Posted on 05/13/2008 8:26:19 AM PDT by shrinkermd
The New Criterion is unmatched for its hewing to reason and empiricism among the poltical publications. By it, you'll like it.
ping
http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2006/03/8th_grade_exami.html
"This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, KS, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal. Students were given 5 hours to complete the test."
8th GRADE FINAL EXAM Grammar (Time, one hour) 1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters. 2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no Modifications. 3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph. 4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb. Give Principal Parts of. lie, lay and run 5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case. 6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation. 7. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar. Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours) 1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic. 2. A wagon box is 2 ft deep, 10 feet long and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold? 3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050lbs. for tare? 4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals? 5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton. 6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. 7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per meter? 8 Find bank discount on $300 for! 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent. 9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods? 10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt. U. S. History (Time, 45 minutes) 1. Give the epochs into which U. S. History is divided. 2. Give an account of the discovery of Americaby Columbus. 3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War. 4. Show the territorial growth of the United States. 5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas. 6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion. 7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe? 8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865. Orthography (Time, one hour) 1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication? 2. What are elementary sounds? How classified? 3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, sub vocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals? 4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u! '. 5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule. 6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each. 7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup 8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last. 9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays. 10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication. 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? 3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean? 4. Describe the mountains of North America. 5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall & Orinoco. 6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. 7. Name all the republics of Europeand give the capital of each. 8. Why is the Atlantic Coastcolder than the Pacific in the same latitude? 9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers. 10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.
I believe that it is impossible for all children to be above average.
Which begs the question- what percentage of Americans made it to the eighth grade in 1895?
Kind’a reminds you of Jimmah Carter’s statement about being ashamed to admit that half the families in the US were surviving on less than the median income level.
Ok, I'll start...
3. Caps lock is stuck.
4. Cat has paw on shift key.
The first strand in explaining educational romanticism is a mythic image of the good old days when teachers brooked no nonsense and all the children learned their three R’s. You have probably run across tokens of it in occasional editorials that quote examination questions once asked of public schools students. Here is an example that The Wall Street Journal gave from the admissions test to Jersey City High School in 1885: “Write a sentence containing a noun as an attribute, a verb in the perfect tense potential mood, and a proper adjective.” Or consider the McGuffey Readers that were standard textbooks in the nineteenth century, filled with literary selections far more difficult than the ones given to today’s students at equivalent ages. That’s the kind of material all children routinely learned, right?
Wrong. American schools have never been able to teach everyone how to read, write, and do arithmetic. The myth that they could has arisen because schools a hundred years ago did not have to educate the least able. When the twentieth century began, about a quarter of all adults had not reached fifth grade and half had not reached eighth grade. The relationship between school dropout and intellectual ability was not perfect, but it was strong. Today’s elementary and middle schools are dealing with 99 percent of all children in the eligible age groups. Let today’s schools not report the test results for the children that schools in 1900 did not have to teach, and NAEP scores would go through the roof.
It's time and past time to stop trying to put 100% of kids on the college track, bring back vocational ed.
“In the past, you had to memorize or retain knowledge because there was a cost to finding it. Did you have the encyclopedia? Could you spend time going to the library? Did you know somebody you could ask who knew the answer to this question? Were you going to be in a group that had a discussion about it? Now, what can’t you find in 30 seconds or less? We live an open-book-test life that requires a completely different skill set.” —Mark Cuban
I think this article makes profound sense.
I am no fan of public schools (I homeschool and always have, all my kids) but I don’t like it when they are blamed for inadequacy based on the fact that ALL the students aren’t graduates headed for college.
If we all get Bachelor’s degrees, who is going to pave the roads? Roof the houses? Plant the trees?
We need a balance in our society. We can only handle a small number of pointy headed intellectuals.
Many - perhaps even most - of the important jobs in our nations should not require a college degree.
We should all be literate, have a working knowledge of basic math, and know basic civics. The rest is specialization, which should be available to those so inclined.
In my utopia, there are no public schools. The government, because it has a legitimate interest in defense, provides a “free” literacy course, a “free” basic math course, and a “free” course in basic citizenship, for all ages, at the local library, offered at various times to suit kids and/or adults.
All other education is the parents’ or individuals’ responsibility.
Oh well, a girl can dream.
Considering the average 'rod is good for at least 100,000 miles, that farm has a Circumference of 64,000,000 miles. Since it's square, we can deduce that each side is 16,000,000 miles so it's worth 16,000,000**2 sq miles * (640 Acres/ 1 Sq Mile) * $15.00 =
$2,457,600,000,000,000,000.
That's what I call a farm!!
LOL!!! Good catch!
5. (OR WHATEVER NUMBER HAS BEEN REACHED BY THE TIME THIS IS POSTED) THERE IS A SEVERE WEATHER ALERT SOMEWHERE IN THE COUNTRY.
6. A GlOb oF ChILI cHEesE FRiES hAS LAndED ON THe kEyBoaRD.
People with bachelor's degrees...but they'll be griping about it and do a lousy job (hmmm, sounds just like today's customer service environment...)
American schools have never been able to teach everyone how to read, write, and do arithmetic. The myth that they could has arisen because schools a hundred years ago did not have to educate the least able. When the twentieth century began, about a quarter of all adults had not reached fifth grade and half had not reached eighth grade.
An important point that is routinely overlooked - leaving some children behind was once recognized as an important corollary to helping the others who could get ahead.
It’s a good dream. I homeschool also.
Some of the most successful men I know are self employed tradesmen (plumbers, mechanics, electricians). They are always available for community projects and volunteer work because they aren’t tied to a 9-5 paycheck AND they actually have usefull skills and their own tools.
Pointy head liberals have pretty much wrecked this nation since FDR’s time. It’s the guys with calluses and stained fingernails that fix things that we need more of.
Because we do not train our young to build and to repair we have a generation of burger flippers and gangbangers with no future and no ideas and no desire to serve the community they live in.
My ‘baby’ brother tested out with an IQ in the 180’s. He’s a self-published, communal house managing semi-liberal, sorta conservative property owner with a gun who hates groundhogs with a passion and never has touched drugs or alcohol in his life. Oh, and he’s as self-sufficient as any human I know....right down to the solar panels on his house.
Did he go to college? No, tried it, bored him.
Do you know what he does for money? He’s a handiman. And he makes a fortune doing it...the man can plumb, wire, tile, build...etc, you name it. Can work circles around most folks (as long as he has a nap in the middle of the day).
I know I’m biased, but the world would be a better place with more like him.
For a nation that does not train its young to build and to repair, Home Depot and Lowe’s do a heck of a business. A burger flipper today moves on to bigger things eventually. That’s always been the case.
I know a whole lot of former burger flippers who have moved on to bigger and better things. Isn’t it great that folks can move up in the world when they see that burger flipping isn’t all that useful? That’s what’s great about capitalism. You have the opportunity to learn how to do something that will make you more money than burger flipping. And human nature dictates that people do what is necessary to gain the things that they want.
Educators are no different than anyone else. Their job is to find folks to educate. They have to justify a need for more money in order to move themselves ahead. And the consumer has a need to dicker with the ones pushing a faulty product. Because we have public funded education, we have to elect people who are wise economically and who recognize a good product versus a bad product.
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