In the United States, most public education is administered at the town level. Because towns are so small compared to counties/states/nations, the variance among towns in parameters is very high -- two towns only 15 minutes apart can easily vary twentyfold along parameters like average income and percentage of adults with graduate degrees.

Thus, what passes for a "standard high school education" in the United States varies wildly -- in some schools, you can graduate without even being able to read and comprehend a magazine article. In others, the top graduates often find Harvard less intellectually rigorous than their high school (because Harvard has to help their students from worse high schools catch up).

US education is inconsistent. At my school, we never had to read Swift, or many of the other books that seem to be considered canonical "high school" literature.

>I thought this was part of a standard HS education? That is at least where I first encountered it.

If you assume everybody on HN is an American, maybe.

> If you assume everybody on HN is an American, maybe.

I also attended a French school, where it was covered, and I've had at least one conversation with my Norwegian family in which it came up.

I got to read it in Swedish upper secondary school.