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(Some Guy)   Find out if you could have passed the 8th grade back in 1895   (maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com) divider line
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51201 clicks; posted to Main » on 15 Mar 2006 at 10:57 PM (17 years ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



191 Comments     (+0 »)


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gopher321 [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2006-03-15 9:41:52 PM  
You've gotta be kidding me. There are some questions I could answer and some I couldn't - not that I'm a dummy, or the rest of you for that matter, it's just that emphasis on learning subjects has shifted.

An adult in 1895 couldn't answer an eighth grader's test from nowadays I'll bet.
 
drnugget
2006-03-15 9:42:41 PM  
It's from Kansas and there's no Jesus questions.
 
whatshisname [TotalFark]
2006-03-15 9:47:27 PM  
I wood have faled orthography
 
Meet Us at the Stick
2006-03-15 9:50:18 PM  
This test seems to be heavily biased towards those living in an agricultural setting.

/duh!
 
frtmn7
2006-03-15 9:50:51 PM  
snopes has an article about this.
 
RubyRed
2006-03-15 9:50:55 PM  
I failed this back in 1999
 
frtmn7
2006-03-15 9:51:49 PM  
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm(pops)
 
Pope George Ringo
2006-03-15 9:51:56 PM  
"who cares?" answers most of those questions
 
ecmoRandomNumbers [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2006-03-15 9:54:05 PM  
Most of it is just regurgitation, not critical thinking.
 
MorningBreath [TotalFark]
2006-03-15 10:01:15 PM  
not a single DOS question. I call BS,
 
Lord of Allusions
2006-03-15 10:01:19 PM  
Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

Isn't this a Marx brothers joke?
 
frtmn7
2006-03-15 10:01:42 PM  
I doubt anyone could pass a final for any grade after 5th without studying for it or hearing the information.(save math)
 
frtmn7
2006-03-15 10:03:28 PM  
What nearly all these pundits fail to grasp is "I can't answer these questions" is not the same thing as "These questions demonstrate that students in earlier days were better educated than today's students." Just about any test looks difficult to those who haven't recently been steeped in the material it covers. If a 40-year-old can't score as well on a geography test as a high school student who just spent several weeks memorizing the names of all the rivers in South America in preparation for an exam, that doesn't mean the 40-year-old's education was woefully deficient -- it means the he simply didn't retain information for which he had no use, no matter how thoroughly it was drilled into his brain through rote memory some twenty-odd years earlier. I suspect I'd fail a lot of the tests I took back in high school if I had to re-take them today without reviewing the material beforehand. I certainly wouldn't be able to pass any arithmetic test that required me to be familiar with such arcane measurements as "rods" and "bushels," but I can still calculate areas and volumes just fine, thank you.

From the snopes article. that sums it up.
 
JerseyTim [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2006-03-15 10:08:04 PM  
I'd like to see an 8th grader from 1895 beat Halo 2.
 
Bonzo_1116
2006-03-15 10:09:12 PM  
There's some good questions on there.

I get the feeling that the eighth grader of 1895 who passed their graduation exam was better prepared for life in 1890's Kansas than the 12th grader that passes the California high school exit exam today.

What they don't really say is that not everybody passed the test back in the day. If you were too dumb to pass the test, well so be it. Someone needed to feed the pigs, and you didn't need a bunch of education for that. If you could read, that was more than enough education for a hog-slopper.
 
kitschnsync
2006-03-15 10:09:50 PM  
The only way that I passed eighth grade was by giving sexual favors to my lonely yet inexplicably attractive teacher.

She was my siren of social studies, my mistress of math, an empress of English, a puerile pedagogue of poon.

I'll bet that I could have done it back then, too.
 
Lionel Mandrake
2006-03-15 10:11:38 PM  
An 8th grade education in 1895 was probably about as common as a Master's degree today.

Maybe not...but this just proves that education was different, not better.
 
12349876
2006-03-15 10:17:51 PM  
My criticism of the test and why one doesn't need to know all of it.

Grammar:
Who cares if you can recite every rule or not. What matters is if you can write properly. In 8th grade, I had to do a writing portfolio that consisted of a personal narrative, short fiction story, and a factual piece. Two of them were over 1,000 words. A 150 word piece is pathetic.

Arithmetic:
Much of this section has farming measurements and terms that are useless for the vast majority of us. And we have computers that print out reciepts and checks.

US History:
This is one is actually alright, though I think the focus of history today is becoming more about general social trends (which are useful today rather than specific dates and events (which aren't)

Orthography:
Once again, knowing how to apply a rule properly is better than being able to recite it and not be able to apply it to real writing.

Geography:
Pretty good, but today's focus is more on cultures than locations. There's also a lot of science mixed in this one.
 
Bob Ondeeznuts
2006-03-15 10:18:22 PM  
So is this trying to prove that 8th graders today are stupid? Well at least I have teeth..............
 
mybluemake [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2006-03-15 10:18:36 PM  
caint says as I passed, but I found the school marm passin' friendly.
[image from pbs.org too old to be available]
 
stebain
2006-03-15 10:23:38 PM  
Yes, I would have passed that test. Not now, but if I were in the 8th grade and studying those subjects.
 
stebain
2006-03-15 10:24:56 PM  
#'s
Geography:
Pretty good, but today's focus is more on cultures than locations.

But... but... that guy was teaching geography and he brought up tobacco...
 
rlrevell
2006-03-15 10:33:58 PM  
Dammit, I know all those names but Howe. If I were taking this test I would have made a crack about Dewey & Cheatham and hoped to get partial credit for being funny.
 
me texan
2006-03-15 10:43:29 PM  
A better question is could an 8th grader from the 1895's kick my ass in counterstrike? I think not.

