A good teacher could teach in a barn with shared books. Most of our great grandparents didn’t get much more than that and they generally got better educations than we did.
You are so right-my grandmother had the 6th grade level schoolbooks her mother learned from in the late 19th century, and she gave them to me-they are a treasured possession. Many of the English grammar lessons and the math problems were not covered in my classes until 8-9th grade-and I went to private school...