I have heard so many teachers say that children now days have to learn so much more and learn it more quickly than we did, but I wonder if that is really true when I think of all the subjects that I was taught that the students are not taught now. I had world history, European history and American history from Columbus to present day in my social studies classes plus world geography. In English we had English literature, American literature, current American literaure, grammer, all the structures of the English language including diagraming; writing including writing short stories, writing non-fiction, and writing research papers, plus how to conduct research. We had spelling and pronunciation and penmanship. In math I was taught everything from arthritmatic , algebria, geometry, trig, and beginning phyics. I had a general science, biology, botany, chemistry, foreign language for 3 years, phys ed for every year 1 hour per day, my choice of art or music every day for 1 hour. We had the choice of home ec, business courses or woodworking in highschool for some of our electives. As far as I can tell all I didn't have was computer classes as they weren't being taught then. My 1-12yrs of school was normal for our time as far as I know. It wasn't until college that I really felt any pressure. We didn't have problems with self-esteem, had a low drop out rate, pregnant teenagers were extremely rare in our part of the US. Almost everyone graduated and got a job or went to college or went to the service or got married. I'm so sorry that somehow I had a part of messing it up for my grandchildren. Their school system is screwed, the job market is dismal, the economy is failing and our newspapers read like the Book of Revelation. Too bad we aren't reading the books before Revelation more ,IMHO.