We don’t realize how recent widespread school attendance is.
“In [1890], only between 6 and 7 percent of the population of youth fourteen to seventeen years old was attending secondary school. By 1900, it was already over 11 percent, and in 1920, about a third of that age group was enrolled in secondary schools. By 1930, the number had reached almost four and one-half million, over 51 percent of that population.”
(Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958)
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