I graduated from high school with a New York State Regents' diploma in 1972, for which one was required to have taken, and passed, the Regents' exams for English (3 year curriculum), Social Studies (one year each of World Geography, American history and World History), and at least two "sequences" -- several foreign languages, math and science were the choices (all three year requirements, though the science and math courses had one Regents' exam for each).

A Regents' diploma was a requirement for a New York State resident to be admitted to any state university. They were not easy exams. Junior year was dreaded, because the battery of exams administered, throughout the state on the same days for a week, was gruelling.

The standards you speak of were not relaxed in 1964, when I was 10, at least not in New York. That came later, with educational experiments in open classrooms and less emphasis on rubrics with more on self-esteem. As usual, moderation didn't govern the experiments.

Television has been blamed for a lot of things. We watch it often. It hasn't dulled my wits, nor those of my children, but that's because we don't view it as a passive activity. Television used as a pacifier or babysitter is a problem, but I think of it principally as the way my family mourned for JFK, my moon landing vehicle, my trip to Oz every year in my grandparents' house with my cousins, and my seat at the Watergate hearings. Oh, yeah: MTV, too.