1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools
bullittcountyhistory.com
bullittcountyhistory.com
Without instant access to rote information, knowing some of these facts was probably rather important a hundred years ago. Schools today can avoid burdening the student with memorizing so many facts and focus more on developing conceptual understanding, which – coupled with free, rapid access to factual information – is much more valuable.
Has education really changed that much in 25 years? Heck, 10 years? I don't think most people had heard of Wikipedia 10 years ago, and Google hadn't even IPO'ed yet.
Were all eighth grade exams of similar difficulty? Did most children pass? Did the children that passed truly understand the underlying concepts?
Don't get me wrong; I don't think that things are honky dory right now. I have serious problems with our education system, but I don't buy for a second that kids 100 years ago were so advanced.
I don't actually see any of that in this post, though I can't speak to the original headline here on HN.
I think your expectations tinted how you interpreted the framing. The test is presented as a historical document, and I didn't see any attempt at commentary on the current educational system.
Education was far less prevalent for minority groups, who, as an unfortunate side effect to class-wide limited incomes, don't have the same access to the kind of education which would give this sort of examination to an 8th grader.
Now, if you attend a private grammar school in a Westchester suburb you can expect a lot of your children will have exams like this...
I think, for instance, that the average eighth grader knows much more in 2013 than they did in 1912, but that the proportion of that knowledge that they gained from an education system is much smaller. Knowledge has become universally accessible; reasoning, less so.
>Progressively fewer adults have limited their education to completion of the 8th grade which was typical in the early part of the century. In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education.
http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education
The math questions? I could have answered them in 8th grade. They're not hard, and they're the only part that's not just memorization.
Besides, The answer they present to #7 is a little crazy though when they try to equal 1/3b = 2/3g... I'm pretty sure it should be a simple 40g and 80b
Um, no. The problem statement was b = 2/3 g, not b = 2g.
Of course, back then you could also support a family on a schoolteacher's income.
EX: Arlington VA, has an average classroom teacher pay of 52,003$. However, According to a 2007 estimate, the median income for a household in the county was $94,876, and the median income for a family was $127,179.[37] Males had a median income of $51,011 versus $41,552 for females. The per capita income for the county was $37,706. About 5.00% of families and 7.80% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.10% of those under age 18 and 7.00% of those age 65 or over.
Citation? You make that statement, and then choose as your example an affluent suburb of DC.
Looks like they make less than the national median income.
Doesn't look like you pass the median either until you've put in at least a decade. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary...
Teaching might be "Looked at" as being family friendly but unless you're working in a really nice district or are completely apathetic you're probably going to be working 50 hour weeks.
Speaking of pay expectations... software developers with no college education and a few years of experience can be hired for twice an experienced teacher's salary - and these same developers consider themselves underpaid (which they are... but so is most of the middle class)
The average salary for full-time public school teachers in 2010–11 was $56,069 in current dollars (i.e. dollars that are not adjusted for inflation). In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the average salary was about 3 percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91.
Note the average is well above the median in this case.
Except that they aren't. http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2011/10/05/teachers-work-few...
Yeah...no they don't. Both my parents are career teachers, and both have worked in both public and private school systems. You start out at ~$30,000 in major metropolitan areas and can reach $100,000 after close to a decade, with a graduate degree.
Even still, for such a vastly important profession, I've always been completely disillusioned by the lack of compensation and support for the teaching profession.
[1] http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2007020403001...
Think about: you know, the Romans didn't drive around in nice fancy cars; they walked, or if they were lucky, rode a horse! Therefore we can conclude that they weren't as lazy as we were.
Ridiculous. If the teacher of 1912 had multiple choice tests in their toolbox, they probably would have used them. What point were you trying to make?
Likewise I think the sutdents of 1912 were mentally fitter for having to write out the answers rather than use multiple-choice tests. As a European I'm constantly perplexed by how much Americans use multiple-choice questions for academic evaluation. Anything that allows you to get an exam score of 25% by chance alone is a pretty weak pedagogical tool.
Perhaps I should have phrased my point in the form of a multiple-choice question to make it easier for you to appreciate.
