You can't just take what you know about modern education and retrofit it into the past. The system was just so ridiculously different. To start with the overwhe

You can't just take what you know about modern education and retrofit it into the past. The system was just so ridiculously different. To start with the overwhelming majority of people, low and high class alike, had very limited formal education. I tried to find a list of Harvard graduates of the era to demonstrate this, but the best I could come up with is this [1] list of Harvard presidents who all tended to be distinguished graduates themselves. It's quite unfortunate, because these are ostensibly the cream of the crop - which kind of plays into your class stuff, but I think even this sample also works to largely reject it. In any case it's quite interesting to read their bios! For instance check out guys like Thomas Hill [2]. He had very minimal formal education, yet was a sponge for knowledge, and learned what was necessary to achieve - and achieve he did. Another is Jared Sparks [3]. Educated in common schools (which most certainly were not teaching Latin/Greek and other advanced topics) before he went to work at a variety of trades and then (presumably after saving up some money) attended a private school at the age 20+, before finally making his way to Harvard. Basically it's not like you just went to school, graduated, and then applied with the knowledge you'd gained - at least not in general. In a world where education was optional, those who pursued it tended to do so out of passion and from that passion exceptional competence also tended to emerge. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_Universit... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks