the kids are alright

March 16, 2006 3:03 PM

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895. Not quiet adorned with cuts, but salient still.
posted by The Jesse Helms (45 comments total)

quite.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 3:04 PM on March 16, 2006

Not so much.
posted by EarBucket at 3:07 PM on March 16, 2006

I'll bet those same kids couldn't pass the 8th grade exam of today: Metric system, anyone? Aside from that, much of what they're being asked to learn was relevant to their world at the time, and is now not really worth knowing (Epochs of American history? Yeah, we kind of don't have time to teach them that any more.)
posted by caution live frogs at 3:09 PM on March 16, 2006

The quality of an education is only tangentially related to its (apparent) difficulty.

I do, however, enjoy this "question" on the Geography section:

Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

The only legitimate answer can be "*sigh*".
posted by argybarg at 3:11 PM on March 16, 2006

As EarBucket points out, this is a fake.
posted by LarryC at 3:15 PM on March 16, 2006

An interesting article about it here.
posted by EarBucket at 3:17 PM on March 16, 2006

The weight of the experts do seem to think it's for real, although certainly not typical for the time. I suspect its primary appeal on the internet is as creationist propaganda:

"Look how smart people were before the evolutionists took God out of the schools!"

It's often followed by snark about how liberal elite college professors today probably couldn't score a passing grade.
posted by EarBucket at 3:21 PM on March 16, 2006

Or - - do we just say, 'so what!!' - - and, 'we just don't care that our students come in last on nearly all international tests comparing students from other nations.'

My God! Won't somebody think of the children!!!!!!!
posted by ozomatli at 3:21 PM on March 16, 2006

LarryC the first post by EarBucket said nothing about the exam being a fake, only the conclusions that we are expected to draw from it. The second link he posted doesn't condemn it as fake either, just mis-represented.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:25 PM on March 16, 2006

God, wanna post something else my gramma forwards to me? How about a chain letter that requires I hug people lest I live alone.
posted by klangklangston at 3:28 PM on March 16, 2006

Fake or not, I'd be hella impressed with an 8th-grader who could do well on this. The history components in particular, while a bit quaint, should be obvious to anyone educated in America, but rarely are.

But I'm sure a lot of ca. 1895 13 year-olds would have done terribly on this too.

Lay and lie. I'm afraid life is too short for me to ever get a handle on those two verbs.
posted by bardic at 3:29 PM on March 16, 2006

LarryC writes "As EarBucket points out, this is a fake."


LarryC fails reading comprehension -- the Snopes pages doesn't say this test is fake (though it implies it may be, specifically by using the word "purportedly"). The Snopes page argues with the conclusion that this tests demonstrates today's schools' standards are lower.
posted by orthogonality at 3:31 PM on March 16, 2006

Double. And the debunking was linked there too.

On the other hand, I did learn that the feminine of marquis is marchioness (pronounced with /sh/, not /ch/, as if it were Martianess), so it's all good.
posted by languagehat at 3:31 PM on March 16, 2006

All the time they didn't have to spend teaching kids how to turn on their computers and use calculators was actually spent learning stuff? I'm aghast.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:40 PM on March 16, 2006

What would a simple 2006 history include?
Instead of name the epochs of American history, how about name the major wars the United States participated in during the 20th century.
Relate the causes of WWI or WWII. This was covered in my 8th grade history class.
Who are the following: Martin Luther King, FDR, McArthur, Einstein, Nixon, etc.
Name the events that occured during these years: 1919, 1929, 1941, 1945, 1979.

It's about perspective for many of these questions.
posted by my sock puppet account at 3:43 PM on March 16, 2006

The 1895 test clearly has its blind spots and assumptions. But the men -- a blind spot if all are men -- it asks students to recall is worth noting:

Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

Four inventors whose inventions made 19th century America what it was, the pivotal American political figure of the second half of that century, and -- presumably -- the religious non-conformist (Quaker) who founded Pennsylvania, and either the inventor of the sewing machine or the woman who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and founded Mothers' Day, or her abolitionist husband.

