Joseph:
No one should need to hear or read a lecture on how different today’s world is from the earlier generations. But since you ask, something must be presented.
The existence of yeshivos is a comparatively new phenomenon. The existence of selectivity for admission is also rather new. Expelling talmidim was hardly known before the present era. And chinuch was not a backdoor job for someone unable to find gainful employment elsewhere.
Besides for these and many more differences, the world was also a different place. In the lifestyles among Shomrei Mitzvos, there was a palatable emunoh, in which HKB”H was part of the home. Yiddishkeit was not a competitive sport (frummer than thou), chitzoniyus was not a status symbol, and the true goals of the averge Yid was to be the best nachas ruach to Hashem. Children were imbued from birth with a sense of Yir’as Hashem and Ahavas Hashem. It is sad and tragic, but we can no longer say this for today’s world. There is louder volume of Kol Torah than ever before. We have taken kashrus to extremes unknown to our ancestors, and chumros that were once almost extinct have been revived to become commonplace. There is a thriving marketplace for segulos. There are daily albums of photos of luminaries meeting, performing various mitzvos and rituals, and a plethora of frum media. But the core values of Ahavas Hashem and Yir’as Hashem are harder to find. The pashtus that energized Klal Yisroel is gone, and the emunoh pshutoh that formed the unbreakable chain is deeply hidden. When a melamed taught children, there was an electricity in the air, and kids (yes, kids) wanted to learn and excel. There was a melamed or rebbe who invested his effort in this small group of talmidim, and individual connection was a priceless ingredient in this process.
In today’s home, we need to examine what we teach. We need to buy only certain products in certain stores because of what the neighbors or the yeshivos might say. We need to dress up in ways that are foreign to our respective families, because of the dress codes yeshivos dictate for parents. We can go on and on, and it would be a great lecture if given by the right speaker.
Today’s children are being raised differently. The rebbe of a century ago would be unable to handle this, nor would they the high ration of talmidim per rebbe.