My great grandmother graduated in the 9th grade. Her teacher decided that she and her younger sister were ready, gave them a test on the blackboard, and sent them home with some sort of graduation certificate.
This happened in the middle of the school year back in 1912 or so.
Wow. Some of these comments are nothing short of amazing. Anyone who has taken the time to read letters from Civil War soldiers understands that, while the bulk of them might only have grade school educations, basic English and Math skills were more than sufficient. The idea that the bulk could not read and write until the 20’s or 30’s is well...false. And I’ll put the writings of any West Point graduate of the 19th century up against any modern day liberal arts graduate....
hh
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895
This is the eighth-grade final exam* from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken
from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society
and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
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 do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. 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. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. 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 inch?
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 America by 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, and 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, subvocals, 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, super.
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 N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder 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 inclination of the earth.
The top of the test states > “EXAMINATION GRADUATION QUESTIONS OF SALINE COUNTY, KANSAS
April 13, 1895 J.W. Armstrong, County Superintendent.Examinations at Salina, New Cambria, Gypsum City, Assaria, Falun, Bavaria, and District No. 74 (in Glendale Twp.)”
According to the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas “this test is the original eighth-grade final exam for 1895 from Salina, KS. An interesting note is the fact that county students taking this test were allowed to take the test in the 7th grade, and if they did not pass the test at that time, they were allowed to re-take it again in the 8th grade.”
Who’s the dumb ass’s now?
I recall visiting years ago an uncle by marriage who grew up in a small community in mid-America. He was 90 years old then. He said the school there was a one-room building and the success stories of some of his classmates. He, too was a success story. He was showing me some books he had recently retrieved from a family homestead, one of which was a school math book. Having once been a math teacher I thumbed through the book. It was remarkably well crafted as about 90% were word problems and the problems were in many cases situations you would run into at home or on a variety of work places. Then he told me the best part. No one passed the class without being able to satisfactorily work every problem in the book.
Vin was quoting a posting in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by a guy (or an “it”) named Patrick. He constantly spouts liberal talking points with lots of useless verbage. He is one of the 4 voters for Dingy Harry Reid. That tells you all you really want to know about the loony liberal.
It never ceases to amaze me how many products of the government school cartel can’t even hold a pen properly.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I was at church the other night having a discussion about gold prospecting with an adult woman, who had no clue that there were Chinese in California in the 19th century!
I have a fasination for old books. I’ve seen many turn of the century math books for then junior high level students that would blow you away. This is college level stuff.
Venture into a classroom now days and you’ll understand why Johnny can’t read. It’s because Johnny doesn’t respect his teacher, his classmates, or himself enough to sit down and not cause total chaos. No one can learn in today’s classrooms. In the far distant past, it wouldn’t have crossed Johnny’s mind to act out because learning was a privilege. In the not so distant past, Johnny’s acting out would have resulted in the principal introducing him to the board of education and that evening daddy would be removing his belt for reinforcement on the behavioral lesson. Today, Johnny knows he can get by with anything he wants. Let a teacher raise an eyebrow at Johnny and his parents will be all over the school. Parents don’t value education nor do they teach their children to behave. So, yes, it is the parents’ fault.
Whine, hold your breath, stomp your feet and write scathing replies but it all starts in the home. Come on, admit when you last observed a classroom. For that matter, just look around the grocery store and tell me kids are little angels. A generation back wouldn’t have kids running screaming up and down the aisles calling customers four letter words for getting in their way or in the basket intentionally kicking their parents or hollering “I want, I want, I want” at every cereal box on the shelves. Now, remove the parent (who might have enough power to remove their phones for an hour) from the scene and its all out pandemonium.
Precisely. The school I attended had three teachers for eight grades but the phonetics was the method by which reading was taught. So by the fourth grade I was reading the school’s one set of ancient encyclopedias and Milton’s Paradise Lost for enjoyment.
I was not the exceptional student, rather average in fact, though I should like to think otherwise.
Years ago I picked up an 1830s book on Accounting and the math in it curled my hair. We didn’t have a standard currency until the 1850s and the book, among other things, has charts and formulas for converting foreign money into U.S. dollars. You had to be a sharp cookie to be in that profession, and no doubt others. I wonder how many computer dependent grads could do double-entry Accounting manually.
[Sidebar: there’s an old Sci-Fi story about us being in a war with some distant aliens and our hideously expensive computer-manned spaceships were impoverishing Earth. Two guys enter the President’s office and one guy declares they’ve make a breakthrough that will win the war. When asked to prove it, the guy points to the bespectacled little guy he brought in and says, “Ask him a mathematical question.” The Prez says, “What is 14 x 10?”. “140” the nerd replies. The Prez breaks out his pocket computer, verifies the answer, asks a division question with the same results. “It’s a trick!” says the Prez. “No, it’s for real. We discovered we can train people to do that. We can replace our expensive computers with cheap human calculators and flood the aliens with our new spaceships.” And that’s how we won the war against the Altarians.]
The thing is that they don’t know just how much they don’t know. They believe that the knowledge sufficient to survive is an urban setting is pretty much all there is to know. It isn’t!
I once came upon a young man while working as a manager in a store.
I was having coffe and this young man came over to me and asked if I would help him fill out a job app. I said sure.
I recognized the app, but didn’t say anything.
What really shocked me was when it came to writing his edu. He asked me how to spell his High School name. I kept cool and helped him.
Needless to say I went home and told my children that I had better see homework and plenty of it.
thankfully all of my children have college degrees (one PHD)
I also informed their teachers I wanted to see some concrete proof that they were learning. Works everytime.