The full test is here, here are a few questions:
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 m?
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 are, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
And these:
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
For the pointer I thank Chris F. Masse.
This test is very likely not what it is advertised to be.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam….
N.B. I grew up in Kansas and delivered newspapers and mowed the lawns of the "genius" 12 year old cohort of 1895. They were no different than the retired people of today.
On a similar vein, an English exam paper from 1837. Two very different approaches…
It might not be real, but it's not improbable – but what it shows is that you weren't mowing the lawns of the college-graduates of that period.
From the introduction to Allen Rogers Benner's "Selections from Homer's Iliad" (D Appleton and Co, 1903) – something I used as a college textbook in Greek 201.
"This edition of the Iliad includes the books commonly required for admission to American colleges, and in addition liberal selection from the remainder of the poem — in all, the equivalent of nearly eight books."
The trick was that not many people finished high school, let alone aspired to college in those days.
"The trick was that not many people finished high school, let alone aspired to college in those days."
Agreed. But this was 8th grade, and I know that many of these neighbors had gone to high school, thus completing 8th grade. I also grew up in a small town that had and continues to have a very high average educational level. In a similar sort of anecdote, some of you may have read Laura Ingall's Wilder's account of going to a teachers' Normal School after going through 8 years of plain's state education. [One of the books in that series, maybe Little Town on the Prairie] Her account was that she was not prepared to write a composition from her previous education and had to learn how to do that in Normal School. So something doesn't compute if people who had to take 8th grade exams like this and who went on to be best selling authors were unprepared to write a composition afterward.
The Snopes link does not claim that the test is not real. Snopes disputes the claim that the test "demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards." TruthOrFiction.com suggests this was not an 8th grade exam, but one for prospective teachers (as Snopes also implies).
"…people doing well at this test would struggle with the type of math questions asked in TIMMS."
I seriously doubt it. I scanned through the first ten questions on the TIMMS test. They seem dead easy compared to the 1895 test. And, guess what, they're very "formulaic", if by that you mean they have a right answer that you can determine without knowing the gender or diversity quotient of the participants. The only difference seems to be a veneer of "attack the evil Western culture" context that reinforces the stupidity of our modern ways.
26410 people were college graduates in 1899-1900 (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112596.html) out of a US population of 76 million. Isn't it the Flynn effect which says people's IQ's increase each generation and wouldn't that imply the cream of today's eighth graders are much better informed than in 1895?
The snopes link doesn't really disprove anything. And the criticisms aren't really valid.
but the typesetting in the truthorfiction image is definitely questionable. Is that times new roman?
"Is that times new roman?"
no, I'm pretty sure it's not. And those types of fonts where very much in use by the late 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Transitional
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the meaning of the "m" in " $20 per m"?
I'm struggling desperately to think of a European Republic in 1895 other than Switzerland and France.
San Marino?
"Is that times new roman?"
Well, it's from a computer anyway.
Zoom in on the background of the "actual photograph". It repeats itself by the pixels. Obviously digital.
That "photograph" is a terribly bad fake. I could do it a lot better.
How can you do #6 without knowing how frequently the interest is compounded? Is 7% a yearly rate, a monthly rate, or a daily rate?
"Is 7% a yearly rate, a monthly rate, or a daily rate?"
Yeah, and what is the inflation rate?
All I conclude from this is that, if the test is real (for which there is no evidence), the standards of making exams have greatly improved over the last century.
On the flip side, go read graduate dissertations from the 1900s. Even accounting for the ease with which literature is available and the analytical techniques available, the standards have demonstrably risen.
>Forgive my ignorance, but what is the meaning of the "m" in " $20 per m"?
Man-year.
You're forgiven, by the way.
@ Aretino
They've really dumbed down the requirements for merit badges, as well as Scouting in general. I forget the exact requirements for it, but I do remember getting my Forestry badge in the early 2000's without doing anything nearly that difficult.
Heck, they're so worried about litigation and inclusivity in Scouts today that a boy can't even hit a log with an ax, but must pick them up together and hit them against the ground lest a chip come out and hit him in the eye.
