The often educational Sherman Dorn believes that this recounting betrays an ahistorical mindset because "the early 1970s [were] a time when everyone was complaining about the misbehavior and immorality of youth." If the topic of discussion were the state of the nation overall, he would be??right. Rates of teen pregnancy were far higher in the early 1970s than they are today (although, teen pregnancy rates kept rising throughout the 70s and 80s). But the caller in question referred only to Douglass High School, and his claim that Douglass was a far better school in the early 70s than it is today seems to be corroborated by the HBO documentary. At the very least, it wasn't then the undisciplined free-for-all that it was in 2004-2005.