Regardless who the ambiguous names are menat to be, what's interesting is that it's the inventors -- not the generals or the politicians or the entertainers -- who thew children are supposed to know about. That alone, it seems to me, may be the reason that the 20th century, which would begin some five years after this test was given, would be callled "the American Century" but the 21st surely won't.
posted by orthogonality at 3:46 PM on March 16, 2006

I thought the feminine of marquis was marquise? if not, where on earth have I heard the term marquise before?
posted by shmegegge at 3:48 PM on March 16, 2006

Just think - in thirty or forty years, the middle-aged of that era will be decrying the educational standards of the day, and will begin harangues with "Kids today don't know how good they have it - back when I was in school at the turn of the century..."

"Of course we wore our ballcaps sideways, and our pants low, which was the style at the time..."
posted by hangashore at 3:52 PM on March 16, 2006

These discussions of how literate and educated people used to be often leave out the sample theory. The average college education from a hundred years or so ago (or its equivalent) was probably much more in depth than those of today. How many people got those educations though? How many people who weren't already of a privileged elite? Of course the average writer back then knew more about shakespeare - but how many people could actually write?
posted by freebird at 3:52 PM on March 16, 2006

I used to buy into the "Boy, kids sure were smarter back in YYYY!" thing until I went back to college... Since a good percentage of them understand Algebra (Say, what are the solutions for 12X+23X^2+44-5X^3=6, again?)... Well, I really don't think high school kids are ALL idiots anymore.
posted by Orb2069 at 3:59 PM on March 16, 2006

Two things impress me about this test. The first is the need for algebra to solve some of the math problems, which in my schooling came a year or two later... but no big deal. The second is the heavy emphasis on language (linguistics, spelling, grammar, etc), and this is something I think we are failing at in modern schooling. On the other hand, I fared miserably at the linguistic parts of the GRE, so maybe the problem is just particular to me/my schooling. My sense is that these days English classes focus more on reading comprehension than they do on the anatomy of language and expression.
posted by simra at 4:16 PM on March 16, 2006

Fake or not, I'd be hella impressed with an 8th-grader who could do well on this.

Why? This test is almost entirely of rote regurgitation. A short list of correct answers is implicit in nonsensical questions like "Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided." Lots of eighth graders could do well on this test if they spent an entire year or more going over the material on this test and little else.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:22 PM on March 16, 2006

Comparing ourselves to the past is a bit speculative.

We should be more worried about how we stand up to others.

Having taught in a French high school, I left feeling that the standard there is much higher. Or at least the overall expectations for students. There is much more concentration on abstract reasoning. The liberal arts are taken very seriously and not by any means blow-off classes. And math and science are above all else, except maybe for philosophy which is a bit of the crown jewel in the education system.

Also, the grading is much different. There is no such thing as a straight-A student because the grading is on a 1-20 scale, 12 being good an 15 a respectable score. Therefore, no inflated egos for relatively unremarkable work. Oratory skills are central also.

Also, more argumentation than multiple choice. Although multiple choice seems to give French people fits when they are faced with it here in the US.
posted by pwedza at 4:33 PM on March 16, 2006

From the link: If showing this 1895 exam causes others to think such as to cause demand for much improved standards, better testing and grading/promotion/graduation requirements, all aimed at improving our quality to assist our young and their nation toward a better future, then, in my view, it will have served a useful purpose.

Not really. It is obsession with standardized testing that has turned modern education into the disappointment it is today. Now teachers spend the majority of their time trying to get kids to pass the standardized tests, rather than, you know, teaching them stuff.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:35 PM on March 16, 2006

High School teaching in France in the 1880's (PDF - see page 9)
posted by pwedza at 4:39 PM on March 16, 2006

Here's a similar exam from Kansas, 1918. Many of these things are silly memorization of somebody's notion of rules, but in both tests there's a sense that at least of the questions were meant to test practical, useful, day-to-day skills, and I like that notion. And some of them do have respectable content; for example, question #5 in the Arithmetic section is something that still makes sense today, but I'd expect to find few people - even if I polled college math majors - that could interpret it and answer correctly.

(I like the tacit assumption in Arithmetic #6; and am baffled by Arithmetic #7, which seems completely trivial unless they expected the answer in some particular form that went unstated.)
posted by Wolfdog at 4:45 PM on March 16, 2006

I thought the feminine of marquis was marquise? if not, where on earth have I heard the term marquise before?

Marquise is the French word for the feminine equivalent of a marquis, and it's an alternate word for that in English (but certainly not the one they wanted on the 1985 test); I suspect you heard it in its jewelry sense: 'a ring set with a pointed oval gem or cluster of gems' (OED).
posted by languagehat at 4:49 PM on March 16, 2006

Also, the whole thing fills me with an urge to recite, "An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain..."

