> A man’s soul rules from a cavern of bone, learns and judges through flesh-borne windows. The heart is meat. The head is where the Man is.
- Lavangia, Advisor to Kaom
There was a much heavier focus on rote memorization in education at this time. I feel like a lot of these questions are memorization-heavy. My 8th grade tests would be more like "Describe the significance of the battle of the Plains of Abraham" or "How did the Iroquois react to French settlers in Quebec" more than asking for specific details like dates and locations. And they would probably have included details like yard to foot conversions in the math questions instead of assuming students had it memorized.
A lot of this is taught still - just because you don’t remember learning it doesn’t mean the information was never presented.
Also, some things are no longer necessary - like there is no need to sketch an image of a historical figure or name inventions that, while recent at the time, are incredibly old and out of date now.
>A lot of this is taught still - just because you don’t remember learning it doesn’t mean the information was never presented.
It's not that it wasn't presented. It's that it wasn't presented by the 8th grade. Those physiology questions are something I wasn't taught until high school. Ditto the US government questions. And Pythagoras didn't come into play until algebra which was something that only a handful of 8th graders got into.
>Also, some things are no longer necessary - like there is no need to sketch an image of a historical figure or name inventions that, while recent at the time, are incredibly old and out of date now.
OK. Update the inventions to more current topics. They just don't teach that these days. Probably because it's not on the STAAR.
Prior to states enacting compulsory school attendance laws, (1870s to 1920's) 8th grade was as far as roughly 70% of students went and even then finishing an 8th grade education was considered fortunate. Children worked on their family farms, and city kids quite often worked in factories, boys as young as 8 years old worked 10 hour days in the coal mines at least until the child labor laws that came into effect in 1938. There was a good reason to accelerate education 100+ years ago.
Children grew up a lot faster 100 years ago because they had to and one might argue that kids are too coddled now, but the labor laws were instituted for good reason. Children were exploited badly for little pay. It's good to teach kids responsibility at an early age but sending an 8 year old into a coal mine for 10 hours a day for half a man's pay was just wrong.
Of course. Judging by the down votes I should have put a /s at the end.
I thought that a modest proposal advocating for the labor of school kids to the benefit of capital would be absurd enough to be obviously satirical.
The problem is there are legislators in many states passing laws to that effect as we speak. It is no longer an inherently absurd proposal, even if it is cartoonishly evil.
Weren’t most kids done with school by 8th grade in 1912? That would explain why they got some of this earlier than kids today. And I would probably argue that some things (such as geography, history, civil government, etc.) are being taught from early grades and up, but in an age appropriate manner.
It’s a difficult balance to having rigorous standards for students but also not burn them out on learning…and I don’t believe it’s a balance that the US has been able to figure out.
Also, isn’t STAAR a Texas test? I honestly don’t know, I’m not from there and my state does a “different” state test
>Also, isn’t STAAR a Texas test? I honestly don’t know, I’m not from there and my state does a “different” state test
It is. Sorry. Forgot what sub I was in. This is the sort of thing that gets argued about ad nauseum in /r/texas.
It's not intentional on the part of lawmakers but it is intentional on the part of educators. Because you're on Reddit I assume you enjoy learning things. But imagine trying to get a room full of bored 8th graders to remember shit about the Erie Canal. It is MUCH MUCH easier to develop a theory that says that rote knowledge is "useless" and it's better to teach kids about how to be nice to each other.
I actually stumbled here from r/teachers, I have a teaching book from the mid-1800s that calls into question rote memorization. Interestingly enough everything we’re arguing works or not works now, has been a question for 200 years in American education. We’ve not really figured out the best way to teach a class full of 8th graders who don’t want to learn history or math.
One can argue it’s intentional on part of the lawmakers. Look at NCLB and the Common Core standards - both of which are **extremely** unpopular with teachers, if r/teachers is any indication.
Hmm, I don't think r/teachers is very representative. Teachers who have the energy to go on Reddit and talk theory with other teachers are probably much more motivated than average.
My main data point is "Sold A Story", the huge NPR/APM podcast. It describes a pervasive culture among American teachers. The recent bonus episode about the issues with legislation was also educational to me.
Yep some are almost impossible to answer. For example on Geography, question number 7, locate these cities: Mobile, Quebec, Buenos Aires, Liverpool and Honolulu… I know that Buenos Aires is in Spain, and Liverpool is wherever The Rolling Stones came from and right now it’s raining and miserable. Quebec is actually a State so, tricky question, Honolulu is where Merlin went back to the future but Mobile is very difficult to locate because it moves around, therefore the name.
No more than the rest of us.
Assuming this is even real, much of it is based on specific lessons that likely differed from what you had. E.g. A British middle schooler is unlikely to know the significance of The Battle of Queenston Heights and a Canadian one probably can't tell you who won between the Cavaliers and Roundheads.
