I may be out of step, but I do not believe there is a crisis in education.  There is a crisis of remembering what it was like when one was young.  I have returned to college after six years of retirement.  I am working on a BA in Creative Writing and I have had to take some two hundred level courses.  That has put me into class with students who have generally been out of high school for one to three years.  After 32 years working in public and private schools I am facing the products of the failing American school system.
     It has been an interesting year and I have learned many things I should have learned earlier in my life.  I am finding the university classes challenging and full of new information filling gaps in my understandings and knowledge base.  While I am more focused than I was when I began work toward my initial degree, I am finding many of my classmates to be just as focused and willing to work hard for a good grade.  There are also students in my classes who were just like I was when I began, confused, unfocused and working to complete their program and get out into the real world.  The point I am making is I do not see students who are less prepared than I or any different from the students I encountered in my first go round in college over  forty five years ago.
     Sometimes, when speaking with my peers I wonder why they were so different than I when we were young.  I realize now that it a memory gap.  The 'good old days' were superior to these days.  The funny thing is I get the feeling that the 20 year old students in class with me today will feel the same way when they are older.  I bet there are many different ways of looking at this situation.