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Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895? Take a Look
- jluxenberg 16y agoA wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold? I like how the volume and weight of a bushel of wheat was common knowledge :)
- numeromancer 16y agoWhy weight? The problem only requires knowing how to convert a bushel to English measurements.
- jcl 16y agoThe next question on the test is: 3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
- tankenmate 16y agoI suspect the percentage of GDP from agriculture (and related industries) in 1895 was a fair bit higher than it is today.
- jasonkester 16y agoIn Kansas, in 1895, there really wasn't a lot else to know about besides wheat.
- roel_v 16y agoSo, 4 replies and nobody gave the answer yet ;) ?
- flawawa2 16y agoFrom a european viewpoint "feet" are just as curious.
- glhaynes 16y agohttp://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
- j_baker 16y agoNice find. What I would be more interested to find out is how it compares to tests that are presently being given to 8th graders. It might be difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison though. I don't seem to recall having an actual final exam in 8th grade.
- dkarl 16y agoNice find. Snopes is TFM for this kind of unlikely forwarded-email fodder. Whoever submitted it was woefully negligent in not checking.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sidek 16y agoI did. Don't have copies of them, though.
- prewett 16y agoI don't think I did, but Texas has something equivalent: the TAKS test. I doubt actual copies are available, but the social studies practice test is at: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/taks/gr08/ There is a math test at: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/online/2003/grade8/math.htm They look pretty thorough to me. At least as good as KS 1895.
- j_baker 16y agoHoly cow. I took that test (it was called TAAS back then) and was basically just an easy day in school. It was nowhere near as tough as some of those questions look.
- DFectuoso 16y agoI know its fake but... Arithmetic 6 - Can't get the interest(at least any interesting one) without the capitalization period.
- prawn 16y agoIs it fake? Snopes says a lot about it not really demonstrating a decline in education, but I didn't see them make a strong call on whether they were or weren't actual questions from 1895?
- nitrogen 16y agoSimple interest would be calculated by simple division, but for compound interest you would definitely need more information. Maybe it was safe to assume at the time that students were taught about simple, rather than compound, interest.
- achew22 16y agoHere comes the flame war about how our educational system has declined in the past hundred years. In an attempt to head that off at the pass (Hey, if you're going to have a cliché argument I get to use a cliché) here is the problem with that. This is a test designed to review the material deemed important by one person in 1895 (If it is really from then). The class would have gone over what "epochs into which U.S. History is divided". This is the same thing with the stupid joke that I always heard when I was doing calculus and adults were around "When I was growing up, you didn't have to spell out your math homework". That is code for "I have no idea what's going on here" and let's be honest, that is fine. I would bet that most people who read this could have answered almost all of these questions at some point in their life. We have to remember that the purpose of education is to teach you how to learn and how to adjust to your current situations. You learn what you need to get the job done and you relearn what you can't remember to complete the job. EDIT: It's good to see that Snopes already did this. Thank you Snopes and thanks glhaynes for pointing us to it.
- jamesaguilar 16y agoMore importantly, many of the test questions are dependent on rote memorization of facts that are nearly useless in the accomplishment of successful life. How many bushels in a tare? What is a "principle part" of a verb? These things can be found on Google. I have all the skills tested by this test, but lack some of the knowledge. Since my brain is just a cache for knowledge, I can always fault it in if the need arises.
- wmf 16y agoI think of it more as a look at how different life was in 1895. You couldn't Google anything. A farm owner probably would benefit from being able to do those math problems in his head. BTW, tare isn't a unit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_weight
- knassy 16y agoI think you are right about how it reflects a different time. I doubt many average farmers kids made it through to 8th Grade though. Anyone who was taking the 8th Grade exam was probably reasonably wealthy, looking to continue studying, and take on a profession of some kind.
- nategraves 16y agoIt's hard for me to feel inadequate when looking at this test—regardless of whether it's real or not—because tests are typically dependent on your retention of what you are taught. If you're an 8th grader whose teacher doesn't explain what elementary sounds are, it would have no impact on whether or not you could pass the 8th grade.
- icegreentea 16y agoMore specifically, this is a test heavily based on facts. Nothing wrong with that. Knowing and retaining facts is important to life. Even if you have Google. But the relevance of facts is based on context, and will change through time. Many of the facts tested for just aren't relevant in today's life. It's likely several of these weren't even relevant back in 1895 and were just added because 'they were always asked' or something.
