On another message board somebody posted that 1895 eighth-grade test from Salina, KS. I dutifully posted the Snopes link debunking it but didn’t reread the debunking. Now people are saying that it doesn’t debunk it, though it is clearly labeled “FALSE.” I read the link and the parts questioning the provenance of the test have been expunged and I look like an idiot for trusting Snopes! Even an actor–AN ACTOR!–is laughing at me. Oh, the shame of it!
Until today I trusted Snopes more than my wife, my mother, and my pastor combined. Has my trust been misplaced? Has Snopes proved to be yet another idol with feet of clay? WTF? And why hasn’t Cecil weighed in on this, if he’s so smart?
Well, if this article can be believed (and I don’t see any reason why it can’t be), the test would seem to be the real deal. What Snopes does debunk is the idea that the difficulty of the test demonstrates a decline in the quality of education, not whether the test itself is real.
Now you can go back to believing Snopes again dropzone. And do you think the reason Cecil hasn’t done an article on this, it’s because he’s not smart enough?
Seems to me the test is reasonable for the time period. Remember, until fairly recent years, especially the Cold War period, a basic “education” meant that you had been required to learn to read and write, do basic math, and memorize a large quantity of often aribtrary facts… Kids in those days wouldn’t have known the main exports of France because they were experts in geoeconomics in 8th grade, it would be because the school district got a good deal on world almanacs and sat kids down and made them memorize from them, constructing tests based on certain facts contained therein.
dropzone: that’s odd. I definitely remember there being a more detailed debunking on Snopes. However, this truthorfiction page reproduces the header of the original document, and makes the significant points that it doesn’t mention eighth grade (so who/where did this detail come from?) and that it describes the examinees as “applicants” (very odd phraseology for a school test, but not for an adult one).
Lots of modern 8th grade exams are nearly impossible for anyone who isn’t in 8th grade and hasn’t been studying that kinda thing recently.
How many of you can define what gerunds and participles are? How about give a general outline of the Krems Cycle? Label all the parts of a cell? If given a copy of the Bill of Rights, sans amendment numbers, could you number the amendments perfectly? I only vaguely remember this stuff from around 8th grade, and I’m only 21.
I remember from the * Little House on the Prarie * book series that Laura was in a school exhibition in which the children demonstrated what they had learned. She did long division in her head, reciting the process aloud, and needed to know how to spell “xanthophyll.” I believe she was only fourteen or fifteen at the time.
At the same age, I couldn’t have produced similar feats. Never was I required to do long division in my head. Hell, we had calculators! Nor do I remember spelling words which included somewhat obscure scientific terms. (I remember that most spelling words were ones that would reasonably be used in adult life.)
I doubt if many children graduated from high school unable to read in the 1800s. School was a rare oprotunity for most. Children felt lucky to be there. Often, they made an effort to learn as much as possible, because one never knew if the next season would afford the opprotunity. Thus, for those who recieved years of schooling, the schools seem to have produced better results.
Because of the nature of the classroom materials, which were text-intensive, and somewhat wordy, you had to develop good reading comprehension. Geography texts had few pitcures, for example, or charts of chief exports. A lot of them are primarily long, dry descriptions of topography and the economy of the country. You really had to know it, because most examinations were oral, and you had to be able to answer the questions * sans * multiple choice.
Teachers in those days had little pressure put upon them to pass students who failed the examinations, and they also had better control of their classrooms. (Laura Ingalls’ sister Carrie got in trouble for rocking in her seat. When Laura was a teacher, she thought the school board would think her class out of control because a student got up from her seat without permission.) The careers of many women teachers were short because they couldn’t teach after they were married. Thus, “burnout” wasn’t as much of an issue.
Last year an astonishingly similar test - virtually the same questions but with a Canadian flavour - was making the rounds in my hometown as a “test given to students in Kingston in the 1880s.” The retelling of a story to suit local interest is a sign of an urban legend.
Jesus, Jim, if you don’t have an email account, and you obviously don’t since no obnoxious relative or acquaintence sent you that proof of how much smarter our grandparents were, how did you ever sign up here? (big, don’t-take-me-seriously, )
This was not a shining moment of glory for Snopes. People turn to Snopes for factual information, but the author chose to editorialize instead of saying “Yes, this is a real test from 1895,” “No, this is bogus,” or simply “We’re not sure if this is authentic or not.”
Unfortunately, the Snopes author chose to label the story FALSE without solid eveidence, and proceeded to do some preachy editorializing. Come on, that is NOT what people turn to Snopes for!
I say that in SPITE of the fact that I understood and agreed with the basic point of the Snopes piece: that, even IF this test truly reflected what 8th graders were expected to know in 1895, that wouldn’t prove that public education was better 100 years ago than it is today! The world has changed in all kinds of ways since 1895, and schools have all kinds of responsibilities they didn’t have back then. It’s not helpful to look at a curriculum from a very different time and place, and conclude that our modern schools are falling short because they don’t teach or stress the same things.
Snopes’ proper task was to look for evidence to determine if this test was genuine. They found some evidence suggesting it MAY have been a variation on a test given to TEACHERS at the time. It was incumbent on them, in my opinion, to give the story a yellow light and a promise to keep searching for better documentation. Instead, they chose to turn what’s SUPPOSED to be a General Questions forum into a Great Debate.
There is ample evidence from caches of articles prior to Barbara’s latest update, 26 July, 2001, that snopes expressed that the test was probably a hoax. And, IMHO, she was right to do so, given the info she had at the time. The [url-http://skyways.lib.ks.us/kansas/genweb/ottawa/smoky.html]Smoky Valley Genealogical Society still offers the "transcribed’ version of the test, with no reproduction offering proof it was designed for the eighth grade. Just a disclaimer after the text of the test, saying that it was designed for the eighth grade.
That the printed proof exists is almost certain. Barbara wouldn’t have modified her original claim unless she was shown proof.
Well, I could have, so I don’t know what you want to infer from that.
The math section on this test would have been laughably easy for me when I was in 8th grade, provided that the problems were converted to use units that are in everyday use in the 20th century. Fairly sure that that was snopes’ point.
