What went wrong? We let socialists march through the institution -- some of these pedagogies had their formation nearly 100 years ago; they were just allowed to take hold and thrive. That does, however, tell you just how strong the institution of public education was (and American society as well): it has taken 100 years to bring it down...but, they did. I'd say it really picked up ramming speed in the late 90s/early 00s: the gov't. really let the floodgates loose at that time; at least for me, there was a marked uptick in oversight (prior I was allowed some latitude in creating my own syllabi) as well as a marked downtick in student abilities (we went from what I would consider a pretty basic, easily comprehended English 101 text to a text more suited for high school during that time frame; now, it's even worse -- students today cannot read the basic text that we had in 1998 -- they can't read it; their vocabulary skills and ability to read more than simple sentences isn't enough!). So the 20 somethings you see today are the first products of full blast education on socialism.