Here are some figures...

...from a book I'm reading that surprised me. In The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s, Alan Ehrenhalt, above, writes that:

By the late 1950s, more than four out of five fourteen- to seventeen-year olds in the United States were enrolled in high school.

Really? Only 80 percent?

But then there's this:

In 1930, the proportion was only about half. And in 1890, only 6 percent of that population was in high school.

And I thought about that; I think only one of my grandparents finished high school. (Maybe only one attended.)

Imagine that: about a hundred years ago, it was kind of a big deal to have a high school diploma.