8th Grade Final Exam: 1895

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. 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, Kansas – 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?

5 Give principal parts of 'lie,''play,' and 'run.'

6 Define case; illustrate each case.

7 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.

8 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 feet deep, 10 feet long, and 3 feet wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3 If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cents/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. of 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 which measure 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 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, one 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.

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, 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, and Orinoco

6 Name and locate the principal trade centers of the United States.

7 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 this exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.

Gives the saying “He only had an 8th grade education” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it? This also is a perfect demonstration pointing out how poor our education system has become. And, NO - I don’t have the answers… I don’t even understand most of the questions!

Snopes has a lot to say about that exam. This paragraphs sums it up well:

What nearly all these pundits fail to grasp is "I can't answer these questions" is not the same thing as "These questions demonstrate that students in earlier days were better educated than today's students." Just about any test looks difficult to those who haven't recently been steeped in the material it covers. If a 40-year-old can't score as well on a geography test as a high school student who just spent several weeks memorizing the names of all the rivers in South America in preparation for an exam, that doesn't mean the 40-year-old's education was woefully deficient — it means the he simply didn't retain information for which he had no use, no matter how thoroughly it was drilled into his brain through rote memory some twenty-odd years earlier. I suspect I'd fail a lot of the tests I took back in high school if I had to re-take them today without reviewing the material beforehand. I certainly wouldn't be able to pass any arithmetic test that required me to be familiar with such arcane measurements as "rods" and "bushels," but I can still calculate areas and volumes just fine, thank you.

Taken from here: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

Interesting. This suggests that the education was much broader back then compared to today, something I've suspected for a while.

Narrower and deeper doesn't really work that well IMHO if you're talking about turning people into well-rounded humans rather than little cogs designed to fulfill yesterday's hiring requirements.

we have become extremely stupid in the past 200 years....

924guy wrote: we have become extremely stupid in the past 200 years....

[angry liberal] really?

ask them about evolution or molecular biology...

or internal combustion

or the moon.

Just because some tart can regurgitate some BS about revolutionary war battles and knows the conversion factors for # of wheat to bushels dosen't make them smart... nor stupid.

If I had the conversions for most of that stupid arithmetic stuff at had, I probably could do pretty damn good on that test..

I mean really, who can't name three major battles of the revolution and understand the tactics and men invovled, and outcome. If you can't I suggest you get in the cattle car now so we can burn you as fuel when oil gets expensive...

[/angry liberal]

Thats what you guys expect me to post right?

But honestly, if you want to make your education more broad do it.
I got an engineering background, can program some computers, read most major philosophical works(cept the bible), can weld, have an MBA, can grow my own food.... blah blah blah blah....

Conservatives need to stop pointing fingers on this stuff and actually get out there an be the Renaissance men that they want to be.. Lead by example. I'm trying to.

Dumbification of 'merica ftw, otherwise known as NCLB. NCLB - The only children getting left behind are the smart ones. Now don't get me wrong, way before NCLB things were still bad but not as bad as they are now.

A decade ago when I was a freshman it was a huge deal to actually get admitted to college. A decade later its a huge deal to get admitted in the masters program. Today everyone has a HS diploma, and getting towards where everyone has a bachelor's in something-or-other.

Got a pulse? Well we got a degree for ya.

P.S. Pick up a 8th graders math/science book from a typical public school in the US, pick one up from a better private school and pick one up from a Brit school. The Brit will be miles ahead, maybe things have changed in the last 10 years but when I was in HS we were typically learning 2-3 grades ahead of our US counterparts. Most of us came to the US and were automatically give 24+ free credits for simply having a HS diploma.

ignorant wrote: Conservatives need to stop pointing fingers on this stuff and actually get out there an be the Renaissance men that they want to be.. Lead by example. I'm trying to.

[Liberated free-thinking mostly conservative who is tired of listening to angry liberals whining]

I got a design degree, self-taught engineer, built 4 different successful businesses over 3 decades, taught dozens of others to build their own businesses, self-taught equivalent of an MBA, teach hundreds of students a BROAD range of subjects, read most major philosophical works (INCLUDING the Bible), can weld, machine, grow my own food...blah blah blah blah....

I also write poetry, paint, juggle, design theatrical scenery, make movies, build websites, design chemical processing equipment, serve as a volunteer in several different non-profits, among an enormous amount of other talents and abilities.

BFD.

Liberals should stop pointing fingers at Conservatives and begin treating them like intelligent equals who bring valuable ideas to the table, instead of treating them like ignorant morons.

