The State of Education.

In the first decade of the twentieth century most American children attended schools for no more than a few years, and from their limited education they and their parents were often content if they acquired only the most rudimentary literacy and numeracy skills. During this time American public education suffered from the fact that more than twothirds of the nation's schools were rural, one-room schoolhouses — the educational equivalent of the horse and buggy; in these rural schoolhouses teachers who usually had little formal education themselves faced the daunting task of instructing students who ranged in age from five to twenty years old. In the typical classroom, memorization, drill, and recitation were the standard teaching methods. Urban schools, by contrast, were usually age-graded and had a longer school year, and urban schoolchildren sat in classrooms with desks bolted to the floor; but here, too, students...