That is absolutely wild. Eighth grade being 13-14 years old, nowadays there’s simply no way a test would be that in depth or require that many free form, non-multiple choice answers.
While I won't dispute that modern education is ruining lots of kids' mental potential, a lot of the stumbling blocks with that old exam are just obsolete conventions.
Like 13 year old me would have found the arithmetic section pretty reasonable, if only I knew what the hell the length of a rod was and the volume of a bushel. And I could have listed many different types of punctuation, but I couldn't have told you what the "principle marks" were because AFAIK that's a defunct definition.
That said the orthography section would have destroyed 13 year old me, don't think I'd been taught any of that at that point. And the amount of specific location details memorized for geography is impressive too.
Also I believe the expected percentage of correct answers was much lower back then, because they hadn't given up on challenging gifted kids in favour of coddling retards yet. No-one was supposed to 100% the test, and most were probably expected to score 50% or less.
They were training men how to operate and build civilization in isolation back then. 'Every man an island', literally.
Because the notion of 'going off into the wilderness and putting down a home' was very much a thing. Hell, it was still possible even up to the 1950s. No google, no cell phones, encyclopedias were a luxury and reference books were worth their weight in gold.
I understand the benefits modern society brings when it comes to accessing reference material and learning how to do stuff, but man, when I look at all the old tools my grandpa owned, a part of me misses all that.
There are thousands of wilderness survival guides on YouTube, many with several million views. How many of those viewers have tried to apply even one lesson from that content?
I don’t think access to information is the problem.
1607, 1620, and 1865 aren't that hard because those are still sort of taught today.
But I actually had to look up 1849, and even then that year seems ancillary to now, but back in 1895 it would still be relevant. If anything from that year would be taught nowadays it probably would be Tubman escaping slavery
Informed critical thinkers are unfit to work on assembly lines, which is where the founders of compulsory education wanted the vast majority of people to work.
The quality of education was way better it the times they needed more warm bodies for the assembly line. The students were given a much broader knoledge base to base their critical thinking on, than they are now.
And then you look back to what your great-great-grandparents knew...
That is absolutely wild. Eighth grade being 13-14 years old, nowadays there’s simply no way a test would be that in depth or require that many free form, non-multiple choice answers.
While I won't dispute that modern education is ruining lots of kids' mental potential, a lot of the stumbling blocks with that old exam are just obsolete conventions.
Like 13 year old me would have found the arithmetic section pretty reasonable, if only I knew what the hell the length of a rod was and the volume of a bushel. And I could have listed many different types of punctuation, but I couldn't have told you what the "principle marks" were because AFAIK that's a defunct definition.
That said the orthography section would have destroyed 13 year old me, don't think I'd been taught any of that at that point. And the amount of specific location details memorized for geography is impressive too.
Also I believe the expected percentage of correct answers was much lower back then, because they hadn't given up on challenging gifted kids in favour of coddling retards yet. No-one was supposed to 100% the test, and most were probably expected to score 50% or less.
They were training men how to operate and build civilization in isolation back then. 'Every man an island', literally.
Because the notion of 'going off into the wilderness and putting down a home' was very much a thing. Hell, it was still possible even up to the 1950s. No google, no cell phones, encyclopedias were a luxury and reference books were worth their weight in gold.
I understand the benefits modern society brings when it comes to accessing reference material and learning how to do stuff, but man, when I look at all the old tools my grandpa owned, a part of me misses all that.
There are thousands of wilderness survival guides on YouTube, many with several million views. How many of those viewers have tried to apply even one lesson from that content?
I don’t think access to information is the problem.
A six hour exam would destroy most bachelor students today. Let alone > Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865
They would all fail.
1607, 1620, and 1865 aren't that hard because those are still sort of taught today.
But I actually had to look up 1849, and even then that year seems ancillary to now, but back in 1895 it would still be relevant. If anything from that year would be taught nowadays it probably would be Tubman escaping slavery
The quality of education was way better it the times they needed more warm bodies for the assembly line. The students were given a much broader knoledge base to base their critical thinking on, than they are now.