- numeromancer 16y agoIf that teacher doesn't explain it, but there are such questions on a test, it certainly would have an impact on whether or not you could pass the 8th grade. In either case, it does have an effect on whether you know what elementary sounds are. If you missed out on a lot of such mere knowledge, you may also grow up without understanding that the world, and the powers of human beings, can be analyzed in that way. This is likely to have an effect on whether you can analyze at all.
- jrockway 16y agoGrammar (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. #1: Not "Parts of Speech" in #2.
- nitrogen 16y agoHave capitalization rules changed over time? IIRC, German capitalizes most nouns, and German was very nearly chosen for America's national language. Further, reading a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, one can see that Rights, Happiness, and other important words were capitalized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_declaration_independence.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_declaration_independenc...
- glhaynes 16y agoArticle that touches on some of this: http://www.slate.com/id/2273197/ http://www.slate.com/id/2273197/
- jrockway 16y agoWe still do this in English; consider "Free software" versus "free software". The first means "libre", the second means "zero cost". It's not an issue of importance but of making a generic word into one with specific meaning.
- nitrogen 16y agoIt seems to me that this still falls under the current rule of capitalizing proper nouns, though in this instance the nouns are made proper for exactly the reason you stated.
- wmf 16y agoYes, in English many nouns used to be capitalized but are not today. (And speaking of capitalization, I can't beleive Deletionpedia has a whole page about whether "Internet" should be capitalized or not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_capitalization_conventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_capitalization_convent... )
- mutt 16y agoAsk them to type, send a text message, use a digital calculator, my microwave, the internet (email, www, torrents), driving fast cars, etc etc.. People had far less to know.
- sorbus 16y agoPeople had to know different things, but not necessarily a lesser quantity of information.
- ginsweater 16y agoThis always makes me think of Isaac Asimov's classic essay, "Forget It!" in which he gets a hold of a hundred-year-old math textbook and writes about what's in there that isn't taught anymore. (A lot of stuff about computation using long-forgotten English units of measurement, for one.) Anyone know if it's online? I have a print copy, but I can't find anything with a quick Googling.
- ugh 16y agoIf I remember correctly I was tested on stuff that is just as hard or harder at the end of 8th grade. Maybe with less rote memorization and more thinking, more opportunity to demonstrate that I actually understood everything [0]. Consider also that they talked about all those things prior to the exam. Could you pass it right now? Maybe not. Could you pass it after a few weeks learning about the material? With flying colors. It’s interesting to read the questions but certainly not at all indicative of any developments in the educational system. You need statistics and creative social scientists to find out something about that. [0] I personally don’t like rote memorization. I recognize that rote memorization can sometimes be useful – I don’t need a calculator for simple multiplications – but I would much rather just understand something and develop from that understanding a clear picture of which facts are important enough to memorize.
- yters 16y agoRight, but this is basic, practical stuff for everyday life (except for the stuff about bushels and rods). Even though you can learn it and then pass, the fact that you are past 8th grade and cannot means your education is deficient (mine as well). Rote memorization is underrated. Yes, memorization alone is useless, but critical thinking without anything to think about is also useless.
- ugh 16y agoSo you can still pass all your tests you wrote in school? I certainly can’t and I don’t consider my education deficient because of that. To say nothing of the fact that those questions are more than a century out of date. I also think you are misunderstanding the point I’m making about rote memorization. What good does it if you can merely name and define all the parts of speech? You can learn that whole list and all the right definitions without ever understanding anything. You can answer that question in the test completely without knowing anything of worth. There are better ways of testing whether you know what the parts of speech are and whether you can identify them.
- yters 16y ago
- KleinmanB 16y agoThe real miracle is that this teacher built a computer for her students to take an English test on in 1895!
- Groxx 16y ago>2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold? My, how far we've fallen.
- jerf 16y agohttp://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED119389&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED119389 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_...: "By 1918, all states had passed school attendance legislation, although until the 1930s, many were unsuccessful in enforcing their compulsory schooling laws." Comparing compulsory education standards to non-compulsory education standards is unfair and unenlightening. The forces affecting the school are so different they can not be said to be the same thing except inasmuch as they share the word "schooling". I say this as one who is carefully refraining from going any deeper because I have as rich an opinion on the topic as anyone else around here, one not friendly to current practices (to put my cards on the table), but this is a non-data-point, at least without a lot more context, so much as to dwarf this little tidbit anyhow.
- jpenny 16y agoCould you have passed an 1869 MIT entrance exam? http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/algebra.html http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/algebra.html I suspect so, maybe in the 7th or 8th grade.
