Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 20:45:11 -0500 To: bushken@juno.com From: Roy <r7777@cdmnet.com> Subject: (fwd) 8th Grade FINAL EXAM - 1895 [Eighteen Hundred & Ninety-Five] Mime-Version: 1.0Andy: PLEASE allow this to go through to the entire list! It is a GEM!
If THIS doesn't convince people how "dumbed-down" we have been from our public [government] schools in the last 100 years, I don't know what will! 8th Grade Education in 895, is BETTER than 12th Grade in 2000! Sounds like inflation (of education) to me! Note (esp. to L.S.): Look at question #6 under "U.S. History" on the name of the late War!
Reply-To: "John L. Putnam" <comsense@jscomm.net> From: "John L. Putnam" <comsense@jscomm.net> To: "Putnam's MoRWC List" <comsense@jscomm.net> Subject: Fw: [8th Grade final exam from 1895] Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 08:25:03 -0500 Organization: Common Sense Products
This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, KS. USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895
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 50 cts. 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 m? 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: orse, 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 spellin 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 North America. 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.
Imagine a college student who went to public school trying to pass this test, even if the few outdated questions were modernized.
Gives the saying of an early 20th-century person that "she/he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning!
"It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of the father." --Thomas Jefferson
"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." -- John Stuart Mill, 1859
Samuel L. Blumenfeld, in "Is Public Education Necessary?" (The Paradigm Company; Box 45161; Boise, ID 83711; 1981, 2nd. ed.; 1985, 263pp.):
"An Englishman by the name of Robert Owen, who would someday become known as the father of modern socialism, had gained widespread fame by establishing a model community for his workers and a special school for their children at his spinning mills at New Lanark, Scotland. Owen, born near Wales in 1771, was a self-made social reformer of little formal education who became an atheist at the age of ten and worked out in his own mind a creed concerning the nature of man and the causes of his misery, which he preached tirelessly from about 1813 to the day of his death in 1858." [Ch. 3, 'The Emergence of a Liberal Elite', p. 37]
"...We tend to associate communism with those unfortunate nations who now live under it, forgetting that the original source of modern communist ideology is Anglo-Saxon. Today, New Harmony, Indiana, is little more than a quaint tourist attraction on the banks of the Wabash. But who in 1825 could have known that it was the beginning of the long road to the Gulag Archipelago? Robert Owen had decided to establish his communist colony in America because only in America could such a radical, anti-religious social experiment be tried." [Ch. 5, 'The Road to Utopia', p. 71]
"...The key dogma in Robert Owen's system was the notion that man's character had been deformed by religious brainwashing and that only 'rational' education could correct it. The term 'brainwashing' was not used in those days, but the idea was the same." [Ibid, p.72.]
"...By 1831, public education was being promoted by the socialists, the Unitarians, and the religious conservatives--each for different reasons. The socialists saw public education as the necessary instrument for the reformation of human character before a socialist society could be brought about. The Unitarians saw public education as the means of perfecting man and eradicating evil. As an intellectual elite, they also viewed public education as the means of exerting social and cultural control over a changing society. And as religionists, they promoted public education as an exercise in the do-gooderism and moral activism encouraged by their Unitarian consciences. As for the religious conservatives, they were persuaded to see public education as the means of preserving the American system of government and maintaining the predominantly Protestant Anglo-Saxon culture against the rising tide of Catholic immigration..." [Ibid, Ch. 7, 'The Educators Organize', p. 132]
"...But the largest support for public education came, naturally, from the educators themselves, who saw a centralized market for their textbooks, improved schools and better salaries through taxes, and the security and dignity of public employment. ...There were many successful private schools run by competent educator-proprietors who set high academic and moral standards for the profession. "...The main opposition came from parents in towns which had built private academies, from taxpayers, from conservative legislators, and from those opposed to government infringements on individual freedom. But in 1831, there was no thought at all of compulsory school attendance. That idea was still twenty years away." [p. 133]
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
* * *