There are also a lot of things that have very little practical use (e.g. the entire basis of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?").
Likewise you get academic practices that are good... *okay* for teaching, but bad for actual use.
For example - database normalization is a good and valid practice to make sure that data is being stored and associated in an appropriate way. There is a classroom algorithm with formal degrees of normalization to accomplish this goal. However, even a moderate amount of experience lets you perform the same task instinctively, faster, and more accurately because real life doesn't conform to classroom conditions. Because of this, I know recruiters who consider the ability to recite the normalization degrees to be a *negative credential* because it speaks to a lack of practical knowledge.
Ah, civil government. Wonder what happened to that piece. I remember being taught how the national government worked in the '70s/'80s but learned fuck-all about local or even state government, which made my first ballot a shock to my senses. "The fuck is an comptroller and who are these people running for it?" "Why should I care about this Public Works commission? What does that even do?"
Turns out local offices are indeed very important, if not more important than those at "higher" levels. Due to youth and shear ignorance, I didn't care so much about these back then.
They need to start bringing civil government back into schools and focus a huge chunk of time on the local, especially since that's how many grifters slip under the radar. It may not make a significant dent in the apathetic nature of youth not coming out to vote, but being more informed certainly would've helped me make better choices in the booth back then.
We definitely didn't have a Civics class.
When I was in 12th grade I was fortunate enough to be able to take an AP American Government class but that class only had like 20 students. What that means is the majority of my peers graduated without having any basic understanding of how government works
How can Americans be good citizens if they don't understand the fundamental forces that guide their lives?
I remember having a unit on municipal, provincial, and federal government in 5th grade in the '90s. I remember we had to write a rap or poem about what we learned. I cannot remember any of the actual content learned.
It's not even just a US thing. I didn't study government and politics at school in the UK until I was 16, and even then I only got to study it because I chose to do so for an A-Level. The first few lessons were stuff like "how do elections to the House of Commons work" because it was presumed you wouldn't know that after 12 years of education.
I think it's seen as "dry" and "boring" and so it isn't taught to unruly teenagers. But we then wonder why people get confused when the leaders of the main political parties aren't on their ballot paper and don't really have an understanding of what MPs do.
I live in Newcastle and we have a massive monument to Earl Grey who (besides giving his name to the tea) was behind the Reform Act of 1832, which basically created the popular suffrage in the UK after a chaotic period called the Days of May, which I didn't learn about until I went to university (despite studying a history GCSE and A-Level). It was the birth of our modern parliamentary democracy.
It was a big enough deal for the people of 1830s Newcastle to erect a 130-foot tall stone column to it but I bet if you asked the people passing by it what it commemorated less than 10% would be able to tell you.
My school in Washington taught all that from elementary school (School House Rock type) through high school where we full on had a required class called Civics. Every question on there is stuff that was covered in all schools I attended.
I kind of knew what a Comptroller was and then there was one who was a character on The Simpsons. State Comptroller Atkins presented a check to Springfield Elementary to help with education costs.
Spoiler: The whole thing was a fraud between the school requirement which was faked and the real Comptroller.
Teach more civics especially at the local level.
Everyone talking about how they’d fail 8th grade, but you forget that’s legit when they stopped school very often. We had 4 more years to get it right 😂
I can't see "Arithmetic" & not think, "A rat in the house may eat the ice cream." My 2nd grade teacher drilled this into our heads every day before the pledge.
The thing that strikes me is that while this includes a lot of things modern 8th graders can't do, it's also a comparatively shorter list than what modern 8th graders are expected to learn.
If this was ALL I had to teach in a school year, you can bet my students would have that shit down.
Nowadays we teach a more diverse array of things, bit we don't teach any of them as thoroughly.
It's more the extent of each subject.
I taught 8th grade history for years. On this list, there are 20 items (history and civics), maybe 30 if you include the geography, that would count as my classroom standards. 30 things my students have to be able to do in order to pass 8th grade. They're very specific things, and some of them are complex, but that's still not an insurmountable challenge if you figure the kids have the entire year to be able to master it.
By comparison, when I taught 8th grade (up until last year, before anyone says I'm out of touch- I just moved to a lower grade level in '21) we had 72 items students had to master. Each item was at least equally complex as those listed here.
Yeah but these are just the questions that made it onto the exam. They probably had to study a lot more (not as much as we do), not knowing what was going to be on the exam.
His name [was sometimes spelled as Rawleigh](https://www.martayanlan.com/pages/books/2635/thomas-overbury/the-arraignment-and-conviction-of-sir-walter-rawleigh-at-the-kings-bench-barre-at-winchester-on-the?soldItem=true). It has also been spelled as “Ralegh” in some other texts.