- Mesmoria 16y agoOver the distance of time it is easier than the year 8 exam.
- bluesmoon 16y agoThis is similar to the kind of tests we had in India when I was in the 4th-8th grade. We had world history instead of US history, and did not have Orthography, but those are the only differences that I can see. I might have aced it back then, but it would be hard to get about 50% if I did it today.
- M1573RMU74710N 16y agoI don't think this can provide any insight into our current education system, it wouldn't make much sense to compare them... However it is a rather fascinating look at life in the late 1800's, and what the common concerns were. The section on linguistics; back then there was no large (non-print) media and the US English dialects were more splintered. Additionally English hadn't become quite the lingua franca it is today; (educated) people generally knew several languages in order to communicate with people. If you read books written around that time, it's rather common for the author to quote French or Latin without translation, with the implicit understanding that the reader knows them. The math questions also provide some really neat insight into what were considered "common practical tasks"...in my schooling most of the word problems were phrased in terms of buying things at the supermarket or for more advanced topics building skyscrapers and bridges etc... Here however it's all about bushels of wheat etc. Really neat.
- kingkilr 16y agoI don't know. I do know that I could write essays several pages in length, do math up through algebra/geometry, know both American and European history, and have some knowledge of the sciences, which this totally ignores.
- lian 16y agoIn 1895 I would have been too busy being an immigrant farmer with the rest of my family to go to school at all, so I'm pretty ambivalent about what my standardized testing fate might have been.
- yread 16y agoThere is certainly more republics in Europe now than it used to be back then
- Legion 16y agoHad I gone to 8th grade in 1895, I would be familiar with all of the anachronisms. Also, some of the questions are clearly lists that, were this "real", would be taught by rote memorization. The sort of thing you would be able to chant back without thinking if you were in the classroom where the lists were repeated over and over for you to "learn".
- Semiapies 16y agoI'd be curious to see the answers for someone who got an average grade on this test. It's not much of a test by modern standards - it's more a few quizzes strung together with somewhat generous time limits. Some things stick out: 1) Math section is farming-centric, as people have pointed out; it ends on making examples of paperwork. The first question is obscure terminology for something we cover in second grade or so. No algebra. Especially generous time limit for these questions, though you have to remember your bushels. 2) "fane, fain, feign" Those days had a different fashion in popular homophones. Also, interesting the focus on indicating pronunciation and breaking words down into syllables - I remember doing that well before 8th grade. 3) The geography section mentions the rest of the world, huzzah. ...Well, to test memorization of a few names. Otherwise, a better section than the others. 4) No questions about the Civil War except to describe some famous battles and recognize the year it ended.
- jholman 16y agoRegarding the arithmetic, the finance questions stick out to me: Arithmetic questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. Especially #8. Regarding orthography, I find the mention of etymology, and the morphological question (#7), interesting, as these are pieces in a toolkit for understanding previously-unseen words. The geography section is as much about meteorology as it is about placenames, which is awesome. This kind of scientific whole-world view is amusing contrasted with the Kansas Evolution Hearings.
- Semiapies 16y agoAs to the geography section, meteorology was covered in world geography when I was in eighth grade in Texas in the late 80s. What isn't as impressive (and has been pointed out elsewhere) is that those are the only science questions.
- awt 16y agoWhat was with the focus on events that happened at specific dates? I understand the importance of knowing when events happened relative to each other, but memorizing dates seems a bit much. Perhaps the lack of easy access to reference materials made that kind of knowledge more important.
- baddox 16y agoIf I had attended school for 8 or 9 years prior to 1895, almost certainly. Many of these questions rely on knowing precise terminology no doubt used in that class or its textbook. The time difference is the only thing that would hinder me. Heck, try asking a college student in 1895 a super easy question like how many states are in the United States in 2010.
- phillijw 16y agoWhat's a passing grade in 1895?
- zoowar 16y agoKind of makes me feel real bad for those who can't pass High School today.
- giberson 16y agoHonestly speaking, could I pass this test if I sat down and took it right now? No. However I do believe that, given a study guide (i.e my notes, and a test book) and a reasonable idea of what would be on the test, I could pass the test--just as I passed many tests during my own educational era. Of course, a couple of days later most answers would be gone from my memory. I've always been that way when it comes to learning, I don't retain details, I retain general idea's. For mathematics and sciences--problem solving, and for literature and history--that rules exists and many important events have occurred, all of which I can research and reference such material when the need arises. I'll admit, I'd like to able to recall names, and dates, and formulas at will--but frankly, as I obstinately claimed as a child, I've never actually needed such detailed information in real life. Generalizations, or time willing, a quick reference to related material are all you need.
