No, You're Probably Not Smarter Than an Average 1912 8th Grader

Smithsonian ^

[hinckley buzzard]

This story crops up about once a year. The details change but the format and structure remain the same. There are many of these floaters in the media culture. It would be not quite accurate to call them urban legends, but it would be foolish to ignore the fact that they surface as regularly as mushrooms after a rainstorm. Suffice it to say that the story is rubbish and let it go at that.

[Fiji Hill]

Question #5 on the History section doesn’t make clear whether the Battle of Quebec that it asks about is the one that occurred in 1759, during the French and Indian or Third Silesian War, or in 1775, during the War of the American Revolution. The last battle of the War of 1812 would probably be Mobile, while the last battle of the French and Indian War is probably Restigouche.

[Fiji Hill]

And as any Texan with a sense of his state’s history will tell you, the last battle of the Civil War was Palmito Ranch—a Confederate victory.

[Fiji Hill]

What sound like bizarre questions today were *current events* back then, so the students would have had a lot of exposure to them, in class and outside of class in the newspapers.

For example, The Kingdom of Montenegro was proclaimed by Prince Nicholas I on 28 August 1910, just two years before this test. The new King of Montenegro had declared several “progressive” reforms, so was very popular among progressives in the US, and was thus in the news.

When Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990's and Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro started appearing in news stories, it sounded like 1914 all over again.

[the OlLine Rebel]

‘McKinnon argue that using these types of tests to say that “people are getting dumber” or “people are getting smarter” is kind of dumb itself’

Oh, you mean as with all the older idiots (especially those in schools) today who think kids are so smart because they play with computers/iPads? As if no-one else could do that?

Actually, it’s a MUCH better barometer than “using a computer”.

[the OlLine Rebel]

I also question the smarts of people who question this old test, when they suggest that a geography question is a “science” test.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Who knows? Maybe if the EU falls apart like the HRE, Austria and Hungary will reunify, as it were. Well, maybe if Russia threatened again.

I think the real historical irony is Poland, which should have been as successful as Germany, the twin industrial powers in middle Europe. But it was not to be.

Perhaps it was because of all the Scottish blood in Poland, which has to rate as one of the weirder long term relationships around.

Things change.

[Calamari]

navigators or cruise missile programmers.

[Mr. K]

you make a great point

we may have be stupider from drinking fluoride, but at least we don’t have as many cavities~!!

[chaosagent]

Suffice it to say that the story is rubbish and let it go at that.

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So the Smithsonian thinks it’s a real test and you know different?

And the picture of the test was done in Photoshop?

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

Oh yes, American’s are so much smarter today

American's? With an apostrophe?

[terycarl]

we may have be stupider from drinking fluoride, but at least we don’t have as many cavities~!!

are you ssuggesting that people in the third world, who don't have flouride, have bad teeth but are more advanced and smarter than we are?????......pathetic.