Keep it to yourself, Iggy.

I see nothing wrong with observing trends in deterioration of education in America. Its a fact, not part of a vast right wing conspiracy theory.

Liberals should stop pointing fingers at Conservatives and begin treating them like intelligent equals who bring valuable ideas to the table, instead of treating them like ignorant morons.

And so on and so forth and visa versa.

Sincerely,

Devil's advocate.

SVreX wrote: Liberals should stop pointing fingers at Conservatives and begin treating them like intelligent equals who bring valuable ideas to the table, instead of treating them like ignorant morons.

this comment needs an "and vice versa" at the end. both sides are guilty of belittling the other.

arr - poopy beat me to it

7 under history is easy. they were all great inventors

morse invented morse code and revised the telegraph

whitney invented the cotton gin

fulton invented steam boats

bell invented the telephone

lincoln invented the emancipation proclamation

howe invented the sewing machine

and penn invented pennsylvania

patgizz wrote:

SVreX wrote: Liberals should stop pointing fingers at Conservatives and begin treating them like intelligent equals who bring valuable ideas to the table, instead of treating them like ignorant morons.

this comment needs an "and vice versa" at the end. both sides are guilty of belittling the other. arr - poopy beat me to it

There was a "vice versa"

It was before it.

It was a re-wording of Ignorant's earlier ignorant comment:

ignorant wrote: Conservatives need to stop pointing fingers on this stuff and actually get out there an be the Renaissance men that they want to be.. Lead by example. I'm trying to.

The point was there is no need to approach it that way at all. His initial comment was ridiculous, and it is equally ridiculous if turned around.

I'm not generating this foolishness. I am responding to it.

you guys need to stop looking at what I say at face value and understand the meaning......

Here is the meaning..

"Stop pointing fingers and throwing up roadblocks.. Get moving and do something"

ignorant wrote: you guys need to stop looking at what I say at face value and understand the meaning...... Here is the meaning.. "Conservatives,Stop pointing fingers and throwing up roadblocks.. Get moving and do something"

Fixed it for you.

No reason to point blame. I see equal fault from every voter who ever voted in the past 100 years for the deterioration of education in America. It's not a Conservative (or Liberal) problem.

Politics and education go hand in hand as well as reliable and FIAT.

In reply to autoxrs:

Forget the popular FIAT acronym.

This one is more appropriate: Failure Is A Tradition.

JeffHarbert wrote: Snopes has a lot to say about that exam. This paragraphs sums it up well:

What nearly all these pundits fail to grasp is "I can't answer these questions" is not the same thing as "These questions demonstrate that students in earlier days were better educated than today's students." Just about any test looks difficult to those who haven't recently been steeped in the material it covers. If a 40-year-old can't score as well on a geography test as a high school student who just spent several weeks memorizing the names of all the rivers in South America in preparation for an exam, that doesn't mean the 40-year-old's education was woefully deficient — it means the he simply didn't retain information for which he had no use, no matter how thoroughly it was drilled into his brain through rote memory some twenty-odd years earlier. I suspect I'd fail a lot of the tests I took back in high school if I had to re-take them today without reviewing the material beforehand. I certainly wouldn't be able to pass any arithmetic test that required me to be familiar with such arcane measurements as "rods" and "bushels," but I can still calculate areas and volumes just fine, thank you.

Taken from here: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

I usually agree with most of what Snopes has to say.

They got it VERY wrong this time.

The question is not whether a 21st century 40 year old can pass an 8th grade graduation test from 1895. The question SHOULD be, can a 21st century graduating 8th grader do reasonably well on a test from 1895 for those questions that are still relevant.

As an educator, I can assure you they could not.

There is a great body of knowledge a modern student has which was not known in the 19th century. This is good. However, the basic core learning skillsets are not as developed. That is bad.

The deterioration of education in this country is not about detailed specifics on any subject matter. It is about a deterioration in ABILITY to learn, COMPREHENSION, REASON, and an understanding of real world APPLICATION.

So, while an ability to calculate the number of bushels of wheat that a wagon box can hold may have limited real world application, the ability to understand volume, to visualize the problem, to calculate mathematically, to recognize the relationship of differing measures, to understand the reason and purpose for the calculation, and to apply those skills to modern real world applications are still valuable and necessary (and always will be).

Modern students can't do either. THAT is the problem I see.

It's interesting to note what's missing in that exam, too. There's a lot of things modern 8th graders have to learn that the test-takers didn't.

