history

I'm completely new to using this site but my understanding it is a Q & A site like Quora and Reddit and the now-defunct Yahoo! Answers. I want to ask a question here and maybe someone might have some answers.

I would like to have a better idea about the history of modern education. To explain, my dad was born in 1912 in Puerto Rico. He never specified to me exactly when he came to the mainland (the USA) but he said that he, as a child, was considered a truant by the authorities for not going to school. He told me that throughout his life he only had an 8th grade education, no more. I now best figure that a person has to have been about 12 years old to have had an 8th grade education back in the early 1900's to about the 1920's. (My dad did not send me to school when I was a kid so I am not sure). But I also heard that it was common for young boys back then to be done with schooling at age 12 anyway, or at least when they come close to their teen years. So I am not sure if my dad would have ended up with an 8th grade education regardless if he quit school or if he went through what was then a regular schooling.

Of course, since my dad skipped school a lot I guess he never learned everything he should have even if he turned 12.

I wonder what the schooling standards were like back when my dad was a child. Anyone out there old enough or know, or anyone out there knows anyone old enough to know what was required in schools back in the 1920s ? My dad did not seem to know much science, or social studies, or geography, or reading comprehension, or about negative numbers, or other math beyond very simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. . Furthermore since my dad spent his younger years in Puerto Rico, perhaps until he was about 10 years old, I am not sure if schooling standards in Puerto Rico were the same as say, in Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, or New York where I think my dad was brought over to by his mother when he was a boy.. It seemed to me that even back in the 1980's (or approximately) when I was a young adult, there were pre-teen school kids who were already learning algebra (which I am sure my dad never learned) and were even learning the Boolean system which I guess school kids in the 1980's started learning because computers were becoming more and more a part of the classroom.

I have a friend who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in California and tells me that she had to know a lot of subjects when she went to school, and that she got an excellent education in the school that she went to and she learned history, and economics, and civics, and science, and different languages, and writing, and different math subjects etc etc.

Any information as to what kids were required to learn in schools way before the 1960s? Any one know if, typically, most kids only got an 8th grade education back in the 1920's especially in rural poor places such as Puerto Rico, and especially boys?

Anyone know if school standards were different in different states in the earlier 1900's. Depending on the answers I may ask more questions or explain more. Thanks