Wrong question.
Better question: how is it that it now takes 12 years to educate someone to a minimally acceptable standard, when in the days of the one room schoolhouse it only took 8?
Better question: how is it that it now takes 12 years to educate someone to a minimally acceptable standard, when in the days of the one room schoolhouse it only took 8?
It is a lot easier to teach a room filled with children who are willing to put in the work or at least not screw it up for the other children. It is a lot easier for a teacher when he/she can kick a child out of class for misbehavior and the teacher is protected rather than chastised.
These days, high school is much more focused on being a generalized preparation for a college education, giving students a wide variety of knowledge in hopes that something of that lot interests them enough that they know what career they would like to further pursue.
I can't think of any complex topic -- on par with school maths and science -- that took one hour a day for 180 days to learn, outside of the time I spent in school.
> These days, high school is much more focused on being a generalized preparation for a college education, giving students a wide variety of knowledge in hopes that something of that lot interests them enough that they know what career they would like to further pursue.
Translation: High school focuses entirely on college preparation to the detriment of encouraging useful, immediate work that demonstrates the basic cause and effect of applying real work output to produce genuine value. It strongly discourages interested teenagers from focusing on a specific area of real-world economic exchange, and perpetuates their state of child-like helplessness well into their 20s.
I much rather would have taken Electrician 101 than Introduction to Percussion in high school.
Assuming this is accurate: http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html ... you can see that this has algebra, volume calculations, weights and measures, etc. I know many high school graduates that would have difficulty with both the math and other portions of the test.
And, before you say that this is not representative, let me tell you that I have known many old farmers with only an 8th grade education who were in fact, able to operate at the above test's level.
I recall in particular one couple that built a series of multi-million dollar nursing homes, learning to read and interpret blueprints and handle an architect's rule, on just such an 8th grade education.