Online Advertising | Car Credit | Debt Consolidation | Loans | Bad Credit Mortgages
Can You Pass The 8th Grade? [Archive] - FreeConservatives

PDA

View Full Version : Can You Pass The 8th Grade?


Warlady
05-19-2005, 08:10 PM
Received this in email:

Can U Pass This 1895 8th Grade Test?
Some of us are happy just to be able to pronounce most of these
words..............
Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only
had an 8th grade education? I don't think I'd ever make it.
Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

(LOOK CLOSELY... THAT'S EIGHTEEN NINETY FIVE!)

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, KS 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, 1.25 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/bushel, 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 the 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 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) (WHAT IS THIS ANYHOW?)

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.' (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, 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 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.

7. 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 SIX HOURS to complete.
Gives the saying "he only had an 8th grade education"
a whole new meaning, doesn't it?!
Can You Graduate The 8th
Grade???__________________________________________ _________

Longhorn_Platinum
05-19-2005, 08:55 PM
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?

:question: Was metrics taught in 1895?

Teenager
05-19-2005, 09:11 PM
OMGosh!!!!:eek:

I am finishing up high school(I graduate next week), and yet I do believe I would have failed miserably at this test. I read every single question, and even I(a homeschooler) didn't know more than what half the questions were asking.

BTW, what is "Orthography"?? :question:

Peachdiane
05-19-2005, 09:39 PM
Whoo! I skipped 7th. It'd have been disastrous if I'd gone from 6th to THOSE 8th grade standards.

True or false? You be the judge. (http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm)

What is Orthography? Do as my mom always made me do, and look it up! ;) BTW congrats!! What will you do next?

Orthography (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=orthography)

Riverboat
05-24-2005, 03:33 PM
Longhorn's query about the metric system being taught in 1896 got me to wondering, so I googled this up, and in .38 seconds learned that this chestnut is a phony.

Claim: An 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards.
Status: False.
Origins: This<SCRIPT language=JavaScript src="../../styles/langsky.js"></SCRIPT> item, purportedly a final examination for graduating eighth grade students (or graduating high school students, depending upon which version you have) is of interest because it's supposed to be documentary evidence of how shockingly our educations have declined over the last century or so. Why, most adults couldn't muster a passing score on this test today, people think; that mere schoolkids were expected to pass it is proof that the typical school curriculum has been steeply "dumbed down" over the years, pundits claim.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm

DesertFox
05-24-2005, 03:41 PM
THAT's a relief! I missed two of those questions!

Riverboat
05-24-2005, 03:43 PM
OOPS! Looks like Peachy had the same hunch. I clicked on her link which brought me to the very same web page. Well, you know what they say about great minds.

Peachdiane
05-24-2005, 04:19 PM
OOPS! Looks like Peachy had the same hunch. I clicked on her link which brought me to the very same web page. Well, you know what they say about great minds.

:thumb: Well, if you're down to my level, I pity you!

DeclinetoState
05-24-2005, 07:04 PM
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.


For several of these, there are at least two possible answers. "Yukon" at that time probably would have referred to the river, not the territory. (I'm not sure the territory was even organized and named at that time.) Now, of course, "Yukon" refers to a moose-chasing troll and liberal ex-RC priest in Canada who gets banned from boards like this one all the time. :D

Faithful_Servant
05-25-2005, 10:25 AM
THAT's a relief! I missed two of those questions!
I got 'em all right and it only took me twenty minutes. Of course, I looked at doc D's paper a couple or forty times, so that helped a little.

DesertFox
06-02-2005, 02:04 AM
The "two" I missed were the first two I tried to answer. Then I quit! :thumb:

g21lto
06-02-2005, 10:30 AM
Well, I'd venture a guess that the teaching of grammar has gone down the toilet over the years...even if this document isn't real. On the upside, science education has most likely increased vastly.

Oh well.

Longhorn_Platinum
06-04-2005, 06:17 PM
:unsmile: I know the teaching of math has gone downhill. When I was a senior in high school, I took Analytic Geometry. My teacher could never give me enough work to keep me busy the whole period, without overworking the rest of the class. I remember a test in which I was the only student who finished before class was over. I totally aced it.

:unsmile: One day, while I was bored, because I was the only one finished, I took an old Algebra I book, circa 1935, off of Mrs. Taylor's shelf. I mused to myself that algebra was probably a breeze back in the old days. When I opened it up, YOWZA! There were problems in that book that I wouldn't have understood when I was taking Algebra II.

:unsmile: And when I became a teacher at that same school, years later, the algebra books were even more watered down than before. Not surprising, since students can now "pass" the third grade, without knowing their times tables.