Education
You make a lot of good points about our public education system in past years, especially during WWII and the 1950s.
A couple of observations:
Teachers were not heavily unionized until the 1960s. The current unions are insanely fearful of any competition in the field of education.
There was no Federal Department of Education until around 1980, and the department--apart from all other education funding--has eaten about half a trillion dollars since then.
How has the education system been doing lately, compared to the heydays you write about?