A million dollars a kid could be spent and nothing would change. It's not the amount of money but motivation, need to learn, discipline at home and other distractions. You can't go back to the 50's, it's too late, the damage has been done on the way since then. Kids don't have to work for anything any more, the jobs are taken up by so many people working for minimum wage just to eat. Parents saying I don't want my kids to go through what I did when what you went through is what the kid needs. Malls to go around acting like jerks, no respect for anything but still there are a lot of good kids, just not very smart. School used to be from 8:00 to 4:30 with things like shop and home economics, mechanical drawing and god help you if you got in trouble because you had twice that when you got home. So many factors contribute to the dumbing of America.