Walked into the parts department office one afternoon after eating lunch until time to start work again. Three other coworkers at their desks trying to figure out how many feet were in a mile and how many acres in a mile. One guy was about 35 years old with a degree in business and marketing from major university, another was in his middle 20s and in his second year at a local community college, the third guy also about 35 and graduated from high school, and I was the oldest at almost 60 at the time with just high school a high school diploma, too. After a few minutes of watching them throw out all sorts of figures and formulas, I piped in with, "there's 5,280 feet and 640 acres in a linear mile" They all three stopped and stared at me then asked how I knew that... I responded with, "we had to memorize weights and measures in elementary school back in the '50s"...
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And that episode perfectly illustrates why so many jobs today are listed as requiring a college degree when the requirement 40-50 years ago was (and should still be today) a high school diploma. In fact, someone who went to school in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s was much better prepared to function in the real world than many of today's college graduates, as your story shows. I'm thankful I went to school in a small town that had agriculture, shop, and home economics classes.
All three are very intelligent and experienced guys. The university graduate grew up working on their family farm, the second guy attending community college had served two hitches in US Army Armor and left with the rank E-6, the third was a whiz on computers and hard-wired multi-line phone circuitry and the companies best trouble shooter on both. Two of the three attended small town public schools, the university grad I can't recall now if he went to public or Catholic schools but either would have been small schools. My younger sister attended the same school as the computer whiz and was one year ahead of him. They were taught to spell phonetically and she still can't spell very well and neither could he.
So despite not knowing things like how many square inches in a hectare, proper use of obsolete hand tools and operation of archaic technology, they have managed to acquire the skills most useful to the world they currently live in and thus make a good life for themselves....weird!
I think the point here is, all students and even highly motivated students are and have been getting short-changed by public school's never ending "progressive" curriculum designed to meet the lowest level student's abilities. What they achieve beyond school is all due to their own personal drive or lack thereof...
