Actually in the schools I have visited in the last couple of decades, there was no obvious disorder. Many kids are less schooled in social graces and manners than those were in previous generations and somewhat more likely to be rude or disrespectful or unkind to people, but otherwise things didn't look all that different than when I was in school. The teachers welcomed volunteers who could work one on one with the kid who was behind in reading or math or history or whatever.
But arriving at school early in the morning, it breaks your heart to see shivering kids huddled near the cafeteria door waiting to get in for breakfast because their parents could not or would not feed them. That didn't happen when I was a kid in school. Yeah sometimes mom forgot to give us lunch money and we got fed anyway, but only lunch. Or we brought our lunch. But only lunch as a convenience, not as a necessity. Parents who did not feed, clothe, house their children in those days would lose their kids until they could or would.
Culture always changes over time. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.
But Unkotare is correct. In all times, good and bad, those who take the time to help out the struggling one on one--who chose to extend kindness--are pretty much all that is keeping everything from going to hell in a handbasket.