- p_nathan 16y agoI've seen another variant on this test - What it boils down to is that: (1) rote memorization is not an indicator of intelligence or skill. (2) specialty datapoints regarding farm life are no longer required (3) English grammar teaching is in a sad state. (A known aspect of today's public schools) For a fair comparison, one should review the 8th grade requirements in a variety of today's schools (I did so once in a cursory fashion). In my opinion, today's students have to take in at least as much information, some of it also specialized, and spit it out. Arguably today's requirements are not as focused on exact knowledge as late 1800s requirements. I leave that to the philosopher of education to evaluate for better/worse. What should also be considered is not just the test itself, but how tests were graded - was passing the top 90%? 60%? How lenient were teachers? An issue today is some teachers giving "free As". Did that exist in 1890? What can also be considered is the difference between Kanas 8th grade and Boston 8th grade. Was there one? What about different schools? There is not a simple analysis here. There must needs be a careful data-driven reflection examining the subtleties of the educational system before someone pushes out the generalization - "today's students are all worse and we are all stupid". I see many examples of smart people. Admittedly, they anecdotally seem to have "beat the system" most of the time, so, well - there's another facet to the analysis. Note - I hear occasionally about Dewey & early 1900s educators setting up US education to optimize for factory workers and a compliant populace. Does anyone have any factual data/bibliographic sources asserting/refuting that?
- hc 16y agoi dont know how to answer a single one of these questions.
- crenelle 16y agoWhat is a passing grade for this test? Doesn't seem to say.
- McP 16y ago6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. If this is a genuine question then I find it interesting that it was possible to answer back then. Now you'd have to know which months as the length of each month affects the answer.
- roel_v 16y agoI had a 'mistake' in a question like that on an exam just a few weeks ago. You write 'I assume all months are 30 days' or 'I assume a full 30/31 day cycle' or whatever it is you assume at the top and you get full credit. Additionally, I remember that most tests came with verbal instructions even as recently as when I was in primary school (well recent, 20 years ago). The teacher would dictate the questions which you'd write down on the paper; then afterward you had time to answer them. I think it's quite plausible that a similar system was used back then, especially considering the brevity of the questions. (I don't know how wide spread printing presses were back then, I know that many primary schools in Belgium in the 1980's still either didn't have them or only used them when it was 'necessary').
- tomrod 16y agoCould they have passed 8th grade in 1995? Doubtful: * Advances in Science * More (and more widely varied) history * Different economic and political regimes * Speaking a foreign language * Algebra II * Books (easily 90% drivel) which pass for great literature these days Hard to compare when full information is not available. What is NIST standard for a bushel of wheat? What about rate of compounding at a bank (was that 10% apr or 10% per minute)? This likely would be an easy test for most with today's level of education after a day of remedial education that covers the basics of this test.
- jasonlotito 16y agoIgnoring the quality of the original question ("Could you have passed?"), an equally good follow up would be: Could someone from 1895 have passed an 8th grade test today?
- madcaptenor 16y agoI could have passed the 8th grade in 1895 if I was born in 1882. But I wasn't.