That's a pretty weak argument. Not only can multiple choice questions be weighted to punish guessing, remember how the score system works. 50% is a complete failure.
remember how the score system works
You realize that the particular scoring system you're referring to is a peculiarly American thing, right? There are many different grading systems in use around the world; I grew up with this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Ireland
50% is a complete failure.
This is part of the problem. How do you expect students to stay motivated and progress when 50% effectively equals 0%?
While I'm on this topic, I don't understand this American mania for scoring relative to a population, and there's a distinct lack of transparency in tests administered by institutions like the college board - for example http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/clep/clep-... Even if you're going to use weighting, I fail to see what the point is in using a T-Score (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Normal_distribution_and_sc...) instead of providing a percentile or standard deviation measure. It took me ages to work out what method they were using since they didn't bother naming it in the explanatory notes.
You've turned testing into such an industry in the US that providing the student with meaningful feedback on his/her actual performance seems to be the lowest priority. I score up int eh 98th or 99th percentile on things, I understand statistical distributions, and I still find this horribly alienating. I can't imagine what it's like for someone that isn't quantitatively inclined.
Maybe we dumb Americans expect more out of our students than the oh-so-smart Europeans? Get over yourself.
Why?
this must be an american thing. I have never had a multiple choice test in school. (okay, maybe some small test in geography or something, but very very rare)
In the UK, at least where I live, none of our tests are multiple choice. I've always wondered why in the US tests are given in this format. It seems very dumbed down. Is there a valid reason?
Benefits of this approach include giving teachers fast feedback on whether students are understanding what they're being taught; and spreading the test workload evenly across the year instead of having a bunch of big make-or-break exams at the end of the year, within days of one another. Using multiple choice tests which can be marked automatically makes it simpler to do this as they can be marked by machine.
Multiple choice with automated marking also means you don't have to decipher students' bad handwriting; you can't recognise students' writing and apply subconscious favouritism; you have to ask questions with unambiguously right answers; it's simple to be consistent with marking; and rates of human error are reduced.
With that said, you can't teach someone to write an essay without having them write an essay and giving them feedback; and you can't check a student's math problem working and point out where they make a mistake. So multiple choice tests certainly aren't the be-all and end-all of student evaluation.
multiple choice doesn't mean dumbed down. indeed, it can be much harder since you can't show working or explain reasons. It turns into an exercise of guessing the password (http://lesswrong.com/lw/iq/guessing_the_teachers_password/) rather than demonstrating any real learning has taken place. This can be hard to guess even if you know the material in question.
On the one hand, diagramming a sentence is a powerful skill, which I wish was taught today.
On the other, this one made me chuckle:
> How many parts of speech are there?
If you put any two modern linguists in a room, you'd get about 5 different answers to that question.
The model of English grammar that students were expected to parrot at the time had only a passing resemblance to grammar as it is actually used. The sad part is that, even today, there are still pedants who go around correcting others' grammar on the basis of those outdated grammatical ideas.
We learned the Reed-Kellogg system in 9th grade. I was horrible at it, so I guess I should say we were taught it. It wasn't until I studied grammar theory for my CS degree that I finally understood the concept, and the symbolism of Reed-Kellogg is still nonsensical to me. Most linguists use tree diagrams instead.
As you imply, few English teachers actually know linguistics, or the problems of diagramming Chomsky's "John is easy to please"/"John is eager to please", where John is the object of the verb in the first and the subject of the verb in the second.
It looks though that diagramming was introduced in large part because the previous system required more rote memorization of abstract grammar rules, and applied them only to the analysis of individual words, and not phrases. http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=olddiagrams/beforediagrams
"there are still pedants who go around correcting others' grammar on the basis of those outdated grammatical ideas." -- hear hear!
I think it would be more fair to show a criteria of how the students were taught back in 1912 as well.
We could easily teach children in grade 8 today to answer the following question: "give at least five rules to be observed in maintaining good health" (question 9 of physiology) by teaching them "the ten rules of maintaining good health" one day in class and moving on the next.
Health class and phys-ed today consists of much more than 5, 10 or even 50 rules of maintaining good health.
Or how about question 5 in Geography: "locate the following countries that border eachother: Turkey, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania.
If I was growing up in an Ottoman-empire-ruled world, perhaps I would be taught exactly which countries border with Turkey for example.
