Washington's experience was not unusual for anyone at the time.
Graduation as we know it, was almost non-existent then.  Heck, public
schools in Virginia didn't begin in earnest until the 1870s, and only
because the South came out oin the wrong end of the "Late
Unpleasantness."  Emphasis on completing high school is very much a
mid-20th century phenomenon.  High school completion (12th grade) did
not hit double figures percentage-wise until the 1920s and 30s
nationally.

Antebellum "secondary" education was, for the most part, limited to the
middling and upper classes, and, at least in much of the South,
certificates or diplomas were rare.  (Poor schools, public schools set
up by localities to give basic education to local impoverished students
operated from disestablishment until public schools were established in
Virginia, but on an exceedingly haphazard basis.)

Soory to be long-winded, but most folks simply didn't have a "diploma"
or certificate to indicate a level of schooling in the South.  Usually a
recommendation from someone of importance was what got folks into
institutions of higher learning.

Jim Watkinson


James D. Watkinson, Ph.D.
Archives
Library of Virginia

PS:  The notion that America has always been a nation of learners, or
one that craved education, is -- at least in my research -- a myth.
Most Americans up until the 1930s and 40s would have disputed the notion
that education, especially higher ed, was necessary.  The real exception
would have been black folk in the wake of Emancipation.

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