The effect of the baby boom on the schools helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education in the 1920's. In the 1920's, but especially in the Depression of the 1930's, the United States experienced a 【C1】______ birth rate. Then with the prosperity 【C2】______ by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed, young people married and 【C3】______ households earlier and began to 【C4】______ larger families than had their 【C5】______ during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. 【C6】______ economics was probably the most important 【C7】______ , it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed 【C8】______ the idea of the family also helps to 【C9】______ this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming 【C10】______ the first grade by the mid-1940s and became a 【C11】______ by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself 【C12】______ The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. 【C13】______ , large numbers of teachers left their profession during that period for better-paid jobs else where. 【C14】______ , in the 1950s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and 【C15】______ school system. Consequently, the custodial rhetoric of the 1930s no longer made 【C16】______ keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high 【C17】______ for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children. With the baby boom, the focus of educators 【C18】______ turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and 【C19】______ . The system no longer had much 【C20】______ in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to the older youths. 【C1】