There is a direct correlation between years of schooling and overall knowledge. I doubt the recruits of WWI were better educated than the WWII recruits who had more years of schooling.
Do I ever wish you were right!
I could dig out many tests from elementary school books from the 1800s, but it was easier to do a quick search.
I searched by, "1800s 5th grade exam". I got an 8th grade 1895 one that from what I have personally seen and used in books in homeschooling.
I doubt many present day college grads would stand an icicle's chance in Hell of passing it.
Here's the link to it:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2008/04/then_and_now.html
And here are some questions from it:
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie', 'play', and 'run.'
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time, 65 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per meter?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus .
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas .
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.
Orthography (Time, one hour) (Do we even know what this is???)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, and syllabication.
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, sub vocal, diphthong, cognate letters, and lingual.
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.' (HUH?)
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi-, dis-, mis-, pre-, semi-, post-, non-, inter-, mono-, and sup-.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication
Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
. 6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of: Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.
The Way We Are
Case Western Reserve's Ted Gup, in the April 11, 2008 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about how little his students know:
"Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries - China, Cuba, India, and Japan - not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses - half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975."
A study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that only 31 percent of college graduates could read a ''complex book and extrapolate from it." Furthermore, the study found that far fewer college graduates are leaving school with ''the skills needed to comprehend routine data, such as reading a table about the relationship between blood pressure and physical activity."
From "Failing Our Students, Failing America", the Intercollegiate Studies Institute report on the testing of 7,000 college students at 50 colleges, 2007-2008:
"College seniors know astoundingly little about America's history, political thought, market economy and international relations... Not one college surveyed can boast that its seniors scored, on average, even a 'C' in American civic knowledge. Harvard seniors scored highest, but their overeall average was 69.9%, a 'D+'."
Try this link http://www.thudfactor.com/reading-education-military-literacy-scores-and-john-taylor-gatto/
There is not a simple correlation between years of schooling and overall knowledge, at least not for all schools.
There are several flaws in your correlation argument. One is clear if you look at what comes out of Detroit schools after 12 years of 'education'. Another is that we are talking about literacy, not overall knowledge. And you also assume that the schools were of the same quality over the time in question.
More years at a good school might have a correlation, but more time spent at a crap school is just wasted time.