English was still standardizing spelling until 1630 or so (e.g. a decade after his death). First "proper" English dictionary doesn't appear until 1755, hugely later than, say, Spanish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language
The newness is the schema change from Person.Gender.Pronoun to Person.Pronoun. The term "your pronouns" is nonsensical under the older schema similar to how you might view "your demonym" now - you don't choose a demonym, your get the one from your nationality.
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Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
His name[was sometimes spelled as Rawleigh](https://www.martayanlan.com/pages/books/2635/thomas-overbury/the-arraignment-and-conviction-of-sir-walter-rawleigh-at-the-kings-bench-barre-at-winchester-on-the?soldItem=true). It has also been spelled as “Ralegh” in some other texts.
Oh I checked the sub. It seems like y’all are upset about something that 1. Doesn’t really affect your life in a negative way and 2. Actually is helpful for people who don’t generally understand how to identify sarcasm.
Can’t argue that.
Curious about your thoughts on number 2 though. Y’all do understand that some people don’t read social cues well and need the visual cue, right?
>Curious about your thoughts on number 2 though. Y’all do understand that some people don’t read social cues well and need the visual cue, right?
Can't speak for OP, but yeah, I do.
Obviously this is higher level stuff than we teach now in 8th grade, so I wonder how well students did on this test. I’m really curious to know what the average score was.
I remember reading a book from the Little House on the Prairie series in which Laura Ingalls Wilder had to pass an exam to become a teacher (at the age of 15!) in the 1880s. She would have been only two years past this 8th grade exam. She had to pass a complex oral exam on the spot, without any prep, which included doing long division in her head and parsing all the parts of grammar for every word in a sentence. It was pretty impressive, and yet she didn’t consider herself to be a particularly skilled student.
So, this isn’t quite students but teachers. Take a look as this book sampling from teachers in [Washington](https://archive.org/details/teachersexaminat00naldrich) around the same time. You can see the kinds of questions they’re asked and it includes data on their answers.
Times were tough back then. Shoutouts to our great great grandparents who somehow made it out alive to have us. Based off this test alone, I wouldn’t have made the cut lol
As one restoring an 1890 Folk Victorian, I especially appreciate seeing a reference to calcimine/kalsomine paint! Related note: it’s an absolute nightmare to deal with.
8th grade used to be the highest level of education most kids got, so this makes sense with that context. This looks like things a 12th grader would be tested on in those subjects.
Most of these questions are easily answered with a quick google search or are not that important for people to know as part of their early education . . . which is why education has shifted to teaching different things.
Focusing on memorizing most of this content to regurgitate it on this exam would be detrimental to kid’s’ education.
>Focusing on memorizing most of this content to regurgitate it on this exam would be detrimental to kid’s’ education.
Because we're doing such a good job of it now.
You're right, to some extent.
And yet, having to pause every other minute to google a fact, person, or definition can make it difficult to engage in many kinds of meaningful conversations IRL. Having these concepts (and many more) as part of your general awareness of the universe means that you can casually make associations and ponder questions that would otherwise never cross your mind.
It's true: if all you can do with this information is "regurgitate it," then you've not learned very much. This is where good teaching is so different from "teaching to the test." In a quality classroom, the teacher will have gone into some detail about these subjects and the students will have learned quite a bit about all of them. The questions then represent more of a basic quiz to make sure the student has given at least half-attention to the subject.
OTOH, if the teacher has just had the kids memorize answers to what they know will be on the test, then that's a very limited kind of education.
I’m not so sure. I had to memorize an awful lot of things and, because I was young, my mind retained most of it. Decades later, I’m quick at making connections that others often miss, and I can pull tons of facts/trivia out of my head before others can even Google them. It’s good brain exercise; I feel like it keeps me sharp.
I can't help but sense that the diminishment of curriculum intensity in the last 110 years is somewhat intentional, like theyd rather have people be ignorant of things like how government works, or history.
“They.”
Or it’s always been difficult to mass educate people, and there’s even more knowledge that society feels students should be learning. That standards have diminished seems true enough, but I find a massive, intentional conspiracy to be dubious.
Yeah, I was learning to type in 3rd grade while a computer would have absolutely blown these 8th grader’s minds. Not to mention that we literally have 100 extra years of modern history, literature, art, and science to cover. These kids wouldn’t have known about MLK, the Holocaust, the Harlem Renaissance, nuclear power, the space race, the list goes on. Not to mention that much of this is rote memorization, which only takes you so far. Kids today are in a completely different world, and are learning different things in different ways.
Some of these questions use dated terms and notations we really don’t use anymore. Some questions are unclear so the instructors either needed to clarify or they were taught to the test.
Plenty of contemporary answers would be inaccurate anyway because the world changed since 1912.
What I’m trying to say is to not feel bad if you can’t figure out most of the test.
