Let’s say you have a load of wheat that weighs 3,942 pounds. What is it worth at 50 cents per bushel, deducting 1,050 pounds for tare?
Well, before attempting an answer we need to know what a tare is or where on the planet one can score on wheat that goes for two bushels for a buck.
And here’s another question that’s a bit more challenging: What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology and syllabication?
What I have in front of me is portions of an eighth grade end-of-term examination administered to students in Salina, Kans., and elsewhere. The year was 1895, and we assume students who prepared for the exam had neither the Internet with which to Google the answers, nor had they been distracted by incessant text messaging. They didn’t even have hand-held calculators. More likely each student needed to check out an abacus.
A sample of the examination was provided me on different occasions by former teacher and former Missourian Rosalie Lopez, as well as by Jack Van Horn, a retired business office employee at Highlands.
The information comes from the Coffeyville (Kans.) Journal. The writer of the column in which the test appears is Darrell Sumner. I admit that going over parts of the exam took me away from my own texting and Googling. Nevertheless, it’s fun to peer w-a-y back to discover the kinds of things kids were once tested on.
Sumner wisely makes the point that much of the terminology is obsolete, and some of the applications are passe. And he makes the important point that, “The exam implies that schools provided a level of education to 1895 8th graders that was fundamentally superior to the education received by most modern college graduates.”
It seems that lately we’re being bombarded by how-smart-are-you? applications on Facebook. There are exercises that ask us to unscramble letters to form a word, or to choose the correctly spelled word in a group of three, or to select the proper word (example: to, two, too) in a sentence.
Well, in the pre-TV, pre-laptop, pre-cell phone era of the late 19th century, what did kids have to do but attend school, after finishing their farm chores?
This examination sets out time limits for each unit; presumably, students needed to complete the test in one session. The language part — murder even for the most jaded of Language Cops such as I — asks students to “define case, illustrate each case; define verse, stanza and paragraph; name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.” That looks monumental.
But wait — there’s more. The arithmetic section (1.25 hours) asks, among other things, for the naming and defining of the fundamental rules of arithmetic. Then it has a battery of items, one of which asks students to determine the amount of a levy needed to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month.
There’s plenty for everyone, including units in U.S. History, orthography and geography.
Now in fairness, many of the terms would have absolutely no interest or relevance to today’s students. Because students used crayons and slates instead of laptops 12 decades ago, terms like orthography and etymology would be obsolete, as they have something to do with the shape of hand-written letters. By the same token, terms like byte and algorithm didn’t exist for those of our great-great grandfather’s generation.
And finally, the test ends with a geography section that requires test-takers to “name and describe Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Orinoco and Hecla. What the Hecla were they thinking?
Was that challenging enough?
Making an honest attempt to pass this examination, I felt humbled, or rather humiliated. All my life I’ve been unimpressed by those who have little factoids packed neatly in their brains. We all know of the masters of memorization, of people able to quote copious passages from the bible, or recite articles of the constitution, or recite by heart the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” oration by Marc Antony.
To me, the really bright people are those with the ability to LOCATE the information. I’d rather be the one who says, “I don’t have the answer, but if you give me a minute, I’ll find out for you.”
Imagine back then when the only thing Kansas kids could count on were their fingers. The author of the article posits that most students of that time didn’t make it to high school. A third- or fourth-grade education was enough to enable people to succeed in the work world. Sumner adds that at the time, 8th grade was considered upper-level education.