You wouldn't believe the volume of material that comes in to a newsroom every day, both from local and out-of-town sources.

A couple of weeks ago, a gentleman sent in a copy of some academic test that had been given to eighth graders in decades past. (I forget how long ago -- 50 years, or 100, or what have you.) It was intended to show that our academic standards have suffered over the years and that we demand a lot less of school children today than we did back then. There's nothing wrong with making a point about the need for education, of course, but I really didn't look at the test that closely -- I was swamped with work that week and set it aside. It didn't seem like anything special. Later in the week, probably during a long-overdue cleaning of my desk, I seem to have discarded it.

The gentleman called back, a few days later, asking by what journalistic principle I had decided not to use it. To tell you the truth, it wasn't really a conscious decision. I'm not really sure I realized what it was when he first sent it in. His question about why I hadn't run it caught me off-guard, and I stammered and probably sounded like an idiot on the phone.

But now that I've had the chance to think about it, I wonder if simply running a test from 50 years ago and saying, in effect, that kids today are idiots compared to the kids back in the good old days oversimplifies the issue. There are a number of factors in play that must be considered in any comparison of curriculum today to curriculum 50 years ago. Some of them truly are problems, but others are just changes.

I think a key challenge that all of our schools are forced to deal with is that today's students come from a wide variety of family situations. Some have caring and involved parents, some have less-than-ideal home situations. Some parents are supportive when the school tries to discipline their children; some complain and accuse the school of peresecuting their dear, sweet, obviously innocent little child. Others just don't care. Educators have to find a way to deal with all of this in the context of today's more-litigious society, where people will sue at the drop of a hat. It can't be easy to try to deal fairly with all of these situations. You don't want to penalize the caring, active, supportive family by over-regulating things; the school can't be a parent, and shouldn't try. But educators don't want to leave the unsupported child out on a limb either -- it's not his fault he has lousy or missing parents. Educators don't have the time (or the authority) to be a social worker and fix those home problems.

Schools today have to worry about dress codes and weapons and sexual situations and eating disorders and a million other problems that weren't on the radar screen back when that test was given. And in the meantime, we expect them to educate our kids.

As I say, I don't recall exactly how long ago this test was to have been taken, but there was a time when not everyone was required to finish school, and when some teenagers dropped out easily if they weren't academic material. It's only natural that you could have tougher standards when you're only educating the kids who want to be there and whose families want them to be there. That's not the case today, and the No Child Left Behind program pushes schools to keep as many children in school for as long as possible, decreasing dropout rates and increasing graduation rates.

For better or worse, we also demand different things of school today. Our current high school system is set up so that some children are on a college preparatory track while others are on a vocational track. New subjects like computer skills are expected, and any new subject you add to the curriculum reduces the time you spend on some other subject.

Obviously, there are a great many more extracurricular activities competing for kids' attention today -- everything from sports to Internet chat rooms. Each one has its passionate backers as well as its critics. Is our emphasis on sports making our kids dumber by distracting them from school work, or is it teaching them important life lessons about discipline, self-sacrifice and teamwork? Depends on who you ask. Is music or drama a frivolous excess, or is it something important which helps to round the student out as a human being? And what about an afterschool job? It's easy to say that kids should spend more time memorizing the plays of William Shakespeare, but -- because of the wide variety of situations and outlooks that characterizes our fractured 21st century world -- hard to enforce.

Unfortunately, when people complain about how academics are going down the tubes, efforts to improve them are usually focused on standardized testing -- which tends to reward rote memorization, and "teaching the test." Memorization has its place, obviously, but in my opinion the best teachers are the ones who teach a student how to think, to analyze, to research, to solve problems, to see the world and themselves in new ways. It's much, much harder to measure that.

I thoroughly agree with the man who sent me the test that we need to have high expectations for our young people. And maybe a comparison of academic standards from a previous era would be helpful. In all honesty, I didn't so much consciously reject that comparison so much as I set it aside and forgot about it.

Then again, maybe that kind of comparison only tells part of the story.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com .