8th Grade Test From 1912 Shows How Far American Education Has Been Dumbed Down; Can You Take It?

Natural Blaze ^ | 07/14/15 | Kristan T. Harris

[Enlightened1]

A Kentucky 8th grade exam from 1912 was donated to the Bullitt County history museum. The questions feature the fundamental foundation of education that we seem to have lost due to the dumbing down of the American education system.

Now with the common core epidemic we can see our youth transformed by a cookie cut education system and a near total loss of critical and independent thinking.

If you can not read the fine print or zoom in, then here are some examples of 8th grade level testing in 1912.

1) Define the following terms of government: Democracy, Limited Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give Examples of Each.

2) To what four governments are students in school subjected?

3) Name 5 county officers and the principal duties of each.

4) Give 3 duties of the president. What is meant by VETO power?

5) Give at least 5 rules to be observed in maintaining good health?

6) Define Cerebrum; Cerebellum

7) Name the organs of circulation.

8) How many parts of speech are there? Define each.

TAKE THE TEST BELOW!

[iowamark]

What percentage of the kids in Bullitt County graduated from Eighth grade in 1912? From High School? I think that you will find that the numbers were very low.

[JJ_Folderol]

One thing that’s stuck with me since grade school was the objective of primary education: to be able to get a factory job on graduation from sixth grade and get working papers at age 13.

The requirements were to be able to read and comprehend a newspaper article, write (script) and print, know measures (pounds, pints, etc.), arithmetic (add, subtract, divide, multiply) and be able to add a column of numbers and do percentages.

We also did the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer every day with a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall.

This was in the early 1950’s. Nowadays you’ll be lucky to find a high school grad who can handle those requirements.

We also learned to read with Dick and Jane, so we knew the difference between boys and girls. Jane didn’t have two mommies, Dick didn’t have a new ‘uncle’ every week, mom wore a dress and daddy wore a suit and hat.

And yes, at 8th grade we could have passed that test. Text books were hard-covers and weren’t changed every year on the basis of political correctness and historical re-writing.

We need to roll the educational system back more than half a century to catch up to where we were.

[IMR 4350]

“I’d love to see the common core version of this.”

Tommy works 1 hour raking leaves and gets paid 6 apples.

Larry works 1 hour mowing the yard and gets paid 6 oranges.

Jamal sits under the shade tree smoking pot for and hour.

How many apples and oranges do Tommy and Larry owe Jamal?

[Fhios]

I expect one day all traces of proof like this about the dumbing down of education will simply have disappeared, tossed into the vast chasm of digital information and then slowly revised out of existence.

[dila813]

missed nearly 15%, but some of them I didn’t understand the question but when I saw the answer I realized my mistake.

[JoeDetweiler]

I found a site that gives the answers....

http://bullittcountyhistory.org/bchistory/schoolexam1912ans.html

They say;

“...students would be subject to the jurisdiction of the local school board, and the county, state, and federal governments.”

I always thought of the school board as a branch of the county, but I’m willing to admit that I just might be wrong about that.

[Lorianne]

My great grandfather, born in the 1880’s had only an 8th grade education. From all accounts he was a very educated man. He new trigonometry from school and taught himself higher math. He could read Latin. He read history voraciously throughout his life. He had beautiful penmanship, I have some of his letters. He made a good living as a machinist apprenticing at 16 ... but he had many intellectual pursuits outside his work. I believe this is because of 1) Good basic education 2) Personal drive to be a lifetime learner.

I don’t think we need 12 grades. The basics and even more than is taught now could be learned in 8 grades. Then, if students wanted to continue their education they could do so or they could go directly into apprenticeships.

[Jim Noble]

You know what?

It is a fundamental misunderstanding to say that education has been “dumbed down”, as if education was a drug, or a vitamin, which if administered correctly could allow a population of low IQ unmotivated people to become students and pass that test.

The Bullitt County, Kentucky schools in 1912 did not enroll everyone in eighth grade. Any student who lacked the aptitude or the motivation to master that material either was never there, or was long gone.

There is no conceivable school reform, program, or expenditure that can teach algebra to people with IQs of 85. Most American students should leave academic instruction by age 13. High school should require an exam to enter, and periodic exams to stay. College enrollment should be no more than 10% of the eighteen year old population, probably much less.

What we are doing now - universal twelfth grade for a population of morons - requires constant lying, and miseducating the few who are capable of mastery.

Stop complaining about the schools - it’s the students that are the problem.

[GreyFriar]

we need an elementary education to actually educate the young, not to do touchy-feely stuff, such as whether or not they are lbgt in the 1st or 2nd grade.

[The Great RJ]

I would love to see how college professors would fare on this exam. Today’s eighth graders would be totally clueless about these questions if they could even read the exam

[Nea Wood]

Thank you for that answer site!

[Political Junkie Too]

There was an interesting passage in the biography John Adams, by David McCullough, where Adams writes of teaching (home-schooling!) his son John Quincy, who was seventeen ( that would be in 1784):

If you were to examine him in English and French poetry, I know not where you would find anybody his superior... He has translated Virgil's Aeneid... the whole of Sallust and Tacitus' Agricola... a great part of Horace, some of Ovid, and some of Caesar's Commentaries... besides Tully's [Cicero's] Orations...

In Greek his progress has not been equal; yet has he studied morsels of Aristotle's Politics, in Plutarch's Lives, and Lucian's Dialogues, The Choice of Hercules in Xenophon, and lately he has gone through several books in Homer's Iliad.

In mathematics I hope he will pass muster. In the course of the last year... I have spent my evenings with him. We went with some accuracy through the geometry of the Preceptor, the eight books of Simpson's Euclid in Latin,.. We went through plane geometry... algebra, and the decimal fractions, arithmetical and geometrical proportions... I then attempted a sublime flight and endeavored to give him some idea of the differential method of calculations...[and] Sir Isaac Newton; but alas, it is thirty years since I thought of mathematics.

Letter from John Adams to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, former tutor to John Quincy Adams, pp. 324-325

Compare that curricula to 1912.

-PJ