(Forgive me if this has been posted before. I received it in email today and found it very interesting. I know that the intelligent forum participants will probably have no trouble with these, but I was clueless on several. Of course..that's me..how did you do? -kirsten)

Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895? Probably Not...Take a Look:

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.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 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 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 50 cts. 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.

-------------------------------------------------- Imagine a college student who went to public school trying to pass this test, even if the few outdated questions were modernized. Imagine their professors even being able to pass the 8th Grade! Can Americans, student and professor alike, get back up to the 8th Grade level of 1895?

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), May 31, 2000

Answers

This test is NOT as presented. For the facts, check out the Snopes web site at http://www.snopes.com/spoons/fracture/exam.htm.

"Origins: The first question everyone wants answered is: "Is this real?" The Smoky Valley Genealogical Society of Salina, Kansas, assures us that this is indeed a bona fide copy of an actual school exam from 1895, and it does include details of name, location, and date. If so, something has gone wrong in the transcription of it to their web site, as the Internet version of this exam includes questions not found in the web version, and the section headed "Orthography" is clearly the "Geography" section, while the orthography questions are nowhere to be found. (Unfortunately, their web page ends with the long-circulating "1872 Rules for Teachers" piece that has never been traced to any real American school of the era, which doesn't help to lend credibility to the "1895 school exam" piece.)

As always, we try to address not so much the question "Is this real or is it a hoax?," but the question "If this were real, what would it tell us?" Most people see this exam as a vivid example of how much our educational standards have declined in this country over the last century. It may be true that our standards have declined, but several factors about this exam and the environment in which it was (supposedly) given can be misleading to the contemporary audience:

Today nearly everyone in the USA attends school at least through junior high, and the non-high school graduate is the exception; a century ago, a student who even reached an eighth grade level was the exception. School attendance, especially in rural areas, was sporadic, and many students had to drop out long before completing the equivalent of a modern public education in order to take a job or work the family business. It's not a stretch to assume that those who persevered in completing their educations under those conditions were more motivated and placed a higher value on learning than today's average student.

Today's rigid division into grades based upon the ages of students did not exist in small, rural schools. As the early school records page on the same site notes, the thirty students at the school in 1883 ranged in age from 6 to 18, and all were all taught in the same room by the same teacher. Although there were some rough divisions of material and students into grades, the modern, fixed concepts of "every 11-year-old should be in 6th grade" and "every child who finishes 6th grade should know the following things" did not exist; students often all studied the same material, regardless of their ages. Students completed their educations whenever they completed their educations -- you were a graduate when you passed the final exam, whether you were 8 or 18 at the time.

Although many of today's eighth grade graduates (or high school graduates or even adults) couldn't necessarily achieve a passing score on this examination (which is difficult to demonstrate, since we're not told what score was considered passing), most of today's parents and educators would probably be outraged if the breadth of knowledge required to pass this exam were all that was required of a modern public school graduate. Consider what one does not need to know to complete this examination:

Absolutely no knowledge of the arts is necessary, not even a nodding familiarity with a few of the greatest works of English literature. (Never heard of Shakespeare? No problem.)

No demonstration of mathematical learning other than plain arithmetic is required (i.e., no algebra, geometry, or trigonometry).

One need only be familiar with the highlights of American history; absolutely no knowledge of any world history is required. In fact, one need scarcely acknowledge that any country other than the USA even exists.

No awareness of the history, structure, or function of the United States government (or state or local government) is required. Not even the ubiquitous "Name the three branches of our federal government" appears here.

No knowledge of science is required other than some rudiments of human anatomy.

Familiarity with any foreign language (living or dead) is not a requirement. Obviously, many of these differences are attributable to good reasons: one could hardly expect students to be familiar with art in an era when books were expensive, art had to be viewed directly (rather than glimpsed in color photos, films or on TV), and music could be heard only through live performance; America was not yet a world power and internal events were of far greater importance than foreign affairs; the average citizen had little contact with any agency of the federal government other than the Post Office; foreign languages were irrelevant to people primarily concerned with running family farms; and scientific knowledge common to many of us nowadays was undiscovered, uncommon, or too controversial to be taught in public schools. Still, if we want to pretend that this exam says anything about the state of education today, we have to be aware of the differences in both directions.

