[CMB_polarization]

The electronic distractions of today are the propaganda tools of tomorrow.

[driftdiver]

smart and educated are not the same thing.

[trubolotta]

Oh yes, American’s are so much smarter today because they don’t know these facts. Who needs to know where the Suez canal is located?/s

[Hardraade]

Trayvon voter: “What’s a country?”

[Impy]

Ping

[mikrofon]

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

  Sunday, October 20, 2013 7:10:48 PM · by SamAdams76 · 6 replies

  Smithsonian ^

• The White House Brain Initiative

  Sunday, October 20, 2013 7:04:49 PM · by EBH · 9 replies

  WhiteHouse.gov ^ | 4/2/2013

[Daffynition]

You said Montenegro.

That's racist.

[Olog-hai]

Wow, look at the archaic spelling of “calcimining”, which means to whitewash (i.e. use cheap white paint with calcium hydroxide as curative agent and chalk powder as pigment).

And here is a question that they want modern kids to be utterly ignorant of with respect to the answers:

Define the following forms of government: Democracy, Limited Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.

[dr_lew]

Do I see a typo in the spelling list?

[rdcbn]

Our 8th Grade class could have answered most of those no problem

[Isabel2010]

But, where is the part about Susie having two mommies??

[sharkhawk]

Truthfully I could have passed this test in 8th grade. If you take away some of the antiquated terms, and if some of the history was stuff that was studied in class. Now, probably only 40 to 50% of kids could pass it today, but remember that probably less than that percentage passed on to high school in the early 1900’s anyway

[I cannot think of a name]

The real difference:

Teachers back then didn't spend 80% of the school day trying to indoctrinate their students in liberal nonsense.

Funny how much more you can teach when you concentrate on what kids should actually be learning to have a better life as opposed to trying to screw-up their thinking so they will vote democrap.

[blackdog]

I have a whole series of books from the early 1900's for the 4th grade cirriculum. They are written at a college level of today.

We are a country of time diminished morons of prior greatness..

[GeronL]

Intelligence and knowledge is so “outdated” according to this article

[driftless2]

These tests “proving” that 8th graders were smarter than today’s kids don’t take into account maybe only 10% to 15% of all prospective students actually finished the 8th grade. Remember at that time most kids were still on the farm helping out. In short, most children of 8th grade age at that time could not pass that test. And we don’t know how many of the small percentage of kids who actually took the test passed it. Whenever somebody posts stories like this about supposedly all the children from that era were great students, my bs detector starts making a loud noise.

[Mr. K]

they weren’t drinking fluoride all day

[Caipirabob]

With all respect, how uniform was said education applied? There is something to be said about standardization. Was the teacher qualified or the local drunk? So many variables...

[Bigg Red]

mark

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Don’t be surprised. 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.

Likewise, did it impress anyone why in the world they would care about a trip from England to Manila?

Because a very similar route mattered a lot during the Spanish-American War of 1898 followed shortly thereafter by the Philippine Insurrection. This route would have been in the news a lot, and teachers would talk about it at length.