How was schooling organized in, say, the 50s? (Not referring to segregation). Private schooling still produces people who can speak eloquently. I think it's a case of training (propagandizing) teachers who then in turn teach that to kids. 20 years ago I wouldn't take much issue with putting my kids in the school system, even knowing what I know now. But today? No way. Does pop music play no role in this? TV and entertainment? Seeing as that influences people of many age groups, it feels like that would be a bigger driving factor.

They only teach the Trivium in the elite schools now. There is a reason people are getting dumber.

Everything plays a role. Pop music certainly does, but phones are worse. That was one of the things that disappointed me while I was trying to shift to teaching in the US - teachers are mostly not allowed to take away phones, and the exceptions are only after state-level legislature that prescribes when and how they can take away phones. Teachers in the US really have their hands tied, and any slight deviation (in one direction) equals prompt dismissal. The 1950's, I think, was different in that there was a kind of momentum from previous generations still affecting them. Our society was just beginning to be litigious and heavy with policy. A lot of schools still taught marksmanship, with real guns. People in general were tougher and more responsible. But if you go back to before ww2, classes were mixed ages and several grades were together in one classroom. Modern school structure is modeled after British schooling, mostly invented at Cambridge, and it was pushed in the US by Roosevelt and all his socialist bullshit. IMO, Roosevelt murdered America, and only a few people are able to see it now because the detrimental affects of policy unfold over generations.

We should bring that back, for sure. I'd be worried we'd botch it, though, by making the class book-heavy. If I did it, I'd try to blend rhetoric with drama, make the kids compete in oratory performance, and sprinkle in the classical education between performances.