All that said, this exam is primarily daunting to us in the sense that any test appears difficult to those who have not recently learned and studied the material it includes. Remember, those who took this test would have been covering all these subjects in school at the time. From the perspective of one who finished public school during the 1970s, I can say that this test doesn't really prove to be all that remarkable upon close examination:

Arithmetic: This section appears strange to us because the questions are posed in the form of word problems, and because those problems include words for measurements no longer in common usage (e.g., bushel, tare, rod). Still, these questions don't require anything beyond a grasp of basic arithmetic skills (e.g., multiplication, division, and simple interest calculations), while my contemporaries had completed a year of algebra by the end of eighth grade. Some of the questions are poorly formed (#3: A "bushel" is a measure of dry capacity, not weight, yet this question depends upon one's knowing how much a bushel of wheat weighs; #6: This question can't be answered without knowing how often the interest is compounded), and others are outdated (#10: Almost none of us will ever need to write a check on anything other than a bank form printed for that purpose).

Grammar: The questions in this section are again posed in a way that might seem odd to us (e.g., explain the rules of punctuation rather than correctly punctuate example sentences), but they still cover basic material. How many of us graduated from high school (or even junior high school) without ever having written an essay in which we were graded on our correct use of elements such as paragraphs, capital letters, and punctuation?

History: These are some pretty good American history questions, but we also have to keep in mind that there was a century's less history to learn in those days, and most of these students probably had parents or relatives who had been through (and even fought in) the Civil War, so this wasn't exactly ancient history. In an era when the automobile was a curious (and not obviously useful) novelty that few people had ever seen, names such as Morse, Howe, and Whitney were as important as the names of Orville and Wilbur Wright or Bill Gates are to modern audiences; in terms of elapsed time, asking an 1895 student who Lincoln was would be like asking a current student who Nixon was; and while many of us may not know much about the history of Kansas, most of us were probably required to learn something about the history of the state in which we received our education.

Orthography: Well, every era has its own peculiar ideas about how best to instruct its students in the finer points of reading, writing, and speaking their native language. Most of my contemporaries probably couldn't list and classify the "elementary sounds" of English, but I doubt many 1895 students could diagram a sentence correctly. Who got the better end of the bargain, I couldn't say.

Geography: Again, not necessarily bad questions, but they evince a decidedly narrow world view. I think that given my choice, I'd prefer my children have some awareness that places such as Asia, Africa, and Australia exist and know something about the people who live there rather than being able to recite the names and capitals of "all the republics of Europe" or describe "what use is the ocean." (Question #7 is certainly phrased unusually unless it was intended to be a trick question, since France was technically the only republic in Europe in 1895.) Whether real or hoax, perhaps this exam says far more about how we'd like ourselves to be than it does about how we used to be."

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

I go along with kritter, education has gone down the toilet, I'm not saying it should be revived in the same fashion as 100 years ago but standards should be raised to being higher than then not lower

most late victorian era books simply cannot be understood by today's semi-illiterates, I can only see it getting worse, the book Tarzan is perhaps an exapmle

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), May 31, 2000.

Richard, please provide proof that education is "going down the toilet". Also, please provide proof that today's "semi-illiterate" are more numerous, or less literate, than the "semi-illiterate" of 100 years ago. While you're at it, please provide documentation of how many Americans were capable of reading a Victorian novel, or even had funds to purchase one, versus today's Americans.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

Tarzan -

BS. Modern Public Education is a sham and a joke. If we weren't deliberately being dumbed down, today's eighth grade students would be TWICE as smart as 100 years ago. Look at Japan's high schools for example.

-- I. Q. This (@ .), May 31, 2000.

Tarzan,

How about a comparison of basic skills of people educated through the 12th grade, turn of the century versus now, think there'd be any difference?

And what good is being able to purchase a book if you can't read it? There were free libraries at the turn of the century for those who were poor, but could read.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 31, 2000.

"Modern Public Education is a sham and a joke."

