Eighth Grade test from 1895

timb

New member
Thought you guys would enjoy this---came from the Salina Journal in Salina, Kansas.
Tim

What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895...

Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

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

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina , KS - 1895
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 'lie,’ play,' 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 hou r 15 minutes)
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 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 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 the cost of 6,720 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 metre?
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 of 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, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
(Do we even know what this is??]
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& nbsp;
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.' (HUH?)
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, sup.
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, f ain, 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 North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the 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 the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.

Gives the saying 'he only had an 8th grade education' a whole new meaning, doesn't it?! Also shows you how poor our education system has become and, NO, I don't have the answers!
 
That is rediculous,I got tired just reading that. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I honestly dont think I can answer a single one of those questions.Why would anyone want to know the answers to any of those questions would be my question. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
 
The primary purpose of education is to teach a young person to think and to learn. Some practical facts are used to do this, but the facts themselves aren't important.

They knew this back then, they don't seem to care as much anymore.
 
Yikes!!!
Looking back on my educational experience, probably a minority of it actually trancended into anything marketable.

That trend seems to have continued from back then. The arithmetic section seems to have direct relation to earning back then (farming), I doubt there was much market for any of the other stuff.

Maybe its not as different then as we think?????
 
One MAJOR difference you may have noticed, not a multiple guess question to be found.

Probably less than .001% of what I learned in school has been directly marketable, but without the other 99.999% I would not have been able to do any job I've ever had.
 
"7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft.. Long at $20 per metre?"

Of all of that I am most surprised to see that in Kansas in 1895 eigth-grade students were expected to know the metric system.
 
Quote:
Of all of that I am most surprised to see that in Kansas in 1895 eigth-grade students were expected to know the metric system.




Me too. It makes me question whether the whole test is real. My dad went to school in the 30's and they had 5 grades in one room. I don't think the education he got was any better than I got in the 60's.
8th grade is 14 years old, folks, you can only learn so fast (especially when you had chores to do at home and no electricity for doing homework after dark).

But it makes a good story. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
 
Used to have some grade school text books ,I got from my grandmother, that were copy righted in the late 1800's .
Those books still boggle my mind today.Couldn't understand any of it.It amazed me a younger mind could comprehend any of it.
Dad never finished 6th grde but was a genius in math, he attended one of those one room schools back in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.He worked on his fathers family farm, so he attended class when the family could spare his labor
Kids in his enviroment didn't have the time to attend school 9 months a year every day.The put a lot of emphasis on education, they didn't except mediocracy from their school.

Today class time is taken up to learn about great Americans, Cesar Chavez or a Martin Luther King, very little is learned of those that made the most difference in our nations history. Why should it be any different with reading ,writing ,or math.
Today a kid has no idea of what a bushel is, it makes more since in teaching , " What percentage of your wages do you get to keep after you pay your income taxes "?
or " If your next door neighbor is cheating the IRS , claiming exemption which total 1 percent of $250,000, how many poor people is he stealing from. ? " how much money can you recieve if you turn him into the IRS and get an award if you recieve 1 percent of the total your neighbor owes ." ?
 
Quote:
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.



Okay, without knowing how it's compounded, can you actually answer that? It's one example.
There's a huge difference if it's compounded daily or monthly.
Where's my grandma when I need her? (yeah, right). /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
EL
I could be wrong as I have before, but back in the 1800's the loaners werent intrested in compounding the intrest as are the Banking industries of today. Just a simple per cent was sufficest on any loan. Probably payed back in crops or barter in some other way , so compound was taken care of in the final marketable product, Unless it was in cash.
 
It's sure to have been considered as a simple interest loan, given the time period and the fact it's in an agricultural context where there were no payments until it was all paid off at once.

The problem then becomes twofold (as with most of the other arithmetic problems). (A)Can you successfully extract the amount of interest owed on a given amount knowing the percentage and (B)can you extract the percentage (of the year) knowing the number of days?

There are 365 days in a year divided by 12 months: 365/12= 30.416 days in a month. 18days/30.416=.591 so you have 8.591months/12 (months in a year)=0.715917years

You want to calculate the interest on $512.6 at 7% interest per year after 8.591 months.
Use the simple interest formula, or: I=Pxrxt

Where:
P is the principal amount, $512.60.
r is the interest rate, 7% per year, 7/100=0.07.
t is the time involved (0.715917years).

Multiply 512.6 × 0.07 × 0.715917 to get:

The answer is: $25.69

I don't know when you guys were going to school, but that was 6th grade math in '64 at my school.
 
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I could be wrong as I have before, but back in the 1800's the loaners werent intrested in compounding the intrest as are the Banking industries of today.



I think you're right. Figuring out the answer to that question today, with compound interest, is a LOT more complex than it was then.
Apples and oranges.
It's the same with interest rates, my accounts are all compounded monthly. Without a calculator, it's a tough question (time consuming, anyway).

However, I will say my dad can calculate square roots with paper and pencil, and I can't ever remember learning that trick in school. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
 
Quote:
If your next door neighbor is cheating the IRS , claiming exemption which total 1 percent of $250,000, how many poor people is he stealing from. ? " how much money can you recieve if you turn him into the IRS and get an award if you recieve 1 percent of the total your neighbor owes ." ?


I think I saw this question on my son's TAKS prep test the other day. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

"no kid left behind".....unless there's some way you can make money from it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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The inherent problem with the interest question is the assumption of evenly divided months. Unless you take nmleon's approach and divide the year evenly, there is no way to calculate the interest, even using a simple I=Prt formula. The time factor would vary depending on the time of year and the day of the particular month in which the loan was taken.


I have seen many of these floating around in the past. The time constraints make the test impossible. It is physically impossible to write out the answers to all of those questions completely in the time frame allowed. The U.S. History exam itself would have taken several hours. When the words describe and relate are used, the answers can become very lengthy, and even with continuous writing, it would be impossible to complete within the time constraints.

Just my .02

RB
 
Quote:
The inherent problem with the interest question is the assumption of evenly divided months. Unless you take nmleon's approach and divide the year evenly, there is no way to calculate the interest, even using a simple I=Prt formula. The time factor would vary depending on the time of year and the day of the particular month in which the loan was taken.


I have seen many of these floating around in the past. The time constraints make the test impossible. It is physically impossible to write out the answers to all of those questions completely in the time frame allowed. The U.S. History exam itself would have taken several hours. When the words describe and relate are used, the answers can become very lengthy, and even with continuous writing, it would be impossible to complete within the time constraints.

Just my .02

RB



+1 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
 


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