- SageRaven 16y agoAs a homeschooling parent, I always find this kind of stuff interesting. For reference, people should check out the following link (under "Practice Tests for State Exams") for relatively current standards tests for various states, grade levels, and subjects: http://quizhub.com/quiz/quizhub.cfm http://quizhub.com/quiz/quizhub.cfm
- HilbertSpace 16y agoYes, there are many opinions on this thread, and this fact supports an observation: The 'theory' or 'principals' of what 'education' should be are a MESS! One of the posts mentioned Dewey: Yes he wrote: John Dewey, 'Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education', The Free Press, New York, 1966. although this is clearly not nearly the 'first printing'! Since my father was in education and had some influence from Dewey, I read that book. Dewey summarizes what 'education' actually is, and, really, is essentially forced to be, all other theories or principles aside, as just: What the older generations pass down to the younger generations, with a lot of what was wrong and, hopefully, with some improvements. So, here's an 'application': If have a broad 'public' education system where use essentially just a broad sample of the older generation to teach essentially everyone in the younger generation, then have to expect that what gets 'passed down' will have nearly all that was bad about society in the older generation and relatively little that is new and advantageous! Here is a telling example: I was a college professor at Ohio State University. At one point I was asked to represent the faculty at a lunch for parents. Yes, many of the parents were quite skeptical of what was being taught or not taught. So, one question went: "Why are you teaching my child calculus? I've never needed to know it." I was a bit slow to see all the emotional, social, educational, and rational issues and, not wanting to say something wrong, said next to nothing. In a sense, it can be safer not to argue with 'the customer' or with a poorly informed and angry question. But here is what I might have said: "We're trying to educate for the future, say, teach things that can be useful at some points over the next 50 years or so. "Calculus is a pillar of Western Civilization: Although not everyone uses it, without it we would be in deep trouble in strength of materials, design of structures, electric power generation, distribution, and use, electronics and essentially everything involving electro-magnetic waves, engines of all kinds, airplanes, essentially everything in mechanical engineering, nearly all more advanced military technology, and in many subjects from more in math, all the physical and social sciences, statistics, finance, and more. "We're not necessarily trying to teach what is already in very common usage but what is less well known and can give an advantage over the next 50 years. So, from its track record, calculus looks promising. That is, we believe that so few people know calculus well that more people could get an advantage from knowing it. "For a specific example, before my graduate studies, I was in a new, rapidly growing company. At one point the Board of Directors wanted some projections of the revenue of the company. Many people could describe hopes, intentions, assumptions, dreams, etc., but there was a lack of anything with a more solid, objective, rational basis. "While I didn't want to get involved, I thought for a while: What do we know? What do we want to know? "Well we knew what our (daily) revenue was then. And, from our capacity planning, we knew what our planned, eventual daily revenue would be. So, for the projections the Board wanted, essentially we needed to 'interpolate' between these two revenue figures, that is, say how fast we would grow. "So what could we observe about what was causing our growth? Well, broadly the growth was due to 'viral' effects, that is, happy customers talking to target customers not yet customers. So, each day in the future, the amount of this 'talking' by happy customers was proportional to the number of happy customers and, thus, to the revenue. And the number of potential customers hearing the talking and becoming customers was proportional to the number of potential customers. "So, let t be time in days with the present day t = 0. Let y(t) be our revenue at time t. As in calculus, let y'(t) be the first derivative of y(t), that is, the rate of growth in y(t). "Let b be the maximum daily revenue from our capacity planning. "Then the rate of growth y'(t) is proportional to the current revenue y(t) and the capacity yet served b - y(t). So for some constant k, we must have y'(t) = k y(t) ( b - y(t) ) "So, this is a non-linear ordinary differential equation initial value problem. With a little calculus, really just classic integration by parts, we can get a simple algebraic expression for the solution. This solution will have one constant c we so far do not know. But we have reduced the problem of projecting out to the future to selecting just one constant c. And we can estimate c from our growth over the past few months. "So, on a Friday my SVP Planning and I selected a value for c and drew the graph of the growth. My SVP left on a business trip, and the Board meeting started the next morning. "At noon I was in my office working and got a phone call to come to the Board meeting. "The Board meeting was in disarray and no longer 'meeting'. Our two Board representatives from our main investor were unhappy and standing in a doorway to the hall with their bags packed. "At about 8 AM the graph had been presented to the Board, and the two investor representatives asked how it had been calculated. For the next three hours or so, all the top management struggled to reproduce the graph and could not. The representatives then became angry, lost faith in and patience with the top management, made plane reservations back to Texas, returned to their rented rooms, packed their bags, and as a last chance returned to the offices for an answer. "I arrived, reproduced a few points on the graph, and the investor representatives canceled their plane reservations, unpacked their bags, and stayed, and the company was saved. It is now a major company you know well and have used often; you value their work highly. "This success was all because I knew calculus well and was about the only one there who did. "So, we believe that in the next 50 years, calculus can be an advantage." Yes, there is some question at how well even this answer would have been received! Generally, then, in the real world of the broad population, it is difficult to know what to teach, how to teach it, or to get it learned! Here's my take on the US 'way out': As we can tell, in K-12 and maybe more, the most important educational advantage is the family life of the student. So, in some families, education is understood and emphasized. So, education is really not just from the K-12 classrooms, not nearly! Broadly, then, the secret to good education is to have parents who care do what they can at HOME. In extreme cases this solution can be just 'home schooling' and, at its best, can totally blow the doors off essentially anything from 'organized' education. So, as in many things in the US, really good results are the responsibility of each individual, their family, their local community, etc. and much less well served by the county, state, or DC. Topics with big advantages are essentially necessarily understood by at most only a tiny fraction of the population. Or, if a large fraction of the population understood, then much of the advantage would be gone. So, education with big advantages cannot be from the public school system! Sorry 'bout that!