• @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    142 days ago

    On the other hand, people don’t realize how far we’ve come especially for rural areas.

    I got an uncle still alive and kicking whose school had to combine grades because there were so few kids.

    So for the bulk of his public education it was just him and another girl like 2 years younger than him. That was the whole class, and it was literally a one room school. Not “one classroom” it was a one room log cabin with an outhouse. One single teacher “teaching” literally everything to 1st graders and the rare person who stayed till 12th at the same time.

    Oregon Trail generation really looks more like the exception than the rule every year. It seemed like a terrible education at the time, but we’re sandwiched between complete farces of an education system.

    • Pennomi
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      62 days ago

      2 person classes would be a dream compared to the overburdened 30+ person classes of today. You get half of a private tutor? Hell yeah.

      • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        172 days ago

        half of a private tutor?

        That teaches everything. You think every one room schoolhouse was staffed by someone who knew every topic well enough to teach others?

        If something wasn’t in the handful of textbooks, there was no way to get that information.

        I don’t think he ever made it to algebra, definitely nothing like chemistry or physics. Biology would have been a joke, and astronomy likely limited to memorizing the order of planets.

        It was not a good education.

        • @errer@lemmy.world
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          32 days ago

          And I’m guessing in the era of no internet where you couldn’t easily self-teach subjects you didn’t know so that you could pass that onto the kids.