I find myself thinking so often that I was raised with or hang out with the "wrong" people that I wonder if I was raised and lived on a different planet than DU folk were. While it is true that my 3rd Grade year was at a Lutheran parochial school (Grades 1-8, two classrooms, very small), my 4th Grade year was at a public school, and I didn't see/hear anything like what she describes as typical/normal.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was in my 3rd Grade year, but the highlight of my year was that out teacher miscalculated our pace through our Math book, and we finished 3 or 4 weeks early. Rather than be bored, we chose to learn multiplication. I don't recall when I learned that the school would be closing down, but the teacher gave me 4th and 5th Grade Readers, which I took advantage of over the summer (along with Little League and swim lessons 'n' stuff). I knew the table before starting 4th Grade, and then was bored, because I was a couple of months ahead of my fellow students. I had turned 10 by the time JFK was killed.
Had I somehow heard of abortion at that age, I would have thought it crazy and horrible (just as I had when I heard of racism a year earlier). My views on both have matured, but haven't really changed.