It used to be, at the turn of the century, a grade 12 education meant getting the equivalent of 2 years of college.
Exactly right. K-12 education is nothing more than a jobs creation program for teachers.
People laugh at an “8th grade education”, but that used to be equivalent to what a HS diploma is today, if not more. And a lot of high school graduates still manage to show up ill-prepared for college these days. What a joke.
Most of what is taught in middle schools these days is just filler.
College education in those days wasn’t that great. I have 1907 organic chem college textbook. 100 pages.
Nowadays knowledge goes through a , PC, and DEI grinder before acceptance. That’s one thing among many things that is dumbing us down.
It used to be that two years of college imparted real knowledge.
I assume you mean the turn of the 19th century to the 20th.?? The text books my aunt used when she taught in the 1930s were so difficult!