copyright in Anne of Green Gables had been registered on June 11, 1908
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm ... In this 1903 children's classic
Could you pass 10 percent of this test and it is not an urban legend?
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/kansas/genweb/ottawa/exam.html
1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves
The differences between 1895 and 1903 are negligible. WWI is the next great watershed.
Moreover, a book published in the first decade of the 20th century would draw on the author's memories of his or her own school days. In fact, Kate Douglas Wiggin was born in 1856, and started her teaching kindergarten in the 1880s. L.M. Montgomery was born in 1874, and she took her teacher's license in 1895.
I could easily pass the test - have scored 85 percent on it before, cold. I was a history major with a good background in Latin and Greek, and my Gaelic teacher was actually a linguistics professor, so the "orthography" stuff isn't a problem. Don't know what the health questions are doing under Geography (which I do o.k. on because of my amateur radio license), and I don't remember those on the copy I used, but wouldn't have any problem with those either. Where I fall down is in the obsolete units of measurement - rods, tare (what we would call zero), etc. - and arithmetic is not my strong point in any event. Fortunately the legal stuff under arithmetic (don't know why it's there!) is easy if you have a law degree.
But I have a graduate degree and post-graduate studies . . . not an eighth grade education!