Read the letters home from the soldiers, both sides, in the Civil War. That will disabuse you of any notion you have about our forbears being illiterate. Our nation prospered with one room schools, where the more advanced students taught the younger students, and it worked well until the government started meddling.Since then it has been all downhill. But we were a quite literate nation back then.
Actually, I have no notion that our forbearers were illiterate.
But education was promoted by the founding fathers, especially Jefferson.
A large portion of America had no formal education, even during the Civil War Era and beyond. We, as a whole, were not literate. Many, many people could not read or write. The number of schools were very limited.
I will agree that government interference has been the demise of public school. That, imho, has been a fairly recent event. Had the system remained as it was intended, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.