What changes have you noticed in education during your lifetime?

In the US, we now have Pre-K, all day kindergarten, middle schools, mandatory government controlled programs (gotta get the grants), a ridiculous amount of placement testing, no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served in the cafeteria, lack of history lessons, children graduating that can't write, do math and don't have a clue who was the first president of the US. Most districts are also top heavy in the administration department demanding mega salaries.

We tend to spend more on our sports arenas and participants than we do on the arts. In my area of the country, many older retired citizens are losing their homes due to the horrendous increases in school taxes.

I don't know about other countries, but in the US they have cut back on the arts, physical education, and recess. The result is children who are overweight and have poor imaginations. They have trouble with problem solving because everything is book learned instead hands on learning. My brother and sister-in-laws are teachers and some of the things I feel are basic reasoning their high school students can't figure out.

I went to a private high school,it was affordable, but in the last 4 years the tuition for private schools has gone up by 1600%, without counting the many books they're supposed to buy(it's basically a business to get parents go broke because public schools don't have capacity for all students), and the system has also changed,that includes the material, parts of history that are not in favor of the government have been omitted and a third language has been added to the curriculum.(I'm not from the US)

Less reliance on brawn, and more reliance on brain. My relatives who are coal miners and oil riggers are usually the ones who grew up with little education. They follow the booms, making decent amounts of money but spending every single dime they make like most of their peers. Most manual labor industries come and go on a whim, leaving these workers with non-transferable skills and bad spending habits out in the cold.

My relatives who spent their time working hard in areas that are worth working hard in, such as their studies, have attained various amount of success in the past decades. Company lay-off?  A dozen job offers in your email inbox the next day. Bored of your current role? Take on a different route. Jobs with yearly cash bonuses, stock options, 401k matches, etc. That's why one of the top priorities for the middle class when buying a home is the quality of schools for their children, and they'll pay top money for their children to attend the best.

When I went to school, you could FAIL!! (Had to redo the year) Now you cannot fail, fail is a dirty word. Students now get their high school diploma, even if they know nothing.  (in my humble opinion, this is evident in society today... Did you notice how many people were upset with the US election, because their candidate did not get elected? Is this a result of going through a system where no one loses?)

Students today can get the answer as fast as I can, if they use their calculators/computers, but I don't really think they understand mathematics (other than the people who specialize in a math based field)

I don't think teachers would get away with banging kids heads off of  their desks today. That's good :)

It got more and more boring and/or irritating

A broad question. The biggest change I've seen is even more parents are openly derelict in ensuring their offspring are properly prepared for adulthood. Even if a school curriculum provides meaningful teaching (not so much a fact as we'd like it to be) students are not motivated to become learned, to do hard academic work. They have Google now, why do they need to learn?

Children having smartphones and tablets. I didn't get my first one until I was well into my 30's. The fact that children get a lot more bold while at the same time, sensitive and thin skinned.

Back in my day ... You were taught how to commit to memory. If you graduated high school there  as a pretty good chance you could both spell properly and do basic math in your head., now days kids graduate and are a high percentage is still  pretty much completely illiterate  because of their dependence on computers and calculators. 

The thing that blew me away was when I saw child care in my daughters high school. They offer an elective in child care for "early childhood development" where the students take care of the kids (with a teacher of course) but the babies/children come from the teens on campus!

More computers and no physical education

I noticed that day by day the education level is improving through digitalization technology.

More technology and fewer writing, spelling, and conversational skills.  The electronic devices are great, but I hate to see so much dependence on them.  My goddaughter is in the honors program, but she's more comfortable texting than actually talking to a friend.

More students, but overall, less knowledge acquired.

I have noticed that with the the presence of calculators, some students seem to think that there is no longer a need to learn how to actually perform some types of calculations.

The problem with that is that learning how to perform such calculations is important to learning how to think and how to come to meaningful conclusions with minimum error.

I fear that if machines with the ability to "think" ever become ubiquitous, some of those human beings will have made themselves superfluous to life on earth.

(I used to think that grocery store checkers and toll road attendants would be around forever---apparently not.)

I'm still in high school, but even I've noticed some drastic changes in the curriculum.  Firstly, we switched from a state curriculum where schools have more freedom in what they teach, to the national curriculum, where schools are more rigid and everyone has to learn the same thing, no matter how relevant or irrelevant it is.  All in all though, the national curriculum is better as there are a wider range of subjects in the in lower grades.

I started preschool when the year I turned 5 (I was 4 for the majority of the year).  It was all focused on play time and arts and crafts and imagination, and I could only count up to 10, write my name and read basic sentences.  The year I started year 1, it was Prep instead.  They could read and write and do sums by the end of the year.  They also started a year older than me.  By the time they were in grade 3, they could do exactly the same things as I could when I was in grade 3, although, I think it would be beneficial to be a year older in later grades.

My cousin just finished grade 2 on the national curriculum.  She was in a pilot program where instead of books, they learn fully on iPads.  Her handwriting isn't as good as most kids her age, and she is iPad-obsessed (though not as much as other kids I know...).  They are learning coding, which, is an increasingly important skill (I can only set up a basic HTML file), but it would be just as easy to have an hour-long IT class each week.  I think that it's all right to use computers for assignments, but not much else, from about grade 6 or 7 just to practice handwriting and spelling and whatever else one may learn from writing by hand.

I think that education is changing with the times, the curriculum is getting better, the Prep grade could just as easily be play time, and computers are used way too much.

Australia focuses on the Arts and Sports sides as well as the academic side, and, for as long as I remember, it's always been like that.

What has really changed is that the teachers are no longer have authority in the classroom, so it's the animals that are running the zoo. Here in Omaha, there is one school where they cannot keep experienced teachers because the kids are so out of control. Kicking, stomping, disrupting the classroom, defying the teacher's requests, etc., etc.

The Omaha World Herald put this story in the paper a few days ago and the school is wondering what to do about this issue - how they can "help" the students behave better.

OMG.

What about kicking the students out? No, sorry. They will just go to an alternative school and wreak havoc there. What about yoga? It's supposed to have a calming effect on people.

What about HOLDING THE PARENTS accountable for these kids? Um, no, because that would hurt their feelings. What about flunking the students? Um, no, because that would hurt the children's future. They wouldn't be able to find a job because they flunked out of school.

The blatant disrespect for authority is ruining this country. Teachers can only do so much and without the school administration backing them up, they are doomed for failure.