Learning in a time gone by

Here is a snippet from the past (1911) which reminds me of how children grew up quickly
learned the 3 Rs with the minimum of teaching aids and started a working life at an age where today they may be considered to young for such responsibilities. 

I started school when I was just two and a half years old, although I didn't go on the register until I was five. My brother drove me to school - he had an orange box on wheels and I used to sit in it, and he used to wheel me. I was four when my mother died.
Throughout my school days I only missed three half days and received bronze and silver medals for attendance before I left at the age of thirteen.
The headmaster was a wonderful man who took great interest in me and all pupils. He taught everything including football, cricket and gardening, he was also the scout master.
The  teachers were a bit fishy, a Miss Herring, Miss Salmon and the headmaster Mr Whiting all much loved by the pupils. Each teacher taught two classes and twice a week the rector visited for the first hour. We started with a hymn and were told about all the historical events which had taken place that day.
Any trouble and you got the stick. None of the boys mentioned this to their parents as they might well have got belted by their father had they done so.
Manners were very important in those days. If the boys didn't raise their caps and the girls curtsy to the gentry, then we were given a lesson in manners.
On leaving school there were few openings for girls who nearly all went into service. The pay was 3/6 per week with just one half day off. Boys could go into agriculture, carpentry or carters etc.. If you were an apprentice, or you had a job to go to you could leave school at thirteen other wise you had to stay till you were fourteen. After that you had to leave school regardless of a job to go to. My first weeks work earned me 2/4 roughly equivalent to 12 pence in today's money.

How is it that this very simple start in life which was common to so many of the people of this country at that time was still sufficient to produce literacy that some today could only wish for.
It is not to say that life was easy or comfortable, far from it, but one only has to look at the great achievements of those times, from great ships ,trains,buildings,bridges,dams to the introduction of electricity etc....with not a computer in sight unless you count log tables and slide rules, to appreciate the possibilities for any man or woman and it was the ordinary man or woman who implemented  all  these different activities.
Maybe the current trend of being at school until the age of 18 and then a university degree that will most likely be of little use to many except as a key to the job market is to ignore the fact that the best tool for learning is life experience, which given the opportunity allows most people to achieve in their chosen endeavours.