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Astronomy fell by the wayside in recent decades.
In the 1960s and 70s every public school taught Harry Messels science program for years 10-12 which did include basic astronomy and optics and were issued a 4” reflector, though sadly very few of the teachers knew how to use it and most say in a cupboard never used.
Some schools taught the “Project physics” course for years 11 and 12, in which the course was 6 sections one of them being a whole term of year 11 was astronomy. The experiments were very similar to those in Jerry Waxman’s “Astronomy Workbook”
The school I went to was lucky enough to have had a 4.5” Cooke refractor since 1936... it was fully functional in a roll off shed and many nice evenings were spent with it.
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