Procrastadabbler

I hate these kind of emails.

This came to me in my email. One of those conservative “jokes” that get sent around to show how awful a society we’ve become. As an educator, and educational researcher, and as a scholar, this type of kneejerk criticism really bothers me.

Here’s the email and my response follows.

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 , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , and r eprinted 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 ‘lie,”play,’ 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 hour 15 minutes)

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 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/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. 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 metre?
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 b attles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name event s 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 U.S.
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 the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete
Gives the saying ‘he only had an 8th grade education’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?!
Also shows you how poor our education system has become! and, NO! I don’t have the answers.

MY RESPONSE

Ooo did you open a Pandora’s box here. Beware sending things like this to an educational researcher!

First, it’s not proof of anything. It’s a folk theory based on faulty assumptions that has not been tested empirically across a large population comparable to those who took the test in 1895.

I go to town tearing apart the assumptions upon which this test and the email are built. I’ll spare you most of my rant but there are several things to bear in mind:

1) If you use Bloom’s taxomony, you realize that this tests basic memorized knowledge (recall) and some application but very little comprehension and no analysis, synthesis, or evaluation. So, this test is faulty in that it tests mostly only lower level thinking skills.

2) The population that even went to school in 1895 were primarily white men of landed (monied) families. That probably constituted about 10% of the total population – the population that supposedly could now pass that test. Girls were educated only to about 6th grade and those with money were then sent to finishing schools. Few people of color were educated. The rural poor received minimal education. Compulsory education was not enacted in Massachusetts until 1852 and it wasn’t until 1947 that MA required every town to operate a grammar school (notice the name even – where do you think the educational emphasis was). Around the turn of the 20th century, compulsory education was enacted for several reasons (and none had to do with making people smarter). Firstly, it was a humanitarian act to counter child labor. Secondly, this was the time of massive immigration, so education was seen as a way to “Americanize” the huddled masses and teach them how to be good citizens. Thus the purpose of education changed from preparing a small number of white men to be leaders of the community to a glorified babysitting facility designed to crank out good Americans. At the same time, vocational programs were introduced into public education, so a third purpose was to prepare workers for an industrialized economy that was moving along at a rapid pace.

3) A 150 word composition is barely enough to get an idea started let alone demonstrate the ability to form and support a thesis. Being grammatically correct is only a tiny portion of what constitutes good writing. Something that is grammatically correct but lacking is substance or full of faulty reasoning does not constitute good writing.

4) The Arithmetic (not mathematics) section is just that – computation, but it’s also interesting in that it is the one part of the test that is the most practical. It relies on a great deal of prior knowledge that is representative of the agrarian community in which the test was given. Why would urban and suburban students whose homes are heated by natural gas know or care about the number of pounds in a ton of coal. The question made sense then because a person would have to be able to figure out those things to warm their home or run their business. Today’s youth instead would need to know at X dollars per gallon of gas and a tank that holds U gallons, with an MPG of Z, how much would it cost them to drive to and from school for a week.

So, I take issue with the underlying message of this email. I get frustrated with my undergraduate and graduate students for many things. The primary one being a lack of intellectual curiosity because they have been so overly tested and have learned only to do what is asked of them in order to succeed rather than learning how to ask questions, seek answers and take risks. The type of knowledge tested in something like this 1895 test is not the knowledge that built the U.S. into the economic powerhouse that it was during the 20th century. That test was used to sort out the haves from the have nots.

When I work with youth in the middle and high schools, and at the college level, I find that they many not know many of the types of things tested here – why should they? Those questions have no real applicability. I know what orthography is because it is directly related to my field of study. By the way, it means the rules of spelling – graph means to write, ortho means correct (as in orthodontia means correct teeth). We learn that which is socially meaningful. In 1895 those questions were socially meaningful because knowledge of those items were the marker of an educated person. I can guarantee you that the knowledge tested in that test did not translate into the ability to run a railroad or business or farm. That was learned at the elbow of one’s father, uncle, and/or grandfather.

Today there is a whole different set of knowledges needed to survive in this world. It’s a different economy and a different political situation. I wouldn’t say we’re over educated – I would say we’re differently educated.

By the way, I bet any kid with access to the Internet could ace the test in less than an hour and most adults would still be struggling 5 hours later.

That’s not to say our educational system isn’t broken. It is. Horrendously so. But not for the reasons implied in this email. The problems facing our educational system today are so much more complex than that which is implied in the email.

There is much more I could rant about, but I’ll stop now.