When an Ypsilanti servant girl suffered a near-fatal burn, one that fused her clothes to her back, she was taken to Ann Arbor and given a skin graft that covered her entire back and some of her arms.
That story is horrific and I can't even imagine the kind of agony that poor young lady went through.
The other thing that caught my attention was the low number of people who went to high school in those days. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but there are a lot of folks out there who would love to dismantle the public school system. I'm sure there are, in that group, folks who would love to see such low percentages of the population educated--for their own selfish reasons, of course. I know I'm probably reading too much into this but I think of those anti-public (TRUE public, not this for profit cherry picking charter school crap) school folks, I really wonder what their ultimate goals are....
I myself was startled to learn that such a massive graft operation took place in 1908, and even more startled when researching to find that skin grafting is far older than that...by centuries.
The low # of high schoolers also shocked me, but I guess it shouldn't...we were an agrarian population with insufficient youngsters, spread out over a wide area of farms, to support high schools. Those were urban phenomena.
During research also found that by 1930--twenty-odd years after cars became more common--51% of kids were attending high school and by 1945? that figure had gone up to 71%.
I can't imagine why anyone would wish to dismantle the public school system these days, Teacher P. Do they see a privatized system as preferable?
Random fact: heard on the radio the other day that one in 12 kids in Detroit graduates from high school. That is tragic.
That story is horrific and I can't even imagine the kind of agony that poor young lady went through.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that caught my attention was the low number of people who went to high school in those days. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but there are a lot of folks out there who would love to dismantle the public school system. I'm sure there are, in that group, folks who would love to see such low percentages of the population educated--for their own selfish reasons, of course. I know I'm probably reading too much into this but I think of those anti-public (TRUE public, not this for profit cherry picking charter school crap) school folks, I really wonder what their ultimate goals are....
I myself was startled to learn that such a massive graft operation took place in 1908, and even more startled when researching to find that skin grafting is far older than that...by centuries.
ReplyDeleteThe low # of high schoolers also shocked me, but I guess it shouldn't...we were an agrarian population with insufficient youngsters, spread out over a wide area of farms, to support high schools. Those were urban phenomena.
During research also found that by 1930--twenty-odd years after cars became more common--51% of kids were attending high school and by 1945? that figure had gone up to 71%.
I can't imagine why anyone would wish to dismantle the public school system these days, Teacher P. Do they see a privatized system as preferable?
Random fact: heard on the radio the other day that one in 12 kids in Detroit graduates from high school. That is tragic.