If it's a sham and a joke, it won't be a problem to prove it. Please do so.

"Look at Japan's high schools for example."

Japan's high schools are equivalent to our colleges, that's true. Unfortunately, Japan's colleges are equivalent to our junior high schools. They're known as party palaces, where kids drink and run wild before settling down into adulthood. This is why so many Japanese families send their kids to America for their bachelor degrees, and why American colleges have such cachet in Japan.

"How about a comparison of basic skills of people educated through the 12th grade, turn of the century versus now, think there'd be any difference?"

Sounds like a good homework assignment to me, Frank. Please have it on my desk no later than the end of class on Friday. ;-)

"And what good is being able to purchase a book if you can't read it? There were free libraries at the turn of the century for those who were poor, but could read."

There are still libraries in the US for those who are poor but literate. Or, one can go into Barnes and Noble or other bookstores and cop a squat for a couple of hours without having to spend a dime. I think the point of your last paragraph was not to discuss the state of public libraries but instead to imply that Americans aren't a very literate crowd. If this is your point, please provide documentation of that fact.

Frank

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

Tarzan,

If you've talking about the raw percentages of people who can at least read and write at an 8th grade level, yes, that number HAS increased in the past 100 years. More people are being educated. The problem, though, is that the QUALITY and SCOPE of that education has declined.

You've obviously never tried to hire people off the street to do a job. I have; it's no fun. Most applicants won't know basic geography (which is useful when planning shipments -- which packages should go out first?), algebra (which is used in finance, planning, sales, you name it) grammar and spelling (which is useful for writing notes to customers that actually make sense, etc), and so on. They can read simple instructions and do basic math, but that's about it.

At Burger King and MacDonald's, they've had to resort to putting cute little pictures in place of written instructions. They also have icons on the cash register buttons. Otherwise, they get too many errors from employees who are confused by big words like "hamburger." :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 31, 2000.

I'll take a stab at this one:

Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn,and Howe?

Morse, Robert. Morse is an actor.

Witney, as in Whitney Houston, is a singer.

Fulton was that nerdy guy in 8th grade science class who ate his boogers, I hated sitting next to him.

Bell, Art. A late night talk show host.

Lincoln was the invertor of the luxury car.

Sean Penn is another actor.

Howe was the greatest defenseman to play the game of hockey.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

"Modern Public Education is a sham and a joke."

If it's a sham and a joke, it won't be a problem to prove it. Please do so.

Hey monkey man -

I see you're part of the dumbed down (m)asses. Did you miss the news report last week where the US is now 15th in HS grads? They called it "third world" status.

Watch out for that tree...

-- Bee Spelling (abc's@RRR.edu), May 31, 2000.

Please provide a citation. Thank-you!

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

"More people are being educated. The problem, though, is that the QUALITY and SCOPE of that education has declined."

Please provide a citation. Thanks!

"You've obviously never tried to hire people off the street to do a job."

Not true.

"Most applicants won't know basic geography (which is useful when planning shipments -- which packages should go out first?), algebra (which is used in finance, planning, sales, you name it) grammar and spelling (which is useful for writing notes to customers that actually make sense, etc), and so on. They can read simple instructions and do basic math, but that's about it."

Ironically enough, if you used this test as a guide, you would continue to get poorly qualified job candidates. This exam has no need to show practical geographic knowledge (i.e., find Mexico on a map) and no algebra whatsoever.

"At Burger King and MacDonald's, they've had to resort to putting cute little pictures in place of written instructions. They also have icons on the cash register buttons. Otherwise, they get too many errors from employees who are confused by big words like "hamburger.""

If your BK and McD are anything like mine, you'll find that management has put those icons on their registers in order to make the job easier for non-native English speakers. Non-native English speakers continue to make up a growing percentage of the hourly wage market.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

This is why so many Japanese families send their kids to America for their bachelor degrees, and why American colleges have such cachet in Japan.

Elvis has a cachet in Japan for crying out loud. Japanese people are fascinated with American culture, and things American.

BTW Lord Greystoke, I don't blame you for ignoring "Did you miss the news report last week where the US is now 15th in HS grads? They called it "third world" status." as it puts a real dent in your argument.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/31/curriculum/index.html

Food for thought.

