My dear friend Sharon sent me this forward. I'll attempt to include it here and then comment on it afterward because I think - while being very interesting and offering a great look at what comprised education at the end of the 19th century - this email serves to perpetuate several myths about education (which I'll discuss later), though I don't think that was Sharon's intention by forwarding this to me (after all, she has a pretty remarkably talented granddaughter who proves wrong much that is implied by this forward).
First, the email -
This was the response from the person sending it to Sharon (or at least that's how I read it) ----
"If I would have had to pass this exam, I would still be in the eight grade. But I do believe 1895 ninth graders probably knew more than most college graduates.
Pencils ready!
What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895... Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895? This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895
Grammar (Time, 1 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,''play,' 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 hour 15 minutes)
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 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 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 the cost of 6,720 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 metre?
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 of 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, 1865.
Orthography (Time, 1 hour)
[Do we even know what this is??]
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& nbsp;
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.' (HUH?)
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, f ain, 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, 1 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 and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the 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 the inclination of the earth.
Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete. Gives the saying 'he only had an 8th grade education' a whole new meaning, doesn't it?! Also shows you how poor our education system has become and, NO, I don't have the answers! "
*****
Now this type of email is part of what is known as the myth of nostalgia.
First, as late as 1950, fewer than half of the high school students graduated. There is no telling the reading levels of those who did graduate. So let's just imagine what the graduation rates were like 50 years prior to that?
Second, we like to think either that the people of the past didn't know as much as we did (well, they didn't actually . . . since we have so much more to know than they did), but we like to think that we are superior to those in the past. That is not true. As James Burke said, you could travel back in time and talk to a serf during the middle ages and he could tell you a thousand things that related to and affected his life and all you'd really recognize would be the strong scent of manure. Or we like to think - and this is what is meant by the myth of nostalgia - that the people in the past either worked harder or were more devout or studied harder or whatever. And that isn't always accurate.
For example, I have no doubt that this is a legitimate test from an 8th grade class. However, is it a ubiquitous example of 8th grade work around the country? How many actually passed the test?
Plus, look at what the test actually gets wrong - I mean Columbus clearly did not discover America. Yet, that is what this test claims. Also, look at the term they use for the Civil War - the Rebellion. And, much of the information on this test is simply rote memorization, which often passed for education back then (another phrase that tends to denigrate the past, but that is not my intention in using it).
Third, this is a great example of how certain periods of time give more credence to certain seemingly paramount information than other times. Also, certain sections of the country put a great emphasis on certain figures than other areas.
Here is one question -- Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
Now, another generation after this might see little use in certain names here, instead wishing to insert Hoover and Roosevelt. While people two generations removed would find it relatively useless to worry about Whitney, Fulton, Penn, and Bell when they could include Hilter, Eisenhower, Patton, Salk, and Einstein.
Fourth, this seems to be a rather blatant bash on our education system today - given Ken Fort's response at the end about how bad our education system is today. The problem is that such a statement is moronic.
Those 8th graders needed certain specific knowledge to thrive at their local at that specific time. Yet, very little in the way of pertinent information (given the large portion of Americans who still worked on the farm at the time) was given on that test. I mean what impact will having a sound understanding of grammar and orthography have on the young people who would most likely end up earning a living from the land or in factories after the Industrial Revolution?
That is one criticism of today's education - why don't you teach me anything that I will actually use? Well, maybe the supposedly superior education system of the past was not any different.
I have no doubt that most kids today would not do very well on this test (do we have any evidence, though, that these kids did well on it? No).
But try and imagine how these 8th graders would fair on even our sixth grade curriculum today? Could you imagine them trying to do the higher math now done in grade schools? Or typing on a computer? Or analyzing reliable information on the internet? Multi-tasking? They would have no clue.
Now, I realize that if you were to take my seniors from this year and transport them back in time to 1895, I have no doubt they would struggle to make sense of the world around them (if they would even live longer than a week given the diseases that would not have been conquered back then). But the same is true if you were to take those kids from 1895 and transport them to 2009. Could they even derive meaning from 30 seconds of CNN? They'd probably collapse into an epileptic fit given the glut of information that flows across the screen and the amount of visual stimulation they'd be exposed to.
But think of all that we have now that those poor souls back in 1895 didn't have. Most people in 1895 probably didn't travel more than a few hundred miles from their homes in their lifetimes. Yet, that is a weekend shopping trip for us today!
Now, I put Father Guido on here with his facetious take on the results of college education; however, it is utterly repugnant to claim that an 8th grader in 1895 would know more than a college graduate today. It's like comparing - again - apples and oranges. Much of our education and training schools today are far more technical than what this test attempts to measure. So you're telling me that a student who graduates with the ability to write computer code or program a computer or engineer a highway or a skyscraper is less intelligent than an 8th grader in 1895? That is stupid beyond measure. But again this falls under the myth of nostalgia and how easy it is to bash what we have accomplished today and viewing the past as 'the good old days.'
Finally, I'll end with this from Sir Ken Robinson --
Kids are living in the most intensely stimulating environment in the history of the earth (just turn on the TV and go to CNN for stimulation - or - go to the web), they deal with more information in a day than we dealt with in a year (again, think of all the 24 hour news stations that exist and think of the flat, globally connected world we live in today - one book I was reading remarked how one reporter actually said this on his radio show, "There is no news to report this evening. Good night." My how our worlds have changed! Could you imagine Tom Brokaw or Katie Couric doing that now?), their minds are moving at a thousand miles an hour (again, multi-tasking and the ability to deal with multiple sources of stimulation - think of commenting on Facebook, texting, listening to an iPod, and blogging at the same time) . . .
So really, Mr. Fort is trying to compare apples and oranges. I know he states that he would not do well on the 1895 test and that our schools today are poor by way of comparison. Mr. Fort is certainly welcome to come into my College Comp class when we discuss literary theory or in Lit and Language 11 when we produce iMovie trailers or when we stream video off the internet or download podcasts and see if that is up to his level of challenging or not.
Ultimately, like the kids that took this 1895 test, our kids today are products of their time periods. So whose to say who is really smarter? Are we to glorify the 8th graders for rote memorizing information that would really have next to no impact on their daily agrarian lives (if I'm not being too stereotypical there) or at least have little impact on their daily lives after the Industrial Revolution? Are we to penalize the students of the 21st century because they could head to Google or Wikipedia and answer every single question correctly (bonus points for correcting the test itself on the inaccurate Columbus question) in a matter of minutes? After all, just as in 1895, these 'facts' would have little impact on the daily lives of our students after the IT Revolution and in our global economy.
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