[Gumdrop]

I grew up in the late 40’s and early 50’s. My teachers in public school and in parochial school were all very good back then.

I remember the diagramming of sentences in grade school. I had the most difficulty with commas, and the difference between dependent clauses and independent clauses.

[ilovesarah2012]

My mother kept some of her father’s school work where he had diagrammed sentences. She was very proud of him. Schools in the late 1800s to probably the 1940s actually taught. I always said my mother had a much better education than I did.

[RJS1950]

In the 50s and 60s I learned all of those grammar learning tools and more. If you look at the history of english language usage in this country you find that proper spelling and grammar were not all that common in the 1700s and early to mid-1800s. It was somewhat freeform in many ways. From about the mid-1800s to the 60s the rules of language, spelling and English in general were brought into formalized education and a larger portion of the population were going through this formalized education system. We now seem to be moving back toward the freeform writing and language era. This is not good. Many of my students cannnot critically read, interpret, or communicate. We’re not approaching idiocracy, we have crossed that line and are moving deeper into it.

[Graybeard58]

I grew up in the same era as you and the following is me to a "T":

I had the most difficulty with commas, and the difference between dependent clauses and independent clauses

Makes me think, "ummmmmm".