You! Yes you behind the bike sheds! Stand still, laddy!
posted by Wolfdog at 4:50 PM on March 16, 2006

I remember studying communism in grade school and telling the teacher I thought it was a great system.

She totally, completely lost it on me...
posted by Deep Dish at 4:51 PM on March 16, 2006

Textbooks, school and education is often very biased. For instance, in my current textbook (8th grade by the way) The only thing about Cortez in the only paragraph about European conquest is that he "triumphed over the Aztecs". I was walking in the hallway of an elementary school and heard a teacher tell her 1st grade class that Columbus invented slavery. My Social Studies teacher told me that (Deep Dishes story reminded me of this) "In commusnism, you must share everything. Nothing is yours. You can't even pick an apple and eat it without being sent to prison for stealing from the people. Do you see why communism is bad?"

Kids in 100 years will look back and go wtf? Was teaching really that biased? Or I hope they will.
posted by Suparnova at 5:13 PM on March 16, 2006

I thought Marquis/Marquise in Frenchish, but Marquess/Marchioness in English. Hm.
posted by fleacircus at 5:18 PM on March 16, 2006

what's interesting is that it's the inventors -- not the generals or the politicians or the entertainers -- who thew children are supposed to know about. That alone, it seems to me, may be the reason that the 20th century, which would begin some five years after this test was given, would be callled "the American Century" but the 21st surely won't.

Well, sure, except can you tell me who invented the cellphone? The modern personal computer? The atomic bomb? The jet engine? The space shuttle? The internet? Polymers? By and large, major inventions are the domain of corporations, not single people. As the complexity of new technology increases, products are less and less discrete objects and more often large systems; the likelihood of a single person devising such a system out of whole cloth is zero, and was so even before the likes of Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney and Nikola Tesla.

Besides that, knowing who invented the cotton gin is a far different thing from understanding how it works, and I'll bet good money that eighth graders in 1895 no more understood the inner workings of a cotton gin or a steam engine than you understood the workings of a microprocessor when you were 12. Yes, we should be teaching more about the history of science in schools. No, I don't think asking children to memorize who did what is the way to do it.
posted by chrominance at 5:26 PM on March 16, 2006

The test is about writing out the correct answers to facts learnt by rote. There are two interesting questions in the whole thing; first is 7-10 on the Grammar section, where the kids at least write an essay on something. Second is 3 in History, the causes and results of the Revolutionary War, which probably had a "correct" answer as well. I'd be more impressed by someone who could write a coherent essay on the role of freed slaves in changing the nature of the Civil War than by someone whose head had been filled with nonsense like "case" in English. Anyone who touts this test as a model is seriously deluded about education.
posted by graymouser at 5:32 PM on March 16, 2006

It's a shame that memorization has gotten such a bad rap. I'm all for critical thinking skills and creativity, but I don't think these things are mutually exclusive.

I'll never forget a lit prof. in college who could recite the first 500 lines of Chaucer's General Prologue. If you're reading this, hi Adele.
posted by bardic at 5:34 PM on March 16, 2006

Also, as to Suparnova's point, a lot of early school systems were built around the time nationalism came into vogue, and so were built not just as educational systems, but indoctrination systems. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, this is why British schools (and likely others) instituted rules about mandatory attendance; not just so parents could continue to use their kids as cheap labour at the expense of their education, but also so the next generation understood why Britain was a Empire, and how she was better than other Empires.

Arguably, schools are still indoctrination systems, though much less overtly so. These days it's more the unconscious reinforcement of prevailing ideas than anything else, though the pendulum is starting to swing back, re: evolution vs. creationism. Whenever you have a system that imparts information from the top down, you're going to naturally see bias (especially when the state is involved in running the system). So yeah, kids a century from now will wonder how we got on with such a biased education, blissfully unaware that their own schools are probably about as biased.
posted by chrominance at 5:34 PM on March 16, 2006

This ancient piece of FAX-lore was posted to fark only twelve hours ago. How'd the submittor hold off on posting something this *COOL* for so long?

I wouldn't normally be so snarky about it, but even the third or forth comment over there linked to the snopes article. The submittor clearly never read it and certainly didn't bother to link to.

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates. That about sums up the reason crud like this get passed around in email constantly. It re-enforces the old "kids aren't as smart as I was" attitude of smug adults who clearly don't know any better.