Here is an example of California State Standards 8th grade math: http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/8th.pdf
The Snopes link doesn't claim the test is fake. It claims that the test doesn't demonstrate lower standards in modern education. The test is very real.
See:
Cognitive Skills Valued by Educators: Historical Content Analysis of Testing in Ohio.
Journal of Educational Research, v96 n2 p101-14 Nov-Dec 2002
Abstract: Investigated the relative importance society places on various cognitive skills using data from 1902-13 Ohio high school entrance examinations and Ohio 9th-grade proficiency tests of the late 1990s. The earlier exams demanded deep declarative knowledge of culturally valued information but only simple interrelations between facts. The modern exams expected understanding of complex interrelations between concepts but only superficial knowledge of culturally valued information
Thanks to JP.
How does one measure the area of a board, and calculate the price, when the price is given in meters, a length?
The math is pathetic there, so nothing shocking at all. You could give it to 5th graders if you taught them what to do.
And no I don't think this is any more or any less rote memorization that our schools teach today. Heck almost all of "mathematics" in school in just memorization and arithmetic, until you actual take a real math course(the ones where almost all you do is proofs), which almost non of you have probably taken either. In your defense, those courses aren't really useful for non-mathematicians.
Of course, we don't know the passing grade, do we? And nothing but the most shallow of answers could be written in the time frames shown.
While the exam seems a bit bogus for 8th grade, I think that "m" for 1000 board feet is a reasonable abbreviation, if it was common at the time. Similarly, 7% was probably known to be a standard annual rate back then. My grandfather used to say that his father, who would have been about 25 in 1895, was very good at computing interest rates and returns for 6 and 7% in his head, which were standard rates back then. He used those in negotiating speculative land purchases.
My difficulty stems more from not knowing the specifications of a bushel, rod, m, etc. are. Its more that it sounds foreign than hard. The rest is mainly a question of retention. I had to memorize all sorts of things in school, like how many ATP's are produced during the Krebs cycle or whatever…most of which I've forgotten because its not relevant in my life. As for the math? I was tested on Pe^(rt) in 8th grade too (if not earlier). Its really not that hard.
If anything, it just shows that either:
a) They taught just as silly things back then as they do now.
b) What was deemed important to know has changed.
How many of us need to know about bushels and rods anymore?
I checked the link to the 1837 Exam that someone posted in the comments. I find the following question very intriguing and very much ahead of its time.
"How far do external goods contribute to happiness?"
One might also note "Fermandez" ought to be "Fernandez".
Jeremy pointed to a paper comparing tests from 1900-1913 to tests today. The tests it used were the Boxwell-Patterson examinations which needed to be passed to get into high school in Ohio at the time.
Link: http://www.archive.org/details/EighthGradeExamina…
Many of the Boxwell-Patterson questions were very similar to the ones in the originally linked exam so the questions originally linked do seem to be relatively typical. Various additional information from the paper:
Pass rates on the Boxwell-Patterson tests were pretty low (28%), and at that time less than half of students attended high school nation wide and high schools were selective institutions at the time. This means that at most the top 14% of students academically would have passed this test and entered high school. Only 6% of students graduated high school at the time.
Recitation and memorization of facts was the rule of the day and the test reflects that. Memorization of random geographic and grammar details may once have been important. In a world where looking things up is easier than ever, it no longer is. In addition, the math problems are pretty trivial once you get past the terminology as people have mentioned. I did like this one though:
I owned 5/8 of a farm and sold 2/5 of my share to A, who then had 40 acres less than I had left. How many acres in the farm?
Given the preponderance of memorized facts over substantive critical thinking and the fact that those who mastered the test represent such a small percent of the population, I'm not that impressed with early 20th century educational attainment compared to our own.
-D
Okay, I must be missing something here. My 7th grader had his trimester finals last week; some of the topics:
Balance the following equations for the combustion of each molecule.
Correct each of the following.(written in Pinyin)
Discuss Ma Joad's role and compare it to that of any contemporary personality.
I don't mean to say that this is typical (I don't know), but rather that one data point doesn't provide a clear idea of the norm.
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