
1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools - daegloe
http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
======
rkaplan
What is most interesting to me is how the test shows the value we enjoy of
living in the information age.

Without instant access to rote information, knowing some of these facts was
probably rather important a hundred years ago. Schools today can avoid
burdening the student with memorizing so many facts and focus more on
developing conceptual understanding, which – coupled with free, rapid access
to factual information – is much more valuable.

~~~
elteto
So what happens when the lights go out? How do we get all the facts?

~~~
wil421
I've heard of these building that store nothing but paper books that you can
borrow for a certain period of time and return at a later point.

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3pt14159
The problem with these types of posts is that they never come with the context
or the gravitas needed to substantiate the underlying claims that are implied
by the presentation.

Were all eighth grade exams of similar difficulty? Did most children pass? Did
the children that passed truly understand the underlying concepts?

Don't get me wrong; I don't think that things are honky dory right now. I have
serious problems with our education system, but I don't buy for a second that
kids 100 years ago were so advanced.

~~~
dylangs1030
Putting this in context, I'm sure the gross overall level of education for
teenagers in the early 20th century was higher than it is now.

Education was far less prevalent for minority groups, who, as an unfortunate
side effect to class-wide limited incomes, don't have the same access to the
kind of education which would give _this_ sort of examination to an 8th
grader.

Now, if you attend a private grammar school in a Westchester suburb you can
expect a lot of your children will have exams like this...

~~~
jmduke
How do you define 'level of education' on a per-student basis? (Well, I guess
the whole issue is that that's hard a question to answer, right?)

I think, for instance, that the average eighth grader knows much more in 2013
than they did in 1912, but that the proportion of that knowledge that they
gained from an education system is much smaller. Knowledge has become
universally accessible; reasoning, less so.

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jff
When people start reflecting on how it's so amazing that 8th graders were once
expected to describe the Battle of Quebec, I think about this:

[http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education](http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-
brazil-education)

The math questions? I could have answered them in 8th grade. They're not hard,
and they're the only part that's not just memorization.

~~~
gcb0
Yep, not hard considering everyone here probably likes math. My wife has to
search matrix multiplication even if she has to use it once a month. Otoh i
have to read about grammar anytime a child ask me help with any simplistic
question... Damn those meddling kids

Besides, The answer they present to #7 is a little crazy though when they try
to equal 1/3b = 2/3g... I'm pretty sure it should be a simple 40g and 80b

~~~
brazzy
> Besides, The answer they present to #7 is a little crazy though when they
> try to equal 1/3b = 2/3g... I'm pretty sure it should be a simple 40g and
> 80b

Um, no. The problem statement was b = 2/3 g, not b = 2g.

~~~
gcb0
Though i read 2/3 of total... Can't open the pdf now :/

~~~
gcb0
Or type, apparently...

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anigbrowl
Note the biggest change from today: none of these are multiple-choice tests.
Students are expected to write out the answers, and teachers are expected to
mark them. I very much doubt whether the textbooks on 1912 had special
teacher's editions with answer keys.

Of course, back then you could also support a family on a schoolteacher's
income.

~~~
Retric
Most public School teachers make close to the meadean household income in the
US (50,000$) with some earning double that. If it seems like there underpaid
it's simply in comparison to other upper income professions requiring a
collage degree or high cost of living areas. Also a teachers income is often
looked at as a family friendly steady/supplemental income with good benefits
as the time off matches up well with a dual income family raising children
thus lowering aggregate pay.

EX: Arlington VA, has an average classroom teacher pay of 52,003$. However,
_According to a 2007 estimate, the median income for a household in the county
was $94,876, and the median income for a family was $127,179.[37] Males had a
median income of $51,011 versus $41,552 for females. The per capita income for
the county was $37,706. About 5.00% of families and 7.80% of the population
were below the poverty line, including 9.10% of those under age 18 and 7.00%
of those age 65 or over._

~~~
japhyr
_Most public School teachers make close to the median household income in the
US (50,000$) with some earning double that._

Citation? You make that statement, and then choose as your example an affluent
suburb of DC.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Standard GOP war on teachers talk. They'll compare a teacher in NYC to a
software developer in rural Alabama, and call it reasonable.

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Pitarou
As an English teacher, I was fascinated by the grammar questions: much to love
and much to hate.

On the one hand, diagramming a sentence is a powerful skill, which I wish was
taught today.

On the other, this one made me chuckle:

> How many parts of speech are there?

If you put any two modern linguists in a room, you'd get about 5 different
answers to that question.