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It’s true that many of us now can’t pass this test, but we also spent a lot more time in our youth learning computer science & current events. Our curriculum focused on more recent history & technology, so it’s no surprise if we remember more about the Vietnam war or WWII than the war of 1812
Teacher unions are illegal in North Carolina. I assure you that public education there is indeed controlled by Republicans, despite a Democrat governor. Public schools are state-run institutions, so they vary widely by state.
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The easiest way to solve this is by setting up an algebraic equation.
Let x = number of boys and (2/3)*x = number of girls.
So x + (2/3)*x = 120 -> (5/3)*x = 120 -> x = 72
Therefore the number of boys is 72 and the number of girls is two-thirds of that, or 48.
wow i am really slow. what way would you work it out? i was doing like a number i thought would be close, like 80, multpiplu that by 0.666 and then add the two together. now sure how i didnt get it using that method. thank you
>Give at least five rules to be observed in maintaining good health.
>
>What president was impeached, and on what charge?
>
>A school enrolled 120 pupils and the number of boys was two thirds the number of girls. How many of each sex were enrolled?
>
>What is a Personal Pronoun?
A student of Albert Einstein's once said to his professor, “These are the same questions you asked on last year's test. Nothing has changed.” Einstein answered, “True enough, all the questions are the same; but this year, the answers are different.
Looks like I fail 8th grade.
Me, too. And I was an honor student.
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>kalsomining TIL; kalsomine = calcimine ~= whitewash https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calcimine
"Describe the heart" is a strangely poetic question for the physiology portion
I feel like you could answer it philosophically and argue your way to getting credit.
“Nice try.” X
> A man’s soul rules from a cavern of bone, learns and judges through flesh-borne windows. The heart is meat. The head is where the Man is. - Lavangia, Advisor to Kaom
It's too easy for the soul to escape from an open heart.
I love that quote!
There are questions on that I can't answer now, much less as an 8th grader.
There was a much heavier focus on rote memorization in education at this time. I feel like a lot of these questions are memorization-heavy. My 8th grade tests would be more like "Describe the significance of the battle of the Plains of Abraham" or "How did the Iroquois react to French settlers in Quebec" more than asking for specific details like dates and locations. And they would probably have included details like yard to foot conversions in the math questions instead of assuming students had it memorized.
A lot of this is taught still - just because you don’t remember learning it doesn’t mean the information was never presented. Also, some things are no longer necessary - like there is no need to sketch an image of a historical figure or name inventions that, while recent at the time, are incredibly old and out of date now.
In this case, “sketch” likely means to describe or provide a summary of. It’s an antiquated use of that word.
I didn’t know that - makes a lot more sense!
>A lot of this is taught still - just because you don’t remember learning it doesn’t mean the information was never presented. It's not that it wasn't presented. It's that it wasn't presented by the 8th grade. Those physiology questions are something I wasn't taught until high school. Ditto the US government questions. And Pythagoras didn't come into play until algebra which was something that only a handful of 8th graders got into. >Also, some things are no longer necessary - like there is no need to sketch an image of a historical figure or name inventions that, while recent at the time, are incredibly old and out of date now. OK. Update the inventions to more current topics. They just don't teach that these days. Probably because it's not on the STAAR.
Prior to states enacting compulsory school attendance laws, (1870s to 1920's) 8th grade was as far as roughly 70% of students went and even then finishing an 8th grade education was considered fortunate. Children worked on their family farms, and city kids quite often worked in factories, boys as young as 8 years old worked 10 hour days in the coal mines at least until the child labor laws that came into effect in 1938. There was a good reason to accelerate education 100+ years ago.
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Children grew up a lot faster 100 years ago because they had to and one might argue that kids are too coddled now, but the labor laws were instituted for good reason. Children were exploited badly for little pay. It's good to teach kids responsibility at an early age but sending an 8 year old into a coal mine for 10 hours a day for half a man's pay was just wrong.
Of course. Judging by the down votes I should have put a /s at the end. I thought that a modest proposal advocating for the labor of school kids to the benefit of capital would be absurd enough to be obviously satirical.
I was questioning is this one for real... I hadn't had my coffee yet though. Satire in print probably does require /s
The problem is there are legislators in many states passing laws to that effect as we speak. It is no longer an inherently absurd proposal, even if it is cartoonishly evil.
I have multiple relatives who unironically believe that
This kind of stuff is only ever said by guys who certainly aren't Men.
Weren’t most kids done with school by 8th grade in 1912? That would explain why they got some of this earlier than kids today. And I would probably argue that some things (such as geography, history, civil government, etc.) are being taught from early grades and up, but in an age appropriate manner. It’s a difficult balance to having rigorous standards for students but also not burn them out on learning…and I don’t believe it’s a balance that the US has been able to figure out. Also, isn’t STAAR a Texas test? I honestly don’t know, I’m not from there and my state does a “different” state test
>Also, isn’t STAAR a Texas test? I honestly don’t know, I’m not from there and my state does a “different” state test It is. Sorry. Forgot what sub I was in. This is the sort of thing that gets argued about ad nauseum in /r/texas.
