[tomwed]

Originally Posted by blueash

Interesting to read how the books required for a high school education 50 to 60 years ago are being held up as somehow the best choices for today's students. I dare say that none of us would have for a moment agreed with any suggestion in the 50's or 60's that we should be reading the same material as was being given to students in the 1890's. We loose our sense of time and all see our youth as the best.. If we could all just get America back to how it was then, because for the most part, it worked for us?

But in the spirit of the topic, public schools... Shakespeare plays, at least one every year beginning in 7th grade, Pride and Prej (yuck), Wuthering Heights (yuck), Billy Budd, Red Badge, Lord Jim, Tom Sawyer and Huck, Ibsen plays, Animal Farm, Mice and Men, Ethan Fromm, Gatsby, Scarlet Letter, Old Man and the Sea, Tale of 2 cities, Great Expectations, Walden, Cry the Beloved Country, Black like Me, Native Son, several Shaw plays, Importance of being Earnest, Dante's Inferno, some Mythology, some Greek Plays like Medea and Oedipus, Abel Sanchez by Unamuno, some short stories by several but I loved Jorge Borges. and I'm sure I'm forgetting more than I'm remembering. I once was given the opportunity to pick a book for a class, Cat's Cradle, so it goes.

The HS graduation rate was below 20% 100 years ago. Who knows what the reading lists were like.

For the last 50 years the rate has been flat at 75%.

Since 1970, the high school graduation rate for 17-year-olds has remained flat

In the mean time College graduation rates went up. I couldn't find 1975-present college graduation rate.