The model of English grammar that students were expected to parrot at the time
had only a passing resemblance to grammar as it is actually used. The sad part
is that, even today, there are still pedants who go around correcting others'
grammar on the basis of those outdated grammatical ideas.

~~~
dalke
"diagramming a sentence is a powerful skill, which I wish was taught today"

We learned the Reed-Kellogg system in 9th grade. I was horrible at it, so I
guess I should say we were taught it. It wasn't until I studied grammar theory
for my CS degree that I finally understood the concept, and the symbolism of
Reed-Kellogg is still nonsensical to me. Most linguists use tree diagrams
instead.

As you imply, few English teachers actually know linguistics, or the problems
of diagramming Chomsky's "John is easy to please"/"John is eager to please",
where John is the object of the verb in the first and the subject of the verb
in the second.

It looks though that diagramming was introduced in large part because the
previous system required more rote memorization of abstract grammar rules, and
applied them only to the analysis of individual words, and not phrases.
[http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=olddiagrams/beforediagrams](http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=olddiagrams/beforediagrams)

"there are still pedants who go around correcting others' grammar on the basis
of those outdated grammatical ideas." \-- hear hear!

------
GigabyteCoin
I will admit that this test would look daunting to "eighth grader me", but
should I feel less intelligent than the eighth graders we were producing 101
years ago?

I think it would be more fair to show a criteria of how the students were
taught back in 1912 as well.

We could easily teach children in grade 8 today to answer the following
question: "give at least five rules to be observed in maintaining good health"
(question 9 of physiology) by teaching them "the ten rules of maintaining good
health" one day in class and moving on the next.

Health class and phys-ed today consists of much more than 5, 10 or even 50
rules of maintaining good health.

Or how about question 5 in Geography: "locate the following countries that
border eachother: Turkey, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania.

If I was growing up in an Ottoman-empire-ruled world, perhaps I would be
taught exactly which countries border with Turkey for example.

~~~
GabrielF00
When I was about that age, NATO was in the process of bombing Serbia. The
Balkans has receded a bit from the headlines, but today, Turkey remains
critically important to the relationship between the West and the Muslim
world. The ongoing struggle between the secular and Islamic forces may be
crucial to determining the fate of the Islamic world over the next decades.

And of course most of Turkey's other neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran,
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria are in varying states of crisis.
Something like 100,000 people have died in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Lebanon is in perpetual crisis. Georgia fought a war with Russia only a few
years ago. Iraq and Iran need no further explanation.

So maybe we should be teaching our 8th graders exactly where Turkey is on the
map?

~~~
xenophonf
Don't forget to include Greece in your list.

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beloch
I find it interesting that the test actually has a couple questions based on
the war of 1812. Perhaps that war had a higher profile in 1912, it being the
centenary?

Also, it's interesting that several questions basically come down to the
student knowing the definition of imperials units like cords or the number
feet in a mile. It makes sense that students would need to know those
definitions for daily life, but I still find it odd since I grew up using the
metric system!

I know the test isn't meant to serve as a comparison of students from 1912
with those from today, but I must say, it certainly makes the teachers in some
states of the U.S. today look like dunces!

~~~
philwelch
Before the World Wars, what other war in US history, other than the
Revolutionary and Civil Wars, would be well known? The Spanish-American War
was recent events, the Mexican War was forgotten as it lay between two bigger
and more impressive wars (just like Korea is easily forgotten between WWII and
Vietnam), and that was it as far as major conflicts go.

~~~
agilebyte
How high do the the wars with the native population/first people rank?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars)

~~~
jimhefferon
I can't speak for 1912 but when I was in school in the 60's they ranked not at
all, in my white-person's school.

~~~
icebraining
This American Life corroborates that: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/479/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/479/transcript)

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Semiapies
I think someone needs to start posting modern-day eighth-grade tests, because
a bunch of supposedly smart, middle-class guys going on about how horrifyingly
hard they find tests like this is starting to worry me. I think your memories
may be fading.

There isn't anything here that I didn't do in eighth grade, and those tests
were half this length or longer _for each class_. My history classes had a
different focus, mind, more "What lead to X war?" questions on tests than "Who
were the commanders of the last battle in X war?".

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yerich
Much of this seems like rote memorization, to which I see very little use for
in today's society. Need to get a list of state capitals? Google it. Need to
plot a naval route from England to Malaysia? Look at a map. Students do not
need a teacher nor a classroom to memorize facts. The time is better spent on
developing problem solving and teamwork skills. Note the lack of any room for
original expression or thought - no essays, no argumentation. Just rote
memorization which will likely have no real use 99% of the time.