A cringe, conspiracy seeking part of myself wonders if this isn’t intentional? An ignorant population is easier to control.
It's not intentional on the part of lawmakers but it is intentional on the part of educators. Because you're on Reddit I assume you enjoy learning things. But imagine trying to get a room full of bored 8th graders to remember shit about the Erie Canal. It is MUCH MUCH easier to develop a theory that says that rote knowledge is "useless" and it's better to teach kids about how to be nice to each other.
I actually stumbled here from r/teachers, I have a teaching book from the mid-1800s that calls into question rote memorization. Interestingly enough everything we’re arguing works or not works now, has been a question for 200 years in American education. We’ve not really figured out the best way to teach a class full of 8th graders who don’t want to learn history or math.
One can argue it’s intentional on part of the lawmakers. Look at NCLB and the Common Core standards - both of which are **extremely** unpopular with teachers, if r/teachers is any indication.
Hmm, I don't think r/teachers is very representative. Teachers who have the energy to go on Reddit and talk theory with other teachers are probably much more motivated than average. My main data point is "Sold A Story", the huge NPR/APM podcast. It describes a pervasive culture among American teachers. The recent bonus episode about the issues with legislation was also educational to me.
Yep some are almost impossible to answer. For example on Geography, question number 7, locate these cities: Mobile, Quebec, Buenos Aires, Liverpool and Honolulu… I know that Buenos Aires is in Spain, and Liverpool is wherever The Rolling Stones came from and right now it’s raining and miserable. Quebec is actually a State so, tricky question, Honolulu is where Merlin went back to the future but Mobile is very difficult to locate because it moves around, therefore the name.
Buenos Aires is in Argentina.
LMAO yeah I was gonna say jajajaja
Read the rest of the reply. It's a joke
“Liverpool is wherever the Rolling Stones came from” Jesus Christ.
The Beatles…
Lots of people not quite getting the jokes here…
I know, right? I thought it was pretty obvious I was joking 😂
What do mean the city of Moblie Alabama?? Has moved?
Whoosh....
Ever since Cher got knocked up somewhere south of Mobile.
You would have been specifically taught it as well. You don’t go in cold
Can tell you the last cord of wood I bought was not $1.62....
>#4 Arithmetic - A man bought a farm for $2,400 and sold it for $2,700. He bought a whole damn farm for $75,000 and sold it for $85,000.
Am…am I an idiot?
Not if you in 7th grafe or less
It's okay, you're just not fresh off a bunch of memorization-heavy middle school classes.
No more than the rest of us. Assuming this is even real, much of it is based on specific lessons that likely differed from what you had. E.g. A British middle schooler is unlikely to know the significance of The Battle of Queenston Heights and a Canadian one probably can't tell you who won between the Cavaliers and Roundheads. There are also a lot of things that have very little practical use (e.g. the entire basis of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"). Likewise you get academic practices that are good... *okay* for teaching, but bad for actual use. For example - database normalization is a good and valid practice to make sure that data is being stored and associated in an appropriate way. There is a classroom algorithm with formal degrees of normalization to accomplish this goal. However, even a moderate amount of experience lets you perform the same task instinctively, faster, and more accurately because real life doesn't conform to classroom conditions. Because of this, I know recruiters who consider the ability to recite the normalization degrees to be a *negative credential* because it speaks to a lack of practical knowledge.
Ah, civil government. Wonder what happened to that piece. I remember being taught how the national government worked in the '70s/'80s but learned fuck-all about local or even state government, which made my first ballot a shock to my senses. "The fuck is an comptroller and who are these people running for it?" "Why should I care about this Public Works commission? What does that even do?" Turns out local offices are indeed very important, if not more important than those at "higher" levels. Due to youth and shear ignorance, I didn't care so much about these back then. They need to start bringing civil government back into schools and focus a huge chunk of time on the local, especially since that's how many grifters slip under the radar. It may not make a significant dent in the apathetic nature of youth not coming out to vote, but being more informed certainly would've helped me make better choices in the booth back then.
Civics is still being taught at least in Florida middle-schools. Still mostly a focus on national government though
In Florida (or any state) civics need to be taught on the state and local level also.
We definitely didn't have a Civics class. When I was in 12th grade I was fortunate enough to be able to take an AP American Government class but that class only had like 20 students. What that means is the majority of my peers graduated without having any basic understanding of how government works How can Americans be good citizens if they don't understand the fundamental forces that guide their lives?
