I once found a list of requirements to get into University in the 1800s. If we had the same standards now as then, I imagine 99% of people with university degrees today wouldn't even have been able to get into University. The standards were way higher in the 1800s. Like absurdly higher.
It reminds me of when I used to read about entrepreneurs, inventors, and noblemen in the old days. Invariably, when discussing their schooling, there would be some sort of comment that went along the lines of "in the 8th grade, Cornelius Bumblesworth finished his calculus course and discovered a new way to write differential bullshit, blah blah blah..."
It always made me wonder if the guy in the textbook was a super genius, or if everyone was expected to do that by such a young age. I never even got past pre-calc as a high school senior. Looking at the quality of education now compared to when I was in school, it seems like it is falling off a cliff into a black hole.
Back then people were smarter with long form communication because it’s all they really had. The Lincoln-Douglas debates went on for hours with everyone on the edge of their seat, and they all engaged with it at the time after as a casual thing to do.
Nowadays, most people have few moments where they’re not consuming some kind of drivel. Novels back then used to have untold depths because someone might only have a handful of books that they might read dozens of times over the years.
Kids back then were also raised by adults, not other children. They worked from an early age too because everybody had to help out. We’ve really fallen quite a bit since then. Now most kids are raised by other children and iPads and public school teachers being forced to teach a bunch of Common Core nonsense.
Reminds me of a story of how an elementary school teacher made the class add consecutive numbers up to 100 (1+2+3+4+etc.) as busywork, but one student solved it with a formula and spent the rest of the time sleeping at his desk.
At the turn of the 20th Century, to graduate your primary education (8th grade), you had to sit for a day long test on subjects from household finances (you need to burn x cubic feet of wood a day to heat your house, this will be a long winter, how many cords of wood will you need to buy) to world geography to knowledge of Greek and Roman history.
I once found a list of requirements to get into University in the 1800s. If we had the same standards now as then, I imagine 99% of people with university degrees today wouldn't even have been able to get into University. The standards were way higher in the 1800s. Like absurdly higher.
It reminds me of when I used to read about entrepreneurs, inventors, and noblemen in the old days. Invariably, when discussing their schooling, there would be some sort of comment that went along the lines of "in the 8th grade, Cornelius Bumblesworth finished his calculus course and discovered a new way to write differential bullshit, blah blah blah..."
It always made me wonder if the guy in the textbook was a super genius, or if everyone was expected to do that by such a young age. I never even got past pre-calc as a high school senior. Looking at the quality of education now compared to when I was in school, it seems like it is falling off a cliff into a black hole.
Back then people were smarter with long form communication because it’s all they really had. The Lincoln-Douglas debates went on for hours with everyone on the edge of their seat, and they all engaged with it at the time after as a casual thing to do.
Nowadays, most people have few moments where they’re not consuming some kind of drivel. Novels back then used to have untold depths because someone might only have a handful of books that they might read dozens of times over the years.
Kids back then were also raised by adults, not other children. They worked from an early age too because everybody had to help out. We’ve really fallen quite a bit since then. Now most kids are raised by other children and iPads and public school teachers being forced to teach a bunch of Common Core nonsense.
Reminds me of a story of how an elementary school teacher made the class add consecutive numbers up to 100 (1+2+3+4+etc.) as busywork, but one student solved it with a formula and spent the rest of the time sleeping at his desk.
It would be clever if the teacher did that to identify smart kids, but that's not what she had in mind.
At the turn of the 20th Century, to graduate your primary education (8th grade), you had to sit for a day long test on subjects from household finances (you need to burn x cubic feet of wood a day to heat your house, this will be a long winter, how many cords of wood will you need to buy) to world geography to knowledge of Greek and Roman history.
Now we get 12th graders who can't read or write.