And of course most of Turkey's other neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria are in varying states of crisis. Something like 100,000 people have died in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Lebanon is in perpetual crisis. Georgia fought a war with Russia only a few years ago. Iraq and Iran need no further explanation.
So maybe we should be teaching our 8th graders exactly where Turkey is on the map?
Also, it's interesting that several questions basically come down to the student knowing the definition of imperials units like cords or the number feet in a mile. It makes sense that students would need to know those definitions for daily life, but I still find it odd since I grew up using the metric system!
I know the test isn't meant to serve as a comparison of students from 1912 with those from today, but I must say, it certainly makes the teachers in some states of the U.S. today look like dunces!
With the metric system we still had to learn these things (how many metres in a kilometre etc.) it was just much easier.
There isn't anything here that I didn't do in eighth grade, and those tests were half this length or longer for each class. My history classes had a different focus, mind, more "What lead to X war?" questions on tests than "Who were the commanders of the last battle in X war?".
Yes it's easy to look at a map if you're unsure which countries border Turkey. It's much easier to remember which countries border Turkey if you've studied geography, which allows you to move on from looking up the basics every time so that you can have a deeper understanding of the subject.
Or in total internet manier:
Source: Myself.In any case, I don't disagree with your high-level point.
Some knowledge, like history or literature or even science outside of your field, doesn't really have an apparent application. I'm not really arguing against applied knowledge, but I'm saying that personal edification is a very good thing. Connections pop up in the strangest ways. In fact, I'd argue that without a degree of memorization, research skills will be lacking in most people, as they wouldn't have a clue where to begin.
That might be a prejudice on my part, but I think that someone, who does not know some geographical facts is the less likely to look thoroughly at a map before planning a journey.
"Students do not need a teacher nor a classroom to memorize facts."
You are half-right here, the problem is, if we get rid of the teacher, how do you encourage the student to memorize boring rhetoric like math or reading comprehension? The teacher is also there to 'force' you to put down your toys/electronics and work. Doing your up-teenth geography homework question is a lot harder when there is no enforcement and all your friends are on Call of Duty. Teachers help teach discipline.
The poem by Taylor Mali "What does a teacher make?" (http://zenpencils.com/comic/124-taylor-mali-what-teachers-ma...) sort of touches on this too.
The things that should be taught, I think, correlate highly to the types of things students will later wish they knew. These are mostly low-level rules and processes for things which are so "obvious" to everyone else that they're hard to communicate unless you have a background in education. To flip that around, the kinds of things we call "trivia"--things equally simple or obvious, but as easily learned as said (e.g. a state capitol) don't really need school to teach them--as, if someone later feels the need to know, they can just ask anyone, and pick it up on their own. School is mostly a place to impart knowledge that's hard to teach (including to self-teach) if you don't know the specific skills of teaching.
> Note the lack of any room for original expression or
> thought - no essays, no argumentation.
You cannot build a palace without a fundament. Unless it's an air palace.
Also:
>Sketch briefly Sir Walter Raleigh...
I would have failed this horribly.
They call pre-school nursery, kindergarten is reception, then it follows with american style numbered years. It is slightly off because they have 13 years and we have 12, but they both carry you to 18 years of age.
http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912...
They look pretty thorough, but I think question 10 in geography should include the Strait of Malacca as well.
It's interesting to note that they spell Sir Walter Raleigh differently than we do now. I wonder if that's a typo.
Did anybody else have to Google kalsomining?
The effect of operating an electromagnet at a distance seems to have been thought of as "magnetic" more than "electrical"; see e.g. at http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/56/62/case.html comments from Morse and his contemporaries like "If I can succeed in working a magnet ten miles, I can go around the globe" and "The chief anxiety ... was to ascertain the utmost limits at which he, Morse, could work or move a lever by magnetic power".
It seems plausible to me that even by 1912 the term "magnetic telegraph" might have been in use to distinguish the electromagnetic telegraph from other earlier sorts of telegraph.
(Note 1: the above is based on a small amount of web searching and may be full of errors. Note 2: it appears that in fact other people developed electromagnetic telegraphs before Morse -- e.g., a chap called Schilling in Russia in 1832 -- but Morse is the one commonly thought of as inventing it, and is surely the answer the examiners were looking for.)