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It actually goes way back to John Dewey. He is the theorist that got this all set in motion. My first 4 grades were in a U.S. government financed American private school in Istanbul, 1952-1956. It used the Calvert System and had a bit fewer than 100 students grades 1-12. When my family returned to the States and I started in public school the only reason I learned anything new before 9th grade was I read a lot of books and loved history. My mother was constantly bitching about this fellow Dewey and what his theories were doing to the schools, even then. I think I learned to love history because our 3rd and 4th grade history books in Istanbul had more information in them other than statistical comparisons than North Ward Elementary School or Willard Jr High School books had after we got back. I had learned multiplication tables and all the non algebra math, science and Geography (ever heard of Geography in a public school, well, if you are under 50), etc. We had Civics which I ran into again in Jr Hi but had already covered it. My nieces and nephews never saw a Civics course.

Into the eighties the teachers did not propagandize but they taught less and less. If you don't have any history background, school propaganda is unnecessary, you have no tools to sort out what the leaders of society - the politicians- are telling you.

I've known all about Dewey, long before you did, as a child, and also know ALL of his theories...most of which were NOT put into practice, in American schools systems, until rather recently. Doing away with cursive writing, was one of his very first stupid suggestions. He believed that EVERYONE would, someday, ONLY use typewriters.

There are good schools, mediocre schools, and bad schools...this has ALWAYS been true. Obviously, you went to a lousy school and your mother blamed it on Dewey.

My mother learned less, in school, than my grandparents had,by the time I was in school, it had been dumbed down some more; however, it still wasn't pushing lefty propaganda, alternate/fake history, and there was NO PC crap at all! Even in college and grad school, the teachers/profs didn't let on what their political leanings were. I was lucky....all of that soon began to change!

I was even taught to write cursive, using a straight pen and built in inkwell and still have almost a perfect Palmer hand.

There have been many crazy, weird, peculiar teaching methods pushed, for the past several 100 years; Dewey isn't the ONLY one to blame! These "new" whatevers have come and gone and now, just keep on getting worse and worse; even in elite, posh, very expensive private schools. And no, home schooling doesn't cure all of the "ills"; there are some nutjobs home schooling too.

I am older than 50, went to public schools prior to high school, learned massive amounts of factual history, geography, all maths, prior to algebra ( which my grandparents and my progeny got, as well as geometry, in what is now called middle school !) and most assuredly more subjects than you were; per your post.

My progeny and their progeny went to/go to private school. They all learned/are learning geography, history, math, and foreign languages!

You only know about your own little life/bubble and NOT anything other than that. You write in broad terms, about a topic you aren't all that knowledgeable about.

You'd be wiser to keep it to your own experience, what little you know is happening now, or yes, perhaps even in the '80s, but that still falls rather short of your opening shot.

Without looking it all up, I highly doubt that you can talk cogently about Rousseau's teaching methods/ideology, nor anything at all about the private English school, whose methods were introduced, into some American school systems, around 1952, which did NOT last long at all, where the children, in grades as low as the fourth grade, picked what topics they would study. But I can. :-)

“If you don’t have any history background, school propaganda is unnecessary, you have no tools to sort out what the leaders of society - the politicians- are telling you.”

I agree totally, unfortunately as far as I can see there are NO young people and very few middle aged people who have even the most basic understanding of history and I include even those who have degrees in history. All you have to do is make a comment while in a group discussion to the effect that this country is NOT supposed to be a democracy. If even one person fails to look at you as if you are an idiot cultivate that person’s acquaintance, he is the only one in the group who is NOT totally ignorant.