[ExI] How to get a healthy country

[David Lubkin]

Stathis asked:

 > Are you saying that people were just as well educated in the
 > nineteenth century?

To add to what J. Andrew Rogers said --

Somewhere I have 19th century US grade school proficiency tests and 
college entry exams. It is jaw-dropping to see how much folks were 
expected to know. I'm going to make a note to look for them.

Since I don't have them, I quote from Heinlein ("The Happy Days 
Ahead", in Expanded Universe, pp 521-2 in the hardcover) --

[eliding his comments on what was being taught in schools when he 
wrote the essay in 1980]

>My father never went to college. He attended high school in a 
>southern Missouri town of 3000+, then attended a private 2-year 
>academy roughly analogous to junior college today, except that it 
>was *very* small -- had to be; a day school, and Missouri had no paved roads.
>
>Here are some of the subjects he studied in back-country 19th 
>century schools: Latin, Greek, physics (natural philosophy), French, 
>geometry, algebra, 1st year calculus, bookkeeping, American history, 
>World history, chemistry, geology.
>
>Twenty-eight years later I attended a much larger city high school. 
>I took Latin and French but Greek was not offered; I took physics 
>and chemistry but geology was not offered. I took geometry and 
>algebra but calculus was not offered. I took American history and 
>ancient history but no comprehensive history course was offered. 
>Anyone wishing a comprehensive history course could take (each a 
>one-year 5-hrs/wk course) ancient history, medieval history, modern 
>European history, and American history -- and note that the 
>available courses ignored all of Asia, all of South America, all of 
>Africa except ancient Egypt, and touched Canada and Mexico solely 
>with respect to our wars with each.
         :
> From my father's textbook I know that the world history course he 
> studied was not detailed (how could it be?) but at least it treated 
> the world as *round*; it did not ignore three fourths of our planet.
         :
>[H]igh school and college students can't do simple arithmetic 
>without using a pocket calculator. (I mean with pencil on paper; to 
>ask one to do *mental* arithmetic causes jaws to drop -- say 17 x 
>34, done mentally. How? Answer: Chuck away the 34 but remember it. 
>(10 + 7)**2 is 289, obviously. Double it: 2 *(300-11), or 578.
>
>But my father would have given the answer at once, as his country 
>grammar school a century ago required *perfect* memorizing of 
>multiplication tables *through 20 x 20 = 400* ... so his ciphering 
>the above would have been merely the doubling of a number already 
>known (289) -- or 578. He might have done it again by another route 
>to check it: (68 + 510) -- but his hesitation would not have been noticeable.


-- David.