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 8t h 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 , KS , and reprinted 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, 65 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 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050 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 6720 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 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 US History (Time, 45 minutes) 1. Give the epochs into which US 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, 1 800, 1849, and 1865. Orthography (Time, one hour) 1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, and syllabication.
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, sub vocal, diphthong, cognate letters, and lingual.
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'
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-, and 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 US
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?
Are you smarter than a grade 8 student from 1895? I think not.
by worldtraveller 41 Replies latest jw friends
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worldtraveller
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momzcrazy
I think maybe I could milk a cow and sew. Maybe cook a little too. I'd still be in grade 3 at 16, I'm afraid.
momz
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Gopher
<-- Turns to Jeff Foxworthy and says "I'm NOT smarter than an eighth-grader."
Do you have the answers to these? I'd like to know. A lot of these questions were tied into knowledge you needed to survive in Kansas back then, but many would still be up-to-date.
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hamsterbait
Translate the math questions into metric and I could do them.
Nobody learns about rods, and bushels anymore. This bit is like saying we are more ignorant than a stone age Isrealite cause we dont know the length of a cubit, or what is the capacity of a Hin measure.
If you had defined these terms which are no LONGER taught, most of us would understand them and find examples. Most of the kids back then were actually primed with examples to memorize and regurgitate on demand.
And remember, these kids were sent as cannon fodder to Europe in twenty years, and how many of them had a cogent argument as to why war is WRONG.
But many of the girls would get married and unwillingly bear baby after baby becuse they had been taught birth control is wrong. (Girls were taught to cook and sew - to find their joy in baking pies and puddings)
If you gave an 1895 8th grader an exam asking about the internet, time dilation, the physics of heavier than air flight, why the earth has to be billions of years old, radiation, good diet and cholesterol, generation of electricity by solar cell, even from a lemon or a candle, space flight, wireless telecommunications, they would be even harder pressed to answer the questions. Youngsters take these concepts in their stride now, along with grammar (just TAUGHT with different terminology)
Can you honestly say that the majority of posters here cannot spell or use Capital letters prOperlY because they have been worse educated than the farm boys who started the Witchtower Ragazine?
Education didn't get worse, what people need to memorize changed.
HB
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changeling
In what year did they invent multiple chioce questions?
changeling
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hamsterbait
Changeling -
Multiple choice questions were invented very early because they take far less time to mark, and do not depend on the discretion of the person marking the paper.
They also suit the current program of memorizing pat answers so dear to the heart of those who don't belive in thought. They are learning from the Witchtower.
HB
They can even be marked by a machine. ( like the first electrical census of the US)
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tula
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?WT,
The answers to some questions have changed. Tesla (born 1856) was the Di Vinci of our time. If you really want to know who controls the climate, read on......
NEW WORLD ORDER GLOBALISTS SUPPORT WEATHERWAR AGAINST AMERICA
The 1970 book, BETWEEN TWO AGES, by Zbigniew Brzezinski (the founding director of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission) stated: "Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised... TECHNIQUES OF WEATHER MODIFICATION COULD BE EMPLOYED TO PRODUCE PROLONGED PERIODS OF DROUGHT OR STORM," which is exactly what has happened in America, following the commencement of the Soviet Woodpecker transmissions. A 1977 official Trilateral Commission publication described increased Trilateral-Communist - "cooperation in the area of WEATHER MODIFICATION."
During 1989, World Bank President Barber Conable (member of the Trilateral Commission) made a speech in Tokyo at a conference on "Global Environment". In that speech he revealed the long-range goals of the international bankers. He said that "while higher temperatures may cause a number of natural disasters, THEY MIGHT ALSO WARM COLD AND UNPRODUCTIVE LANDS IN THE NORTH INTO PRODUCTIVITY" (9 December 1989, Washington Post). This candid admission described the real reason that the Soviets, and New World Order gang have secretly promoted continuous weather-engineering over the Northern Hemisphere since the early 1970's....
"Hurricane Alert Killer Storms Are Coming. . . Exclusive: The Secret Agenda of a Military Project in Alaska"
Popular Science was reporting on a project called "HAARP" Anyone unfamilar with this project may want to get a book called "Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology," by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, the ISBN is 0-9648812-0-9.
Our mainstream media,the liberal (Marxist)press blames these weather changes on mother nature, acts of God, El Nino, global warming or pollution of the atmosphere. Most of mainstream media knowingly overlook the "fact" that the U.S. Military has been conducting weather experiments for many years now.
Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL, is the Air Force's home for professional military education. In August of 1996 a research study titled "Weather as a force multiplier" outlined how the U.S. can "own the weather" by the year 2025. Please click on the report and read it for yourslef.Weather as a Force Multiplier
Up until recently, weather has always been a natural phenomena. If we move forward, as it appears we are, in this weather control/modification it should be very cautiously, as not to create problems we can not readily solve. Richard Williams, a physical chemist, questions the effects of HAARP in the September 1995 issue of Popular Science. "HAARP will dump enormous amounts of energy into the upper atmosphere. We don't know what will happen. My concern is its effect on a global scale - you can't localize the effects. With experiments on this scale, irreparable damage could be done in a short time. The immediate need is for open discussion. To do otherwise would be an act of global vandalism."
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mkr32208
What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
Punctuaion is an old form of marking used before the invention of the internet by Al Gore and emoticons
wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
17 rods on the hogshead...
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?
Once the school board votes to give themselves raises? 3.5 million dollars a month...
Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
After bank/brokerage fees your $2000 negative...
Give the epochs into which US History is divided
Watergate, Olivernorthgate, monicagate, the Bush period...
Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
Well exactly 6000 years to the day god created kansas...
Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1 800, 1849, and 1865
Is that first date 607?
Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication
I live in florida I can pretty much just write the first 10 words I think of...
All kidding aside I could do pretty well with this I think. The questions that involve units of measurment that we no longer commonly use (bushel, rod, hogshead) would be impossible of course but the rest I could do ok.
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dawg
I have a degree from UGA, and I'd of failed that....shit!
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B_Deserter
I noticed a lot of the questions deal with farming jargon and don't really apply to most people anymore. I do like, however, the idea of eighth graders knowing the locations and capitals of all the European countries (to be fair, there were far fewer back then, the Austro-Hungarian empire took up a lot of space). That's quite something now that we live in a world where people struggle to find their OWN country on the map.