Arithmetic seems to be limited to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and interest tables. It does require remembering a couple of numbers not usually remembered now, but there's no geometry, algebra, etc.

There's no biology, chemistry, or physics, and only a tiny amount of geology.

The only history in there is US history.

There's no foreign languages, art, or music, although these are usually only optional today too.

exactly, education is not about regurgitating facts and figures. We have computers and the internet for that. Education is to teach you how to learn, adapt, and overcome.

mad_machine wrote: exactly, education is not about regurgitating facts and figures. We have computers and the internet for that. Education is to teach you how to learn, adapt, and overcome.

The internet does not help if you lack fundamental knowledge, there in lies the problem. Today's generation is used to a world of easy answers - Wikipedia, Internet, calculators with more processing power than my desktop. It doesn't matter if the answer is wrong because they found it somewhere. Further, there are some basic facts and figures you have to remember in life. If you have to use the Internet to look it up then there is something very wrong.

When I taught I used to do a day of regression analysis. For most that was the worst word they had heard. My favorite example was to use a sample of gas prices during a downward trend and use it to predict future prices. So they all plugged in the formula and the gas price was negative. To them that was logical, the computer told them that the r value was great and hence the predicted future value was great. See that's where the Internet and computer goes out the window, if you lack fundamental knowledge to realize why that prediction was wrong them no matter how many Internets you search it won't help.

How many 8th grades can use simple first principles to solve mathematical problems? I bet less than 10%, to them the answer is buried in their TI-89. Sure, at some stage all of this knowledge becomes wholesomely useless for your day job. But, generalizing that it is wholesomely useless and hence not worth teaching to everyone is wrong. Ms Suzy can't teach little Billy if she never had to learn how to prove the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x).

SVreX wrote:

ignorant wrote: you guys need to stop looking at what I say at face value and understand the meaning...... Here is the meaning.. "Conservatives,Stop pointing fingers and throwing up roadblocks.. Get moving and do something"

Fixed it for you. No reason to point blame. I see equal fault from every voter who didn't vote in the past 100 years for the deterioration of education in America. It's not a Conservative (or Liberal) problem.

Fixed that for 'ya , those who didn't vote had a far worse impact than those who did. Especially when it's the demographics that don't vote that it affects the most.

I was going to stay out of this.... but I'm really not smart enough to do that...

yes I agree with a lot of what has been said by lots of previous posters (both the liberal and conservative blame finger pointers)

but what I really see in todays education system is the lack of ability of the teachers ( and therefore the students) to speak , much less write, in proper english....

forget the special knowledge about the bushels of wheat, the modern day college graduate has trouble with their own language

I've a friend who teaches in the county school system, and I know she not only doesn't teach the rules of grammar, she doesn't even know them or where to go to find them... and all you will get is a blank look if you were to ask her to diagram a sentence...

Good point, autoxrs. Looking up facts is one thing, having the skill to tell what "facts" you've looked up are baloney and knowing how to use the facts correctly is entirely different.

I had the experience of going to private (non-religious) school through the 9th grade. Then we moved and I went to a public high school - at the time it was supposedly one of the top rated public schools in the country. High school never quite caught up to where my studies were in the 9th grade. I suspect that what our gubment comes up with for educating the public may not be the best possible version. Ooooohhh conspiracy theory time - our gubment actually wants stupid people who can be distracted easily with shiny objects.

wbjones wrote: I've a friend who teaches in the county school system, and I know she not only doesn't teach the rules of grammar, she doesn't even know them or where to go to find them... and all you will get is a blank look if you were to ask her to diagram a sentence...

Chicken and egg problem. How can you teach the future teachers to be better teachers if your current system fails to teach the future teachers because everyone deserves to pass.

I agree to a point, we need better teachers. But, even the best teachers can't do a darned thing if you are expected to hand out grades. Students EXPECT to get grades because they have spent their entire lives being given a shiny participation star. Oh look little Suzy came to school today, lets just give her a shiny medal.

[sarcasm] Educators are disposable, we all know the money is in star athletes.
[/sarcasm]

oldtin wrote: I had the experience of going to private (non-religious) school through the 9th grade. Then we moved and I went to a public high school - at the time it was supposedly one of the top rated public schools in the country. High school never quite caught up to where my studies were in the 9th grade.

My sister has a similar story. We used to be in one of the top 25 school districts in the nation, until we move to a nothing town in upstate NY. My sister was half way thrue 10th and learned nothing new. Senior classes covered what she did freshmen year.