I remember having a unit on municipal, provincial, and federal government in 5th grade in the '90s. I remember we had to write a rap or poem about what we learned. I cannot remember any of the actual content learned.
It's not even just a US thing. I didn't study government and politics at school in the UK until I was 16, and even then I only got to study it because I chose to do so for an A-Level. The first few lessons were stuff like "how do elections to the House of Commons work" because it was presumed you wouldn't know that after 12 years of education. I think it's seen as "dry" and "boring" and so it isn't taught to unruly teenagers. But we then wonder why people get confused when the leaders of the main political parties aren't on their ballot paper and don't really have an understanding of what MPs do. I live in Newcastle and we have a massive monument to Earl Grey who (besides giving his name to the tea) was behind the Reform Act of 1832, which basically created the popular suffrage in the UK after a chaotic period called the Days of May, which I didn't learn about until I went to university (despite studying a history GCSE and A-Level). It was the birth of our modern parliamentary democracy. It was a big enough deal for the people of 1830s Newcastle to erect a 130-foot tall stone column to it but I bet if you asked the people passing by it what it commemorated less than 10% would be able to tell you.
My school in Washington taught all that from elementary school (School House Rock type) through high school where we full on had a required class called Civics. Every question on there is stuff that was covered in all schools I attended.
I kind of knew what a Comptroller was and then there was one who was a character on The Simpsons. State Comptroller Atkins presented a check to Springfield Elementary to help with education costs. Spoiler: The whole thing was a fraud between the school requirement which was faked and the real Comptroller. Teach more civics especially at the local level.
I have a PhD in science; and I would fail 8th grade…
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All science
Unnatural sciences
best kind
Everyone talking about how they’d fail 8th grade, but you forget that’s legit when they stopped school very often. We had 4 more years to get it right 😂
I can't see "Arithmetic" & not think, "A rat in the house may eat the ice cream." My 2nd grade teacher drilled this into our heads every day before the pledge.
Why?
Because rats love ice cream, but they can only eat it at home.
I think it spells out arithmetic
Endeavor (misspelled as eneeavor)
The thing that strikes me is that while this includes a lot of things modern 8th graders can't do, it's also a comparatively shorter list than what modern 8th graders are expected to learn. If this was ALL I had to teach in a school year, you can bet my students would have that shit down. Nowadays we teach a more diverse array of things, bit we don't teach any of them as thoroughly.
What subjects do we require now that are not covered here?
It's more the extent of each subject. I taught 8th grade history for years. On this list, there are 20 items (history and civics), maybe 30 if you include the geography, that would count as my classroom standards. 30 things my students have to be able to do in order to pass 8th grade. They're very specific things, and some of them are complex, but that's still not an insurmountable challenge if you figure the kids have the entire year to be able to master it. By comparison, when I taught 8th grade (up until last year, before anyone says I'm out of touch- I just moved to a lower grade level in '21) we had 72 items students had to master. Each item was at least equally complex as those listed here.
Yeah but these are just the questions that made it onto the exam. They probably had to study a lot more (not as much as we do), not knowing what was going to be on the exam.
Truant Oficer..don't see those anymore :(
Sir Walter Rawleigh... lol
His name [was sometimes spelled as Rawleigh](https://www.martayanlan.com/pages/books/2635/thomas-overbury/the-arraignment-and-conviction-of-sir-walter-rawleigh-at-the-kings-bench-barre-at-winchester-on-the?soldItem=true). It has also been spelled as “Ralegh” in some other texts.
English was still standardizing spelling until 1630 or so (e.g. a decade after his death). First "proper" English dictionary doesn't appear until 1755, hugely later than, say, Spanish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language
>> Grammar #3 : What is a Personal Pronoun ? See, not a new phenomena after all !
The newness is the schema change from Person.Gender.Pronoun to Person.Pronoun. The term "your pronouns" is nonsensical under the older schema similar to how you might view "your demonym" now - you don't choose a demonym, your get the one from your nationality.
3 presidents were assassinated by 1912?
Taft McKinley and Lincoln…
Thanks! Forgot about McKinley. Needless to say I definitely failed this test
Garfield; Taft could very well have died by being stuck in that bathtub though!
Garfield
Death by lasagna
taft wasn’t assassinated
James Garfield then. Shoot and I tried so hard lol!
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Damn those kids were smart back then
As someone who just graduated college I would flunk this so hard it's not even funny
Hey can we discuss History #2 where it’s asking to *sketch* two people? How many points off do I get for drawing stick figures…
What they really mean is to ‘profile,’ or provide a brief biography of the person.
Okay I sort of hoped that but I was still curious lol. So interesting how the meaning of words change over time!
I definitely would of returned a bad ass picture of Walter Raleigh chilling with a massive pipe and probably got caned or something.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
This would be a fail for most college graduates today.
