ALMOST 40 YEARS ago, I got a job teaching high school English and American history, beginning the third week of the fall term.

I replaced a pregnant teacher who, just starting to "show," had to take a leave of absence until after she gave birth. Banishing her would make it less likely the students would imagine how the pregnancy occurred.

So much time has passed that I don't remember if I gave as much thought to the absurdity of the policy as to my good luck. Probably not. But my entry into public education has been on my mind this month in light of two 30-year anniversaries that, on the face of them, might not seem related.

One is the anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in schools and colleges that receive federal funds.

The other is the 30th birthday of one of the oldest university child care centers in the nation, the Student Day Care Center at Towson University.

The center at what was then Towson State College was inspired by students, which is why it has kept "student" in its name for three decades.

It's an unusual operation. More than half of its 60 slots for preschool kids go to the children of Towson students, many of whom are "young and broke," says Harriet Ruckle Douthirt, center director.

Towson alumni have second priority, followed only then by faculty and staff.

"That's as it should be," says Douthirt, who's been at the helm for 27 years. "This is a place for students to work and observe, to make career and life choices and to have a safe and nurturing place for their children while they're in class."

Title IX and the Towson center both rose on the swell of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

In the case of the center, a student approached Barry Frieman, a professor of early childhood education. "I'm not going to survive" as a parent and university student simultaneously, she told the professor.

That set wheels to turning, says Douthirt, but it took a couple of years to get day care for Towson students' kids up and running.

At about the same time, progressives such as Rep. Edith Green of Ohio sought to remove roadblocks encountered by girls and women at almost every turn of their schooling.

College students weren't supposed to get pregnant and have children. In high school? Forget about it. Pregnant students were usually expelled.

And then there were the separate entrances for male and female students, the quotas restricting women's access to law and medical schools, the segregation of girls to home economics instead of industrial arts, lower tenure rates for women on college faculties, lower pay in elementary and secondary schools and the almost total absence of athletic scholarships for women - to name a few sins on a long laundry list.

Thirty years later, Title IX has changed a lot of practices, but not as many attitudes.

"It took a long time, but progress has been particularly evident in the last 10 years, though we still have to deal with some of the old guard who didn't grow up with Title IX," says Nance Reed, senior associate director of athletics at Towson.

There are numerous scholarships for female athletes. There's a girls high school wrestling league in Maryland, and the St. Mary's College of Maryland women's sailing team recently finished third in the 2002 Inter-Collegiate Sailing Championships in Hawaii. Women on college and university faculties have increased from 18 percent to nearly 35 percent. More college and university presidents are women, including several in Maryland.

Yet, a report last week noted that, in Maryland, females make up 99 percent of high school students in cosmetology and 84 percent in child-care courses.

According to the report, boys still dominate in classes that lead to traditionally male careers with higher pay.

Deep-seated attitudes are hard to change. Gail Lynn Goldberg, a Maryland consultant and authority on gender issues, says teachers still favor boys in the classroom, and often ignore differences in learning styles between boys and girls.

Katharine M. Oliver, who heads career and technology programs for the State Department of Education, says she prefers to see the glass as half full.

The gender split in what we used to call vocational education is 50-50, says Oliver. And, she adds, more students of both genders are migrating to courses leading to nontraditional careers, hairdressers notwithstanding.

I've often wondered what happened to the teacher I replaced. If that baby was a daughter, she'd be about 38 now and would have had Title IX protection since the third grade.

If she studied at Towson while her children were tiny, I hope they were enrolled in the Student Day Care Center.