https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Education_Board
The General Education Board was a private organization which was used primarily to support higher education and medical schools in the United States, and to help rural white and black schools in the South, as well as modernize farming practices in the South. It helped eradicate hookworm and created the county agent system in American agriculture, linking research as state agricultural experiment stations with actual practices in the field.
The Board was created in 1902 after John D. Rockefeller donated an initial $1 million (equivalent to $37,211,500 in 2025) to its cause. The Rockefeller family would eventually give over $180 million to fund the General Education Board. Prominent member Frederick Taylor Gates envisioned "The Country School of To-Morrow," wherein "young and old will be taught in practicable ways how to make rural life beautiful, intelligent, fruitful, re-creative, healthful, and joyous".[1] By 1934 the Board was making grants of $5.5 million a year. It spent nearly all its money by 1950 and closed in 1964.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down
Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, and culture. Originating in 1933, the term "dumbing down" was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, meaning: "[to] revise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence".[1] Dumbing-down varies according to subject matter, and usually involves the diminishment of critical thought by undermining standard language and learning standards, thus trivializing academic standards, culture, and meaningful information, as in the case of popular culture.