Could you have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

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William Haskins

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8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895

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

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 do, lie, lay 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, 1.25 hours)
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 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. per bu, deducting 1050 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 cost of 6720 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 inch?
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 around 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, and 1865?


Orthography (Time, one hour)
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?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
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, super.
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, fain, 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 N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give 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 inclination of the earth.
 
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William Haskins said:
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

Through a chain of events too complicated to explain, teacher, the correct answer is George W. Bush and Doc Brown.
 

Puddle Jumper

I've never even heard the word orthography before. And I also don't know what an epoch is.

Impressive test.
 

Puddle Jumper

billythrilly7th said:
Through a chain of events too complicated to explain, teacher, the correct answer is George W. Bush and Doc Brown.
What does George W. Bush have to do with Kansas? The man is from Texas.
 

Puddle Jumper

billythrilly7th said:
He's not from Louisiana either.







Oh...and it was a joke.
;)
Oh, you were trying to be funny? Keep trying mate. :tongue

I do assume by Doc Brown you were implying John Brown and Bloody Kansas, right? That wasn't suppose to be another joke referring to Back to the Future was it?
 

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Uh, no. I don't think there are many 8th graders that have even heard of the word Orthography...

I might have passed everything but the Arithmetic and I'd have struggled with parts of the Geography even after a couple years in college...I know I'd fail it now.

I've forgotten most of that stuff - if I ever learned it in the first place. I have a degree in English Lit. and it pains me to admit the demise of that learning after 28 years of corporate life which rewards "win-win business solutions that leverage our knowledge base to maximize customer take-away" and "Our goal is to continually supply corporate meta-services and completely leverage other's principle-centered catalysts for change while maintaining the highest standards" (ok, that was from the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator)
 
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Puddle Jumper said:
Oh, you were trying to be funny? Keep trying mate. :tongue

I do assume by Doc Brown you were implying John Brown and Bloody Kansas, right? That wasn't suppose to be another joke referring to Back to the Future was it?

I wasn't trying to be funny. Factually speaking, it was amusing.
:D

And no, not Doc Brown. That's a tired bit, huh? But not John Brown either. I was referring to Doctor Jed Brown of the Topeka Browns.

Through a chain of events too complicated to explain....ahh forget it.
:)
 

Puddle Jumper

I wonder how many people on this board know Kansas history and facts.

State Flower: Sunflower
State Bird: Meadowlark
State Fake Bird: Jayhawk (don't ask me why there's a state fake bird)
Capital City: Topeka
Largest City: Wichita
KU Location: Lawrence
K-State Location: Manhattan
State Song: Home on the Range
State Motto: Ad Astra Per Aspera (To the stars through difficulty)
Highest Point: Mount Sunflower in Western Kansas (relax, it's not really a mountain)
 

Lantern Jack

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billythrilly7th said:
I wasn't trying to be funny. Factually speaking, it was amusing.
:D

And no, not Doc Brown. That's a tired bit, huh? But not John Brown either. I was referring to Doctor Jed Brown of the Topeka Browns.

Through a chain of events too complicated to explain....ahh forget it.
:)

I thought you were referring to Chris Llyod's character in the Back to the Future trilogy.
 

SpookyWriter

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billythrilly7th said:
What the hell is an epoch?
Pre or post revolution. Or slavery...or suferage...or prohibition...or ??? we continue to divide our historical significance by rebel men, frustrated women, and booze...how ironic.
 
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Angela

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Orthography has to do with the sounds of a language in writing...a writing system. Epoch is a period in time that's usually distinctive for some reason or another. I can't think of the Epochs of American History now, but I remember studying them in school, although I seriously want to say that we studied that in high school, not eighth grade.

Very interesting to see the format of the test. That's much more comprehensive than multiple choice tests, isn't it??
 

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Angela said:
I can't think of the Epochs of American History now..

Uh? Civil rights movement? Civil war? Revolution? Suferage? Prohibition? Hmmm...did I miss one?
 

aruna

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Funny, I was thinking about this the other day. I watched a BBC relity show in which a bunch of English boys an dgirls were gieven, for a period of time, a 50's style education and the qualifying exam of the time.
Bakc then, the final exam for this age (16) was O Levels. I took O levels in the 60's. Some time after that, the system changed to GCSE's.

Also, I was in single sex education. In the show, the kids were also in single sex classes. These days,it;s al co-ed, except in some private schools.

The result in the show was that almost all of the kids failed in most O Level subjects. The same kids got A's and B's in GCSE's.
The girls got better results than the boys. Boys did far better without girls to distract them (usuallym the arguments for single ses education is that GIRLS do better without boys.)

Lots of other results really made me nostalgic for good old-fashioned disciple and learning by heart. Neither of my kids can recite a single poem or Shakespeare speech by heart. I can still remember several.
 

aruna

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Ol' Fashioned Girl said:

That might be THAT test. There's no question that standards have dropped in England, as I can see daily with my children. Many of the questions my daughter will have to answer are multiple choice. We never had that. They have not properly studied ONE play of Shakespeare, just a few pasasges from Henry VIII; we did one whole play every term. My daughter is all geared to get an A in German, because it was her first language; however, being dyslexic, she cannot spell in German and can just barely read. Only her spoken German is good, but even there it's not as fluent as she used to be as she doesn't practice. We had to do dictation, essay writing, French literature, all kinds of stuff in French to get even a pass. She does not attend German classes at school and isn't even revising, because, she says, she'll get an A anyway.

I could give lots more examples where I can see from day to say that standards have dropped tremendously.
 

Jaycinth

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Silly people, everyone knows that Juan Fernandez grows coffee beans!

Now, because I am evil to the core, I'm going to print this out and give it to my 8th grade daughter's homeroom teacher........BWAHAHAHAHAH MUAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!!!!!!

( Who's the momma? Who's the momma? Yeah!!!:e2headban )
 

AdamH

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Thought this was funny in the Snopes article:

As Joseph Crosby, the man who created the English Grammar and Orthography sections of this exam, wrote to a friend in 1876:


[size=-1]I gave them a pretty severe test in Grammar, and some of them did make terrible work of it. One young lady said the singular of "Swine" was "pigs", another "a hog". One being asked to give me the past tense of "I lie down" said "I lied", which she certainly did. Out of some 30 or 35 words I gave them to spell, not over 10 were spelled correctly by any one, several missed on all but 5 or 6 -- Yet they blushed & tried so hard to do well -- and many were graduates of the High School -- that I was sorry for them. I had no idea that graduates could be so ignorant.
[/size]
 

Sarita

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Shadow_Ferret said:
Urban legend. Beat me to it.
But the article isn't saying that the test is Urban Legend. It's saying to compare it to modern standards would be wrong because the knowledge base is so much more broad now.
 

clintl

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William Haskins said:
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

And this is a pretty idiotic question to ask. Especially as one of eight questions in a section you only have 45 minutes to complete.
 
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