Damn sissies and their walk uphill to school in the snow.
 
rlrevell
2006-03-15 10:44:46 PM  
That's the worst Snopes article I've ever seen. It says "False" but there's not one word about whether it's a real test from Kansas in 1895 (it is), just a rant about how it's not valid to compare it with today's tests.
 
Angry Drunk Bureaucrat [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2006-03-15 10:49:20 PM  
rlrevell

Elias Howe invented the sewing machine.

/Howe'd I know that?
 
Most Delicious Worm
2006-03-15 11:02:42 PM  
Angry Drunk Bureaucrat:

I hear he would say of it for years afterward, "Don't ask me Howe it works!" until his wife beat him with an iron.

/thanks Dave Barry.
 
matt2891
2006-03-15 11:05:41 PM  
Yeah, I didn't try the test, as it was obvious that most of those questions I wouldn't get becasue either A)It's been a long time since ive studied those things, and as i don't use them (at least in a conscience over way) daily I don't really remember them or B) i was never taught those things in the first place.
 
MrNeutron
2006-03-15 11:07:09 PM  
Can I use my calculator?
 
Iczer
2006-03-15 11:07:29 PM  
site's either farked or just in the process of getting farked.

Meh.
 
matt2891
2006-03-15 11:07:31 PM  
But that little thing about Maggies farm at the top of the page was pretty funny. Especially the part about not liking to work for anyone (including Maggie who doesn't pay us nickel or dime).
 
desolationrow
2006-03-15 11:07:48 PM  
I only knew the meaning of half those words. It just goes to show something, but I don't know what it would be.
 
charliebear
2006-03-15 11:08:58 PM  
JerseyTim

I'd like to see an 8th grader from 1895 beat Halo 2.
single player, or co-op?
 
Bondith
2006-03-15 11:09:18 PM  
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

In 1895? There were, what, two, maybe three republics in Europe at that point. Everything else was an empire or a kingdom, and half the countries we have today didn't even exist.
 
GuyusCrassus
2006-03-15 11:09:38 PM  
Link is farked
 
Sislik
2006-03-15 11:11:48 PM  
I doubt it
 
modestmousefan
2006-03-15 11:12:01 PM  
Apparently, the link is ''farked''.
 
Inigo_Montoya
2006-03-15 11:12:59 PM  
Anybody know where to find the answers?

Gotta be somebody who actually took the time.....
 
Balrog
2006-03-15 11:15:28 PM  
No rlrevell it doesn't say the test is false, Snopes says that the idea that this test proves our standards have dropped is false. They present a reasonable (if not statistically proven) argument for their case.
 
sirgrim [OhFark]
2006-03-15 11:16:22 PM  
Here's the answers ya farkers

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


then there's the part about this not being quite factual?
 
Fool_Marquis
2006-03-15 11:16:39 PM  
Oh for the love of... this old thing? Gimmie a second


1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
1. All letters in acronyms, as in: FBI, CIA, Etc.
2. Initial letter of the first word in a list (Example: *Bread *milk *cheese
3. Initial letter of the first word in a callout
4. Initial letter of a name, such as James, Jimmy, or Jim
5. Initial letter of a sentence
6. Initial letter of a complete sentence after a colon:
Sentence goes like this: Then it is like this.
Do not capitalize in the following situations:
7. When you want to empasize something
8. The first word following a colon if it is not a complete sentence
9. a compound term followed by an abberviation or acronym... in example: Blah blah First-Run TLA (is WRONG)

Suck it Trebek: Suck it long, and suck it hard.
 
ACF
2006-03-15 11:17:20 PM  
Snopes article says it is false but then goes on to say we just can't pass it because we didn't study the material. What is the basis for them claiming it is false?

Needs more research than that if you're going to call it untrue.
 
CreamFilling
2006-03-15 11:18:22 PM  
I suppose it didn't ask for nine correct rules of capital letters.

/full credit to Fool_Marquis
 
sirgrim [OhFark]
2006-03-15 11:18:27 PM  
Snopes link now with 100% more pop
pop

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999]
This getting greenlight is funny, it's like my mom sending me the video of the monkey smelling his finger last week. I thought she must be new to the internets.
 
Partisan
2006-03-15 11:19:33 PM  
rlrevell: That's the worst Snopes article I've ever seen. It says "False" but there's not one word about whether it's a real test from Kansas in 1895 (it is), just a rant about how it's not valid to compare it with today's tests.

Even if the test is real... the assertion that this somehow shows a decline in education standards is specious at best.

If anything, it shows how education standards, and testing standards, have improved.
 
Inigo_Montoya
2006-03-15 11:21:49 PM  
2006-03-15 11:16:22 PM sirgrim
Here's the answers ya farkers
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm

Sorry, not seeing the answers there.

/although I've had a few.
 
MysticSavage
2006-03-15 11:22:32 PM  
Nah...I'd have probably been on the homestead trying to get over a case of rickets.
 
Vacuitys Bane
2006-03-15 11:24:44 PM  
hmm....isn`t a bushel a relative measurement...and some of the american stuff sounds non-sensical to my non-american ears, how come you guys get epochs and up here we`re stuck with years :(
 
thewah
2006-03-15 11:25:17 PM  
Heck, I say put an 8th grader from 1985 in front of Civilization IV and tell them that it's what God uses to control the world.

Then show 'em the robots we got on Mars.

I wonder what they'll think of our education system then.
 
Vandal7000
2006-03-15 11:28:05 PM  
Sometimes I wish we didn't give college diplomas out like candy though and have colleges that really anyone can get into. It really hurts the job market if you think about it.

/sort of on topic
 
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