>be portugal >only 31% of adults over age 25 finished high

>>74442229
Probably a lot went to trade school?

"First world" doesn't mean anything, honestly.

>>74442229
>on my undergraduate thesis.
Your what?

>>74442290
I didn't even think of that. That's definitely a variable I should look into

>>74442356
My public university decided that most majors have to complete an undergraduate research project for some reason. The project is basically a slightly dumbed-down grad school exit requirement. Makes me want to kms desu

>>74442229
>How does a Western European country fuck up this hard?

Decades of anti-intellectual and pro-colonial dictatorship. And there are people who still think Salazar was good...

>>74442409
we had 13% literacy before salazar, got 68% after.
he was not good enough with education (nor was intending to be) but the problem is older, much older. Same for spain and south italy

It is also relevant we didn't lose life like most europe in WWII or after and many of our analphabet people are very old

>>74442398
during the dictatorship (about until 40 years ago), 4th class was equivalent to modern 9th grade in terms of sheer knowledge - the system was designed to be as harsh as possible. That being said most people from that time had 2nd or 3rd class just about enough to write/read, do math and know general stuff about the country, far from the modern corriculae.
As for trades, they are very common (increasingly so) but they grant you a 12th grade diploma in the end IIRC, there's also the reformation of the former bachelor degree which lasts for 2 years (as oposed to 3, now those are licenciaturas - i.e regular bachelor degree) and gives you professional education in a specific trade of higher value (like laser cutting machinery, spectroscopy, lab and nurse assistent, etc)

>>74442398
we in chemistry also used to do a project while undergraduate, but nowadays only a small fraction of studens can be elegible for that (i.e only the ones without minors in other sciences, and many go for the sexy combo of chem+phys minor so they have to choose betwen the best minor vs major chem, which allows project or internship)

>>74443305
All of my grandparents (three of them over 90) are from the deep galician countryside and they can read and write. I always found weird your literacy problem with your elders.

>>74445110
that's the diference betwen our dictators and ultimately countries - our hinterlands are neglected ever since the seats of power became more proeminent and centralized.
in other words, we centralized to as much as it was possible (and consider that lisboa got destroyed or depopulated a few times) while spain had regional autonomy due to the lack of power from the crown and later from the republic
our elders unable to read are:
>over 80 years
>from hard to access locations (most interior north/centre) or absolutely abandoned places (alentejo)
>from very humble origins and with work-heavy jobs and/or survival related (subsistence farming, mining, caretaking (both stay at home mothers and people taking care of others), etc)
they are extremely rare now, and are alive mostly because their children took care of them as many have complications from the austere lives they had

>>74445723
when my grandparents where kids the civil war didn't even start and they were farmers, I actually don't know what kind of education they got, I should ask them next time

>>74445807
they probably got something from the church, since it was the vector of education for lower classes before modern age
my grandparents were children of well off farmers, so they got good education, but my ancestors from the portuguese 1st republic (1910-1934) either went through church (males only) or were taught by their parents/uncles/borthers. Even then they were priveleged as there were very few peopel able to read in my/their birthplace at the time.

Since the family was well off, education was always a priority (we actually have some clue about our past due to that, but only on one side of the family). I believe there were valuable writings with some of the elders, but with them dying (or becoming senile) I fear the vultures will lose those when the inheritances start being divided.

I've been putting some effort to make sure it doesn't happen, but intrigue is high and progress is very slow