Watch The Childhood Years: Learning Life's Lessons Video

The politicians of today, and the typical educator, make it sound like education is so complex that regular citizens would find it hopeless to try to comprehend it. However, a quick review of your family dictionary will bring you a pleasant surprise. One common dictionary says simply: "Education -- The process of training and developing the knowledge, mind, character, etc., especially by formal schooling." It is interesting to recall that only 5% of American youth graduated from high school in the year 1900 with only 1% going on to college. This figures changed in the 40s when 50% of our youth graduated from high school. At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted. The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to 1944; the fighting forces had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men who were tested, 17,280,000 were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn't worry anybody. WWII was over in 1945. Six years later another war began in Korea. Several million men were tested for military service but this time 600,000 were rejected. Literacy in the draft pool had dropped to 81 percent, even though all that was needed to classify a soldier a...