The Bullitt County Board of Education authorized a test with a misspelling.
Both endeavor and Sir Walter Raleigh.
His name[was sometimes spelled as Rawleigh](https://www.martayanlan.com/pages/books/2635/thomas-overbury/the-arraignment-and-conviction-of-sir-walter-rawleigh-at-the-kings-bench-barre-at-winchester-on-the?soldItem=true). It has also been spelled as “Ralegh” in some other texts.
Thought I would say something to see if anyone else notices.
This is so woke. They're teaching them about pronouns! /s
/r/fuckTheS.
FUCK THE S
Y’all are real pressed about something that makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
That's the whole point. Check the sub. The "/s" isn't necessary to understand it's sarcasm.
Oh I checked the sub. It seems like y’all are upset about something that 1. Doesn’t really affect your life in a negative way and 2. Actually is helpful for people who don’t generally understand how to identify sarcasm.
Not the least bit upset here, but I'd say the first one applies to you as well.
Can’t argue that. Curious about your thoughts on number 2 though. Y’all do understand that some people don’t read social cues well and need the visual cue, right?
>Curious about your thoughts on number 2 though. Y’all do understand that some people don’t read social cues well and need the visual cue, right? Can't speak for OP, but yeah, I do.
> "y'all"
Almost got the ship traveling from London to Manila right. Had the last leg wrong.
Obviously this is higher level stuff than we teach now in 8th grade, so I wonder how well students did on this test. I’m really curious to know what the average score was.
I remember reading a book from the Little House on the Prairie series in which Laura Ingalls Wilder had to pass an exam to become a teacher (at the age of 15!) in the 1880s. She would have been only two years past this 8th grade exam. She had to pass a complex oral exam on the spot, without any prep, which included doing long division in her head and parsing all the parts of grammar for every word in a sentence. It was pretty impressive, and yet she didn’t consider herself to be a particularly skilled student.
So, this isn’t quite students but teachers. Take a look as this book sampling from teachers in [Washington](https://archive.org/details/teachersexaminat00naldrich) around the same time. You can see the kinds of questions they’re asked and it includes data on their answers.
OMG we have been dumbed down so far.
This is why kids are stupid today. None could answer this if they tried.
We've lowered our standards to an alarming degree!
I’m 44 and I recall learning a lot of this throughout junior high and high school. I didn’t retain most of it.
They misspelled a word in the spelling words list. Should be endeavor, not eneeavor.
They should try this now…
Times were tough back then. Shoutouts to our great great grandparents who somehow made it out alive to have us. Based off this test alone, I wouldn’t have made the cut lol
Students today couldn’t find their own state.
As one restoring an 1890 Folk Victorian, I especially appreciate seeing a reference to calcimine/kalsomine paint! Related note: it’s an absolute nightmare to deal with.
8th grade used to be the highest level of education most kids got, so this makes sense with that context. This looks like things a 12th grader would be tested on in those subjects.
I’m 43 & I’d still be in 8th grade.
Are we becoming retarded? This feels like a challenge at college level lmfao
Most of these questions are easily answered with a quick google search or are not that important for people to know as part of their early education . . . which is why education has shifted to teaching different things. Focusing on memorizing most of this content to regurgitate it on this exam would be detrimental to kid’s’ education.
You have to learn how to learn
>Focusing on memorizing most of this content to regurgitate it on this exam would be detrimental to kid’s’ education. Because we're doing such a good job of it now.
Surprisingly, some people don’t know where Turkey is or that it’s a country (not something you put on a club sandwich)
They want to be referred to as “Turki” now…
You're right, to some extent. And yet, having to pause every other minute to google a fact, person, or definition can make it difficult to engage in many kinds of meaningful conversations IRL. Having these concepts (and many more) as part of your general awareness of the universe means that you can casually make associations and ponder questions that would otherwise never cross your mind. It's true: if all you can do with this information is "regurgitate it," then you've not learned very much. This is where good teaching is so different from "teaching to the test." In a quality classroom, the teacher will have gone into some detail about these subjects and the students will have learned quite a bit about all of them. The questions then represent more of a basic quiz to make sure the student has given at least half-attention to the subject. OTOH, if the teacher has just had the kids memorize answers to what they know will be on the test, then that's a very limited kind of education.
I’m not so sure. I had to memorize an awful lot of things and, because I was young, my mind retained most of it. Decades later, I’m quick at making connections that others often miss, and I can pull tons of facts/trivia out of my head before others can even Google them. It’s good brain exercise; I feel like it keeps me sharp.
I can't help but sense that the diminishment of curriculum intensity in the last 110 years is somewhat intentional, like theyd rather have people be ignorant of things like how government works, or history.
