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Can you pass this 8th grade test from 1895?

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greatauntoftriplets Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:45 PM
Original message
Can you pass this 8th grade test from 1895?
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895

greataunt's comment: I received this in an email today. Good Lord, it is difficult!

This is the eighth-grade final exam* from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

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 do, lie, lay 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, 1.25 hours)
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. per bu, 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 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 inch?
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 around which is 640 rods?
10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. 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, 1800, 1849, and 1865?


Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
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, super.
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 N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give 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 inclination of the earth.

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seventhson Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:49 PM
Response to Original message
1. Thanks
w. family which is homeschooling this is kinda fun.

I am an attorney and I failed it.

Peace and love



Seventh Son
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arcane1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:50 PM
Response to Original message
2. we've really dumbed ourselves down, haven't we?
and KS is one of the states that's really fighting to add creationism as science...

and of course, we all know that doing well on such a test like this isn't "cool"
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bleedingheart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:54 PM
Response to Reply #2
7. This "test" was most likely circulated to fuel the anti-public education
movement...

Lets be very honest...the majority of kids in Kansas in the 1895 period were probably going to be farmers...or work in some sort of manual labor... do you really think that all of them would have passed this test?

I seriously doubt the US had a very high literacy rate at that time...

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ComerPerro Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 01:00 AM
Response to Reply #7
20. That is part of it
Plus, most of the "information" here isn't exactly relevant or necessary in this time.
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bleedingheart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:50 PM
Response to Original message
3. there is no proof that these questions were for an 8th grader..
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DS1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 10:46 PM
Response to Reply #3
15. Yeah,I call Bullshit
Some of the questions don't even make sense, they are designed to make people go 'holy shit' and move to the next one.
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EstimatedProphet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:51 PM
Response to Original message
4. AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
My doctoral defense wasn't that hard!
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OilemFirchen Donating Member (535 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:53 PM
Response to Original message
5. Uhmmm...
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Commie Pinko Dirtbag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 08:30 PM
Response to Reply #5
9. HA! I knew it! My bullshit detector is working like a Swiss watch!
Agenda, agenda, agenda.
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JanMichael Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 08:32 PM
Response to Reply #5
10. Beat me to it.
Drat!
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TrogL Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 07:54 PM
Response to Original message
6. Shows how much they relied on memorization
and how little on actual thinking.
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Kamika Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 08:23 PM
Response to Original message
8. Holy...
Edited on Tue Jan-27-04 08:24 PM by Kamika
Man am I extremely stupid or something?

I don't know any answer to any question at all
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Endangered Specie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 11:14 PM
Response to Reply #8
17. Its bogus... and dont feel too bad...
I know that I would have done bad on that too.
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Bertha Venation Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 08:32 PM
Response to Original message
11. Holy crap.
I am a complete and total idiot.
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Commie Pinko Dirtbag Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 09:19 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. You know...
...you may have stumbled into a "Robb is a dingbat"-like meme there. :silly:
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DrWeird Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 09:44 PM
Response to Original message
13. Mmm, yes. But could they do the same with our questions?
US History
1. What critical event caused the US to enter WWII?
2. In what year did the US land on the Moon?
3. In what year was the Great Stock Market Crash?
4. Explain Roosevelt's New Deal.

Geography.

1. Identify Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea on an unmarked map.
2. The fiftieth state is located in what ocean?
3. Identify the Rocky mountains and explain how they were formed.


Science

1. Name all nine planets.
2. Of what three fundamental particles are atoms composed?
3. What furry black and white creature is native to China and subsists on a diet of bamboo?


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joeybee12 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 10:40 PM
Response to Original message
14. Forget it!!!!!!!!!!!The only answer I know is extreme climates in Kansas..
...because there's nothing else to do there!
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corporatewhore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-27-04 11:00 PM
Response to Original message
16. Uh..We dont need any of the book learnin its uh evil
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Lydia Leftcoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 12:29 AM
Response to Original message
18. And if you had gone to school in the middle ages
almost your entire curriculum would have consisted of Latin and philosophy.

If you had gone to school in premodern China, your curriculum would have consisted of memorizing the text of and learning the characters in the so-called Five Classics and learning to write essays in the approved style.
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GoddessOfGuinness Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 12:49 AM
Response to Original message
19. What the hell is the matter with people today?
They don't know how many bushels of wheat a wagon box will hold?
How can they possibly survive in our high-tech society without this information?

The most striking thing about this phony test is that it reads about as well as many of the standardized tests that our educators are using now. And those tests are not quite as straightforward as our Federal Income Tax instructions. They use a lot of long words in a mind-boggling order. They leave out important details, like the measurements of a bundled bushel of wheat. And all essay questions are absurdly general.

What we need is new test writers.
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Lostmessage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 01:03 AM
Response to Original message
21. If I had to take a test like that
I would have dropped out in the 3rd grade.
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scottcsmith Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 01:58 AM
Response to Original message
22. Debunked by Snopes
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Art_from_Ark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-28-04 09:34 AM
Response to Original message
23. Oh, oh, I know the answer to one of the geogrpahy questions
"Describe the mountains of N.A."

Rockies-- pretty damn tall, for North America
Sierra Nevadas-- pretty tall, but not as damn tall as the Rockies
Appalachians-- not as tall as the Sierras, but taller than the Ozarks
Ouachitas-- competing with the Ozarks for the tallest mountains in Arkansas


How'd I do, teacher?
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