Good afternoon, all!
As a lesson hook, I presented the following to my US history high school students.
Public education for all is a very recent phenomenon in the scope of human history. Consider that public education in the 19th century reached many more people than ever before, but not as many as you would think. In 1900, only 51% of Americans 5-19 were enrolled in school. Now imagine if there were no public schools or mandatory attendance. What would you be able to learn on your own? What wouldn’t you be able to learn? For example, who would teach you to read if your parents/guardians were not literate? Or where would you learn math? What kind of job could you have if you didn’t know basic math or could not read? Do you think education is much more important in the modern world than it was in the agrarian world?
We had an interesting debate regarding the importance of formal education!