~~~
zecho
Facts are the building blocks of argument. One shouldn't expect an 8th grader
in 1912 or 2013 to have particularly well-developed arguments until they
understand basic facts. You might think "rote memorization" has little value,
but I have to disagree with that here. We're not talking memorization of
mathematical theorem without proving them. We're talking about having a rather
basic understanding of the world in a handful of subjects.

Yes it's easy to look at a map if you're unsure which countries border Turkey.
It's much easier to remember which countries border Turkey if you've studied
geography, which allows you to move on from looking up the basics every time
so that you can have a deeper understanding of the subject.

~~~
baddox
But how important is it to form an argument on the spot based only on the
facts you have memorized? Sure, it's valuable for things like competitive
debate, extemporaneous speaking, pub trivia, and perhaps some unfortunate job
interviews, but if I had to pick, I'd rather everyone be better at doing a bit
of research and taking their time forming an argument.

~~~
zecho
I'm not really talking about on the spot knowledge, though. After awhile, you
should just know things. If every time you sat down to write a program, you
had to look up the definition of a variable, you'd be in for quite a difficult
time.

Some knowledge, like history or literature or even science outside of your
field, doesn't really have an apparent application. I'm not really arguing
against applied knowledge, but I'm saying that personal edification is a very
good thing. Connections pop up in the strangest ways. In fact, I'd argue that
without a degree of memorization, research skills will be lacking in most
people, as they wouldn't have a clue where to begin.

------
sirsar
It pains me to see how many I cannot answer.

Also:

>Sketch briefly Sir Walter Raleigh...

I would have failed this horribly.

~~~
defen
I'm guessing they wanted a brief biographical sketch and not a drawing...

------
cup
The questions look daunting but It's naive to think the pupils were not taught
the material before hand. I mean if you spent a week or two with year 8s and
covered the necessary material I have no doubt the majority of them would
answer all the questions.

~~~
javert
Is a "year 8" student the same as an American eighth grader? That would
surprise me.

~~~
dsl
Year 8 students in England are ~13 years of age, so yes.

They call pre-school nursery, kindergarten is reception, then it follows with
american style numbered years. It is slightly off because they have 13 years
and we have 12, but they both carry you to 18 years of age.

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ianb
I wish in one of these cases someone could also dig up the answers to the
question. The questions are interesting, but the expectations are more implied
than clear.

~~~
tristanj
There's some solutions linked on the page just before the questions start.

[http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912...](http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912ans.html)

They look pretty thorough, but I think question 10 in geography should include
the Strait of Malacca as well.

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claystu
You can pretty much deduce what their history class must have looked like: war
and discovery.

It's interesting to note that they spell Sir Walter Raleigh differently than
we do now. I wonder if that's a typo.

Did anybody else have to Google kalsomining?

~~~
anigbrowl
I think it's a typo - note the proximity of a and w on your keyboard. I didn't
look up kalsomining, but it was obvious from the context that it was some sort
of wall covering.

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analog31
I love that the Truant Officer is listed in the credits.

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slackwalker
What _does_ the liver secrate?

~~~
defen
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile)

------
sengstrom
Who invented "magnetic"? Hmmmm.

~~~
gjm11
I think the error here may be the comma after "Magnetic"; Morse's telegraph
system, e.g., was commonly known as "the electro-magnetic telegraph" (earlier,
less successful, telegraph systems were electrical but not electromagnetic)
and the first company that commercialized his invention was called the
Magnetic Telegraph Company.

The effect of operating an electromagnet at a distance seems to have been
thought of as "magnetic" more than "electrical"; see e.g. at
[http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/56/62/case.html](http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/56/62/case.html)
comments from Morse and his contemporaries like "If I can succeed in working a
magnet ten miles, I can go around the globe" and "The chief anxiety ... was to
ascertain the utmost limits at which he, Morse, could work or move a lever by
magnetic power".

It seems plausible to me that even by 1912 the term "magnetic telegraph" might
have been in use to distinguish the electromagnetic telegraph from other
earlier sorts of telegraph.

(Note 1: the above is based on a small amount of web searching and may be full
of errors. Note 2: it appears that in fact other people developed
electromagnetic telegraphs before Morse -- e.g., a chap called Schilling in
Russia in 1832 -- but Morse is the one commonly thought of as inventing it,
and is surely the answer the examiners were looking for.)

