Kids, it seems to me, learn what they are taught. We can't be expected to know the things the 1895 kids knew because we simply weren't taught them. As well, one needs to check just how valuable all that stuff was to one's life. Lots of it looks more like an exhibition of the academic educators' need to show their own intelligence (academic info for the sake of academic info) rather than to teach youth much about life. I'm certainly not saying that our 21st C. education is much better but it is probably on the other extreme: from an anally retentive curiculum to a rather looser, more-choice geared education. I also wonder what that education system would look like had the present day digital technology was available to them? What's the point of knowing how to work out the bushels of weat per acre when a simple calculator can do that work for you? I remember the era not long after that and believe me, I hated Arithmetic with its miles, feet, yards, inches, furlongs and bushels and Pounds, shillings and pence, half pennies and f&&&g farthings, pounds, gallons.... What was the use of all that cr@p? Just to make a kid feel a loser!