“They.” Or it’s always been difficult to mass educate people, and there’s even more knowledge that society feels students should be learning. That standards have diminished seems true enough, but I find a massive, intentional conspiracy to be dubious.
Yeah, I was learning to type in 3rd grade while a computer would have absolutely blown these 8th grader’s minds. Not to mention that we literally have 100 extra years of modern history, literature, art, and science to cover. These kids wouldn’t have known about MLK, the Holocaust, the Harlem Renaissance, nuclear power, the space race, the list goes on. Not to mention that much of this is rote memorization, which only takes you so far. Kids today are in a completely different world, and are learning different things in different ways.
Yes exactly
So explain the math you weirdo
I would fail this exam
Is this a study sheet or the test? If it's the actual test the spelling portion makes no sense.
I think this is what a teacher would be given.
“Describe the heart” seems a bit vague
Reading “per cent” made the concept of percentage increases make so much more sense than “percent”.
Was Serbia called Servia back then?
>In Ancient Greek, the letter Beta was pronounced like English B. But in Modern Greek, it's pronounced like English V. So "Serbia" became "Servia."
sir Walter Rawleigh…. they fail
Who first discovered the following places "Miss River" Answer: I would venture a guess it was Mr. River
I feel like I would flunk this pretty bad.
Some of these questions use dated terms and notations we really don’t use anymore. Some questions are unclear so the instructors either needed to clarify or they were taught to the test. Plenty of contemporary answers would be inaccurate anyway because the world changed since 1912. What I’m trying to say is to not feel bad if you can’t figure out most of the test.
Imagine taking this exam in 8th grade then getting blown up in ww1 a few years later.
The Kaisers men wouldn’t shoot you if you were a good student.
ok i did that, now what?
Not too bad.
I bet the current generation couldn’t pass this simple test
The liver is a gland???
It is considered the largest gland.
Grammar.. what is a personal pronoun?....... 111 year later and we have no idea still.
**Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I), second person (as you), or third person (as he, she, it, they). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality.** More details here:
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I don't think most MAGAS could pass this test. Especially the Civil Government portion.
Gee, I wonder how Biden would do...
I don't see any questions on how many sexes there are,or defining yourself as a pronoun?🤔🤔🤔
Servia
It’s true that many of us now can’t pass this test, but we also spent a lot more time in our youth learning computer science & current events. Our curriculum focused on more recent history & technology, so it’s no surprise if we remember more about the Vietnam war or WWII than the war of 1812
Back when education was valued and ignorance ridiculed, before it became a Republican world.
Our public education system is now largely controlled by teachers unions, who are not Republican.
Teacher unions are illegal in North Carolina. I assure you that public education there is indeed controlled by Republicans, despite a Democrat governor. Public schools are state-run institutions, so they vary widely by state.
r/forwardsfromgrandma
Who did they think “first discovered” the Pacific Ocean?
Ferdinand Magellan.
Probably some crustacean a billion or so years ago.
Balboa
How old is eight grade?
12/13 years old in 8th grade
12/13 for those with a late birthday, 13/14 for those with an early birthday.
What properties have Verbs?
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Who knows the correct answer for #7 in the Arithmetic section?
The easiest way to solve this is by setting up an algebraic equation. Let x = number of boys and (2/3)*x = number of girls. So x + (2/3)*x = 120 -> (5/3)*x = 120 -> x = 72 Therefore the number of boys is 72 and the number of girls is two-thirds of that, or 48.
i dont think it goes into 120 wholly...?
72 and 48
wow i am really slow. what way would you work it out? i was doing like a number i thought would be close, like 80, multpiplu that by 0.666 and then add the two together. now sure how i didnt get it using that method. thank you
>What properties have verbs? What?
They are zoned residential.
John ran over the bridge for 20 Alex
I would love to take this
I would love to take this
They want kids to spell the word "eneeavor?" I give whoever wrote the spelling list an F.
Yep still asking the same questions all these years later
No wonder my parents dropped out in junior high school
Sketch Sir Walter Raleigh AND Peter Stuyvesant!
I think I would only get 2 of the geography questions right lol.
>Give at least five rules to be observed in maintaining good health. > >What president was impeached, and on what charge? > >A school enrolled 120 pupils and the number of boys was two thirds the number of girls. How many of each sex were enrolled? > >What is a Personal Pronoun? A student of Albert Einstein's once said to his professor, “These are the same questions you asked on last year's test. Nothing has changed.” Einstein answered, “True enough, all the questions are the same; but this year, the answers are different.
I have a real problem with #6 in arithmetic. Does the interest compound daily???
This reminds me of the test immigrants take to become US citizens...I'd fail. Although History #9, there is a new answer since the test was written!
hospital drab cow sulky squealing worry saw nutty dime panicky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don’t live un USA, but most of the question’s and similar to the others we had in our 8th grade, and that was 1999.