Can you pass a test for 8th graders in 1912?

[Jackson]

1912 Eighth-Grade Exam Stumps 21st-Century Test-Takers

1912 Eighth-Grade Exam Stumps 21st-Century Test-Takers | HuffPost

Are you smarter than an eighth grader? How about an eighth grader who graduated in 1912? A copy of an eighth-grade exam from that year shows test-taking wasn’t so easy for those early-20th-century students.

Bullitt County History Museum, located in Shepherdsville, Ky., received a copy of a 1912 eighth-grade exam drafted for Bullitt County Schools as a donation. The version was a likely master copy given to schools and then amended by teachers, the museum notes.

One hundred years ago, schools in the rural county were scattered far and wide, according to the museum’s website. Students got together once or twice a year to take the “Common Exam.” This test was a big deal, and students were told to prepare properly. Scholarships were provided to some who passed the exam and went on to high school. (It was rare for farm children to be able to continue their education otherwise.)

David Strange, an executive director at the museum, told The Huffington Post the exam was actually given to the museum last year. (We actually wrote about the test in January in celebration of public education’s 100-year anniversary.) However, the 101-year-old test started gaining popularity again when it was picked up by ABC News this weekend and went viral.

“It is funny for us,” Strange told HuffPost. “We are just a rural county. Our website is used to getting a couple hundred hits but we [recently] got 200,000 [hits]. We’ve had it on the web for about a year or so.”

A renewed interest in the quiz might be the difficult challenge of acing it. Some are likely to get stumped on questions that ask students to define the parts of speech; name and give boundaries of the five zones; compare arteries and veins as to function; and name the inventor of the sewing machine.

“It’s quite a challenging test,” Strange said. “I do try to remind everyone it’s a 1912 test and you need to place yourself in that mindset sometimes. I remember having a similar question [as is on the test] when I was in school. I wouldn’t want to take it again.”

He knows multiple people who have tried to take the exam for fun but doesn’t know their final scores.

“Most everybody says they wouldn’t have passed it,” he said.

Click here for a list of answers.

This example indicates fewer than half of kids today would be attending high school. People get upset that teachers teach children to pass a test....and they are right.

That is because the "test" tests things that should be taught and mastered in each grade. Teach to the test? Hell ya!

 

[Jackson]

 

[Jackson]

Look at how we have dumbed down educatiion in the last hundred years. What a shame.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Look at how we have dumbed down educatiion in the last hundred years. What a shame.

Not true. If you had just studied that information it would be a piece of cake!

A child attending school in Bullitt County Kentucky in 1912 would probably be dirt poor. That location just recently added industries in the last few decades. It was primarily agricultural and there were probably not many students who even got to the 8th grade, much less graduated from high school.

 

[candycorn]

Look at how we have dumbed down educatiion in the last hundred years. What a shame.

There are adults who think Trump wasn't talking about Megyn Kelly's monthly condition (period) when he said she had "blood coming out of her....whatever". It's not a surprise that these person's kids can't pass a test.

Right?

 

[Markle]

I have told of my grandparents immigrating to the United States from Norway and Denmark many times. My Mother's Father came from Denmark, through Ellis Island without a penny in his pocket around the turn of the last century.

He had a fourth-grade education and settled in Chicago where he had a sponsor. I have equated that education, only half kidding, to a Masters Degree today. His first job was driving a horse-drawn milk wagon. He managed to have and keep a job all through the Great Depression and, over the years, bought several apartment buildings to support them in their retirement. During that time he and his wife, my Mother's Mother made numerous trips back to the "Old Country". My Mother's Mother never worked outside the home living to 102.

 

[Muhammed]

Who discovered the Pacific Ocean?

Ummm....a caveman named Grog. And he named it Grog.