Was there ever a Golden Age of American Education?
• In 1874, high school teachers complained “...one fourth to one half of the pupils are not greatly benefited from their course of study. These students lack interest, industry, effort, and purpose, and are too feebly endowed mentally...”
• In 1894 a Committee of Ten on Secondary Education declared: “Only a small proportion of all children in the country...show themselves able to profit by an education prolonged to the eighteenth year.”
• In 1903, “The mental nourishment we spoon-feed our children is not only minced but peptomized so that their brains digest it without effort and without benefit and the result is the anemic intelligence of the average American school child.”
• In 1913, “Illiteracy in the United States is fifty times greater than that of Germany, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.”
• During World War I, the military turned away thousands of thousands of potential soldiers because they were illiterate.
• In 1929, educators worried about the large numbers of pupils who were playing "hooky.”
• In 1938, the Regents of the Sate of New York reported that in that state “boys and girls who leave high school without graduating outnumber the graduates nearly two to one.”