1917 Grade School Textbooks

The curriculum assume students would not finish high school. For this reason, farm management and engineering skills were taught in grade school. Today's young people have to attend college for specialized learning opportunity.

During the early 1900s and before, education was based on the assumption that most students would not finish high school. This was especially true in farm communities. For young people to have some farm management skills before they left the education system, textbooks and assignments were based on examples that farm students could associate with. By the sixth grade, students were learning engineering and management that are only taught in technical colleges today, such as, compiling a list of materials needed to build a barn or number of stones needed to build a wall, or how to use a carpenter's square for computing angles. On a carpenter's square, all the lines and numbers can be considered a early form of computer. Books are written on its use. Whatever age teens left school, they had some professional knowledge on which to expand their skills.

• Classroom lessons had a connection to students' experiences on the farm. With this connection it was easy to for young students to comprehend complex assignments. In reality, this was project base education.

Today, education is built on the assumption that every high school student will go to college. In fact, during the first two years of college, students do not learn anything about the specialized skill they are seeking.  50% to 70% of these students will dropout. Adding this to people who do not go to college, we have a high percentage of young people that are academically well informed, but have little specialized knowledge on which to pursue a career. The system requires them to wait until they are 20 years old or older before they are given opportunity to learn specialized skills, skills that a 12 year old learned 100 years ago. True, schools in farm communities could be focused, but there is a big difference where 12 year olds know how to estimate the cost of building a barn to the abilities of today's grade school students or second year college students. Why the discrepancy?

100 years ago, lower grade textbooks combined academics with the blue-collar world. With this combination, students could associate and expand useable skills at every grade level. Whenever they left school, they would have some specialized knowledge. If they went on to college, their blue-collar training was a plus in the white-collar world. As the 20^th century moved on, the education system became dominated by intellectuals who associate blue-collar skills with people of low ambition. Today, the system requires all students to master academics before they are given opportunity to learn a specialized skill, including blue-collar.

The days of using blue-collar skills as textbook examples, are over. Because of this policy, an increasing number of students walk away from the system with the belief they are born failures, turn to crime and spend their lives in prison.

• Today, classroom topics do not relate to the world young students live in. As a result, they have no understanding as to why they need to know a particular subject. Education is by memorization, not association. Many intelligent people cannot learn in this environment.

• Today, there's heavy focus on reading and writing using topics selected by special interest groups. In the early years, reading and writing was a byproduct on topics that related to the local environment. Teachers could select topics that received positive reaction from students. Education by association is highly motivating.

• Anyone can learn anything if the subject relates to personal interest or the environment they live in. Age, young or old, is not a factor.

Note: The above concept was discovered by reading a 6^th grade text book that was printed in 1917. At that time, I gave it no importance. Thinking about it later, I realized that, over time, classroom textbooks have developed a huge degenerating gap and the mission of education has changed drastically.

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