Comments on: 8th Grade, 1895

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:31:08 +0000

Heh. Snopes has a good article and makes some pretty good points.

Guess it pays to be a bit more ... skeptical about some things.

By: Elliot

Elliot — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:27:38 +0000

According to Snopes, this is an urban myth:

By: la petite chou chou

la petite chou chou — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:30:28 +0000

Oh, good ol' dimensional analysis. I remember learning that for the first time in 10th grade chemistry.

I'm with Craig. And I especially like the section on Orthography---I love the fact that they placed so much emphasis on speaking and understanding language on people who were likely only to go as far as their parent's farm. It's a LOT more than we can say for basic education these days---I can't even remember 8th grade English.

On another note, in 11th grade I had a class called "careers" (which they did away with) in which we learned how to write checks, etc. There was also "personal finance" which was required up until my graduating class before it was done away with entirely.

By: Moosashi

Moosashi — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:40:27 +0000

While the units seen in these questions reflect the life and times of people in Kansas, 1895, the skills needed to answer them are still relevant and are generally lacking in the college freshmen I see as a graduate teaching assistant. The fundamental skill being tested here is dimensional analysis, or converting from one unit of measure to another. In the second question, the student is given the dimensions of a box in feet. They have to first calculate volume (a pretty standard skill even today) and then convert from ft^3 to bushels. To do this, you must set up a ratio of bushels to cubic feet such that cubic feet cancels out, leaving the final answer with bushels as the only unit. This is an essential skill for many kinds of basic calculations and most high school students today don’t understand how to do it. I happened to learn it in AP Chemistry, after I had a semester of calculus under my belt. Guess which skill I use more as a doctoral student in the sciences.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:46:47 +0000

I couldn't disagree with you more. Education of children used to involve much more memorization and categorization as this test illustrates.

It was understood, properly in my opinion, that rote knowledge was a necessary precursor to conceptual -- or as it's often called now -- critical thinking. Children need to know a lot of facts before they can begin thinking about how they relate to each other.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:28:08 +0000

Most of the math problems from that sample look
a lot like the word problems we see today and
that I remember seeing in school.

I have no doubt that the 1895 schooling demanded more,
and held kids to a higher standard of knowledge
and behavior, that we do today.

I like #10 and I really think that our kids should
get a lot more economic education before leaving
high school. Balancing checkbooks, how money works,
interest, taxation, budgeting, etc. I expect some
of that might be considered subversive, though…

By: Dave Moelling

Dave Moelling — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:19:33 +0000

I second Dan's comment. These questions reflect a set of knowledge organized in a very adult way of thinking. You were considered an adult and had to function in a wider world. My daughter although covering much more science and math, would not have been prepared to do this at the end of Junior High School.

The real question is that will she when graduating high school be prepared to enter the adult world (or will that have to wait till after College)? My guess is no. Business, household finance, etc. must be our responsibility to teach at home.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:48:37 +0000

Another possible reason for the disparity:

I wonder how many of the farmers in rural Kansas in 1895 had more than an 8th grade education. Thus they were probably trying to cram all of the skills necessary to running a wheat farm into the first eight years - hence the expectation that an 8th grader should be able to write a promissory note and calculate the bushel capacity of a wagon.

Today's 8th grade education is preparatory to four more years of high school, and thiose are normally considered to be prepaaratory to college. This time is a luxury that 18th century educators simply didn't have.