I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood in the US Midwest, and I went to mediocre public schools. But even so, I learned to write very well. We were taught sentence structure through diagramming in 9th grade; and then we spent the rest of high school writing book reports, term/research papers, and essays. Is this not common in other US school systems?
We started sentence diagramming well before high school. Maybe 5th grade? This was Fairfax County, VA in the 80s and 90s (I finished HS in ‘95). It was also an honors/gifted curriculum, so I can’t speak to what mainstreamed students were taught.
