And, no, I couldn't pass it. Gave up half-way through. :-(
Mucho respect for those old-timers.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
There are a lot of scientists today who would fail these two questions.
I grew up in India, where I had to pass tests like this 20 years ago. It’s not as hard as it seems because:
1. You actually learn the things they’re asking about. e.g. If the question is “What are the fundamental rules of arithmetic”, you can bet there’s a textbook chapter called “The fundamental rules of arithmetic.”
2. You don’t have to get 90% right. A 60-70% will put you at the top of the class.
3. Tests like these encourage rote behavior. The students memorize entire textbooks (I did), and the teachers resort to the same questions on every test.
I’ll take a modern American education over this anytime. Steve Jobs may or may not have known the capital of Albania, but he could Think For Himself. And that’s what counts in the 21st century.
/johnny
Yeah, OK, but none of these 8th grade Kansas smart alecs knew how to put a condom on a banana. So there.
For comparison, here is an 8th grade math exam for the state of Texas in 2006.
The Truth TruthOrFiction.com has listed this eRumor as unproven, even though there is a source for it and we have obtained an actual copy of the exam. There has not been sufficient proof given, in our view, that the exam is what is claimed.
Rather than being for eighth graders, there are several aspects of the exam that raise the question as to whether it was intended for adults, perhaps newly graduated teachers or teacher applicants.
The eRumor says the exam is from the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society in Salina, Kansas, and was published in the Salina Journal newspaper. That is true. Shirley Tower, the volunteer librarian for the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society, found the exam and posted it on their website in 1996 and the Salina Journal's article appeared the same year. The exam started circulating on the Internet and became the subject of numerous newspaper articles including in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.
There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the exam, but there are questions about for whom it was intended (If the graphics are difficult to read, place your pointing device arrow over the graphic for details).
First, the original exam doesn't mention the eighth grade.Second, the document describes itself as being administered orally and for "applicants." Unless eight graders were described as "applicants," it makes one wonder if the exam was actually for newly graduated teachers:
Read more at:http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/1895exam.htm#.UaOaaNjN6kw
um...er...um... can I have multiple choice please??
This should be distributed around the school.
I find it disgusting that these ridiculous and outmoded questions should even be introduced in a world that is oppressed by the triune scourges of global warming, AIDS, and CEO bonuses.
Wow! Thanks for posting. I would miserably fail. That is the most illustrative thing I’ve seen posted about where our culture is.
How many times have you heard a statement like this, “My grandpa only had a 6th grade education but was the smartest many I know”? No wonder!!
If you had the texts in front of you, you’d find the tests so darn easy, it’s pathetic. I’ll bet half the town was illiterate and the rest knew how to write 10 words.
More or less a rote learning-memory exam.
It shouldn’t be hard for any 8th grader who’s been given the information beforehand.
I doubt the half-wits at the ‘college’ and ‘universities’ in this country could get to first base with these questions...
What our Founders trained for was at the time a bachelors in philosophy where it was required that they know Greek and Latin before they entered college.
Just because I was curious I went to the Harvard website to see if they still had some form of the old scholastic training our Founders went through and I did find something close - the PhD. program in philology (which requires Greek and Latin), without the moral training aspect. So, if our Founders essentially had a PhD according to today's standards, what does that say about today's PhDs?
Seen it many times, it’s a fake. Nobody in Salina KS is that smart.
Up until the 1900 it was said that the accumulation of knowledge doubled
every century.
At the end of World War 2 every 25 years.
Today – well anywhere from 1 to 1.5 years to – Nanotechnology they say
every 2 years – Clinical knowledge every 18 months.
And IBM predicts that in the next couple of years, information will
double every 11 hours!
The correct answer is "whatever the market value is" because nobody would pay $20/m in 1895 -- or even in 1995. Okay, the cost of a thing may be defined to be whatever sellers are asking. But if one seller is a fool and is asking a trillion dollars, that's not the actual cost for any buyer as the competition will make sure of it. HAHAHAHA... I AM smart after all! ;-)
http://www.salina.com/1895test/
dropzone06-12-2003, 04:39 PM
On another message board somebody posted that 1895 eighth-grade test from Salina, KS. I dutifully posted the Snopes link debunking it but didn’t reread the debunking. Now people are saying that it doesn’t debunk it, though it is clearly labeled “FALSE.” I read the link and the parts questioning the provenance of the test have been expunged and I look like an idiot for trusting Snopes! Even an actor—AN ACTOR!—is laughing at me. Oh, the shame of it!
Until today I trusted Snopes more than my wife, my mother, and my pastor combined. Has my trust been misplaced? Has Snopes proved to be yet another idol with feet of clay? WTF? And why hasn’t Cecil weighed in on this, if he’s so smart?
Fuming :mad: ,
drop
Boyo Jim06-12-2003, 04:47 PM
I’ll take “What the hell are you talking about for 100, Alex”.
Darwin’s Finch06-12-2003, 04:49 PM
Well, if this article (http://www.saljournal.com/sub/1895/) can be believed (and I don’t see any reason why it can’t be), the test would seem to be the real deal. What Snopes does debunk is the idea that the difficulty of the test demonstrates a decline in the quality of education, not whether the test itself is real.