I'm sure by the time my 7 month old son hits 8th grade, he won't learn how to format and use an Apple IIe boot disc like I did. I'm sure by that point, his computer skills will be far better than mine were at that age though.
posted by inthe80s at 5:37 PM on March 16, 2006

Well, sure, except can you tell me who invented the cellphone?

No, not that one.

The modern personal computer?

Wozniak and Jobs.

The atomic bomb?

Oppenheimer, Teller, and Lizsard.

The jet engine?

Whittle.

The space shuttle?

A committee. The good stuff before the shuttle? Von Braun.

The internet?

Cerf. Or Bernards-Lee, if you mean the web.

Polymers?

Not that one.

what's interesting is that it's the inventors -- not the generals or the politicians or the entertainers -- who thew children are supposed to know about

I see your point. But it's at least possible that this just reflects goals of different grades -- 8th grade is inventors, but high school is all generals and politicians.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:47 PM on March 16, 2006

If you are going to post about one made up fact you might as well base your post on more. How about "The protocols of the Elders of Zion" "A Million Little Pieces" or the "Bible"
posted by Megafly at 5:51 PM on March 16, 2006

You know... I was was all set to post some sort of scoffing snark to this thread but in reading it I thought of something:

The Internet is wonderful. One of the cool things about it is that it functions as a very good, very long-term memory for the cultures that contribute to it. And because so many people can contribute to it, our mass memory is getting better and better and thus more accurate.

I foresee the day when crap like this test, that chain letter, and whatever other memory-deficient sentiments they attempt to evoke, are rendered obsolete. Of course it will just give rise to new forms of meme propagation (misinformation spam campaigns, for instance) but at least it won't be these sorts of hoary samples of "wisdom".
posted by C.Batt at 5:59 PM on March 16, 2006

i particularly Love the Question about the Proper Use of Capital Letters.
posted by underthehat at 7:04 PM on March 16, 2006

I heart languagehat. thanks. that's probably one of the places I heard it. That and some translation of one of radiguet's books.
posted by shmegegge at 7:23 PM on March 16, 2006

ROU_Xenophobe had more answers than I did to my own quiz, so kudos. But the point I was making was that Oppenheimer, Teller and Lizsard didn't exactly invent the bomb the way we think of Edison inventing the light bulb or Bell inventing the telephone. The Manhattan Project was a concerted government effort that involved hundreds of people and many prominent scientists; Oppenheimer just happened to lead the team. As for Wozniak and Jobs, they didn't fashion a computer in their workshop the likes of which no one had ever seen before; there were plenty of home computers beforehand, many of which were quite popular.

The stereotype of the lone inventor with a workshop full of failed experiments and interesting diversions is no longer true, if indeed it ever was (anyone who's ever watched a James Burke show understands that inventions rarely appear fully formed out of the mind of a genius). A lot of things these days are the products of corporations, not individuals. So I'm not surprised that people no longer memorize the names of great inventors; there just aren't as many of them today as there used to be.

Though, admittedly, the jet engine is actually a good example of a lone inventor, and come to think of it, so is the television. Anyways, this tangent is now totally off-topic, so I'll stop.
posted by chrominance at 7:32 PM on March 16, 2006

But the point I was making was that Oppenheimer, Teller and Lizsard didn't exactly invent the bomb the way we think of Edison inventing the light bulb

Edison didn't invent the light bulb in the way we think of Edison inventing the light bulb. He was the manager of a large research organization which was responsible for much of the actual research. History and his PR program gloss over this.

Likewise, Bell did not invent the telephone, he just got his patent to the agency first, which again history and PR gloss over.

So I'm not surprised that people no longer memorize the names of great inventors; there just aren't as many of them today as there used to be.

It's ironic that you would say that in a post on the web, which was the invention of Tim Bernards-Lee. Which isn't to say that something different but similar wouldn't have evolved out of, say, gopher and veronica. But the web in its infant form was, essentially, invented by Bernards-Lee.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:58 PM on March 16, 2006

Argh. All of that sounds cranky. But I don't mean to be cranky, really.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:00 PM on March 16, 2006

The modern personal computer?

Wozniak and Jobs.


Bzzzzzt! wrong. The first PC sold to the general public (as a kit) was the Altair. Ed Roberts was the driving force behind that.
posted by Bonzai at 8:46 PM on March 16, 2006