Wise words, Aldus. The hard curriculum, assuming it is accurate, of 1895 8th grade equipped people who finished it to go out into the world as, at least, working humans with some knowledge of place and planet, the disciplines of their language, enough math to solve major issues on the scale they would likely need to, and a sense of history. The relevance was partly generated by the training in what to look for.

If we trained people in the skills of good living, rather than the mindless adsorption of symbolic facts, we would do them more good.