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virtually exclusively white males. Completely wrong. In 1900 a greater percentage of women than men graduated high school. Furthermore, while I couldn't find

by causi 5y ago

virtually exclusively white males. Completely wrong. In 1900 a greater percentage of women than men graduated high school. Furthermore, while I couldn't find graduation rates by race for 1900, school enrollment by race shows white children were less than twice as likely to be enrolled than black children, 55% and 30%. Far from equal but also far from "virtually only white males".

dredmorbius 5y ago
I'd be very interested to see your source(s). Though it appears you're right on the gender mix of H.S. graduates ~1900. TIL, and thanks for correcting me. (See below.) I'm pretty certain of the overall graduation rate, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122235014/https://www.edweek.org/media/34gradrate-c1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20101122235014/https://www.edwee... showing 6.4% in 1900. Wikipedia's article is also quite good, though most statistics date only to 1940: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... The gender ratio might be off, though I'd be quite surprised if more women than men graduated. There's an extensive set of data in this 1993 publication by the US Department of Education, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait: https://www.google.com/books/edition/120_Years_of_American_Education/RKdxWfRwCxEC?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/120_Years_of_American_E... (Downloadable PDF.) And on page 55 of that, "Table 18 --- High school graduates, by sex and control of institution: 1869--70 to 1991--92" For the 1899--1900 school year, there were 95,000 high school graduates, of whom 38k were male and 57k female. 62k were from public schools, 33, from private. Graduation rate was 6.4 per 100 17-year-olds. On p. 30 the text notes "It should be noted that [high school] graduation ratios for females have consistently been higher than those for males. In 1909--10, about 60 percent of the graduates were women." Racial mix isn't given, though from some earlier figures and tables (esp. Table 2), white enrollment rate was about 1.7x that of "Black and other races" as of 1900. Median years of education for Blacks is also much lower than whites for the same period. I don't see a specific breakout of H.S. graduation by race. Illiteracy rates as of 1900 for ages 14+ were 10.7% overall, 6.2 for whites (4.6% native, 12.9% foreign-born), and 44.5% for "Black and other". Table 28 gives degrees by sex and level. For 1899-1900 there were 27,410 bachelor's degrees granted in total, 22,173 to males, 5,237 to females. I learned a few things here.

by causi 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago

I'd be very interested to see your source(s). Though it appears you're right on the gender mix of H.S. graduates ~1900. TIL, and thanks for correcting me. (See below.) I'm pretty certain of the overall graduation rate, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122235014/https://www.edweek.org/media/34gradrate-c1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20101122235014/https://www.edwee... showing 6.4% in 1900. Wikipedia's article is also quite good, though most statistics date only to 1940: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... The gender ratio might be off, though I'd be quite surprised if more women than men graduated. There's an extensive set of data in this 1993 publication by the US Department of Education, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait: https://www.google.com/books/edition/120_Years_of_American_Education/RKdxWfRwCxEC?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/120_Years_of_American_E... (Downloadable PDF.) And on page 55 of that, "Table 18 --- High school graduates, by sex and control of institution: 1869--70 to 1991--92" For the 1899--1900 school year, there were 95,000 high school graduates, of whom 38k were male and 57k female. 62k were from public schools, 33, from private. Graduation rate was 6.4 per 100 17-year-olds. On p. 30 the text notes "It should be noted that [high school] graduation ratios for females have consistently been higher than those for males. In 1909--10, about 60 percent of the graduates were women." Racial mix isn't given, though from some earlier figures and tables (esp. Table 2), white enrollment rate was about 1.7x that of "Black and other races" as of 1900. Median years of education for Blacks is also much lower than whites for the same period. I don't see a specific breakout of H.S. graduation by race. Illiteracy rates as of 1900 for ages 14+ were 10.7% overall, 6.2 for whites (4.6% native, 12.9% foreign-born), and 44.5% for "Black and other". Table 28 gives degrees by sex and level. For 1899-1900 there were 27,410 bachelor's degrees granted in total, 22,173 to males, 5,237 to females. I learned a few things here.