-- kermit (colourmegreen@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Thanks, Tarzan, for sharing with us this commentary on the exam. I ran across the exam several years ago and was impressed in about the same manner as were the authors of your article. When it appeared again a few months ago I snagged a link to it on the beginnings of my unschooling page so that I wouldn't lose track of it, because I wanted to comment upon it, along those lines. Unfortunately, my uncommented link has probably led people to believe any number of things about my opinion of the piece.

I always hoped to have time to produce a thorough critique of this exam. Instead, now that someone has already done it, I'll just add a few random comments.

These questions seem to me to be designed to impress parents with the difficulty of the course of study that their children have mastered. I'm sure that I could not pass this exam without several hours of directed tutoring, even though I've completed coursework for a Ph.D. in Business Administration, and consider myself quite widely read.

This exam tests considerable rote memorization of facts and rules. This does not necessarily correspond to abilities in the same areas. For example, someone can know very well how to perform basic arithmetic without being able to "define the Fundamental Rules of arithmetic."

In the orthography section questions #1 and #3 are the same. This lends some evidence to the theory that the exam has been modified from its original format.

The question, "Of what use is the ocean?" seems to presume that "the ocean" was "put there" for some purpose serving mankind. But what is the answer? Fish? Of what use is the sky? Ducks?

Who the heck is Fulton? The steamboat inventor? George Fulton of Texas? Whoever they are, they sure have a lot of schools, parks, towns and counties named after them. And Juan Fermandez? Juan Fernandez Islands, perhaps?

Can you think of words for each of these prefixes which would have probably earned the student an expulsion if they had offered and defined them in the exam?: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super. Ahahaha "You're OUTA here!"

Knowing how words are correctly pronounced is not measured well by asking students to cough up examples of mispronounced words. At this moment I can only think of misproNOUNCiation. I'm quite certain that I could not come up with ten of them inside an hour unless I had been keeping a list of them.

What about research skills? Perhaps the most important thing a structured education can provide is knowledge about how to go about finding answers to questions.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), May 31, 2000.

"BTW Lord Greystoke, I don't blame you for ignoring "Did you miss the news report last week where the US is now 15th in HS grads? They called it "third world" status." as it puts a real dent in your argument."

I didn't ignore it, I asked for a citation. As I'm not psychic, I can't comment on an article I haven't read. Why don't you post a citation, Uncle Deedah?

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

Sta tes Scurry to Lift Student Test Scores

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), May 31, 2000.

I didn't post a citation because I am not your step-and-fetchit. I heard the same info on the evening news, or was it the morning news? Afternoon news?

Why don't YOU post a link to refute it?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

Howdy Kritter:

There seems to be a general concern with our educational system. Even when we lead the world. Answers to an 1895 test would be important in 1895. I will give you a test from a few years ago in one of my courses. I rewrite them every year and the field changes so rapidly that this isn't a problem. Each year the lectures are completely new. See how you do! [Note Bud is a scientist from Washington State University that had just given a seminar on the subject]. Also, creepy-crawlies are insects. The test deals with GMO's and a lot of things that you talk about. Probably more important than an 1895 test. Tell me how you did.

1. From Bud Ryans Seminar: The information [taken at face value] suggests that creepy-crawlies which vector a plant pathogenic virus would have a short term survival advantage over those that dont. Why?

2. From Bud Ryans Seminar: Did any information given in this seminar suggest something about the importance or unimportance of membrane peroxidation in the scheme of plant defense responses to microbes?

3. Signal sequences: Some of the chitinases that we have discussed have a C-terminal signal sequence. Some other chitinases have an internal signal sequence. What other kinds of plant proteins have internal signal sequences? Provide a reference or two.

4. Talking about soybeans: For a long time, expression of the PAL gene has been used as an indicator [sometimes a quantitative indicator] of expression of plant defense responses. The primary argument was that it represented initiation of the biosynthetic pathway for glyceollin synthesis. Now we learn that glyceollin is not produced by this pathway, but from stored intermediates. How do you think this affects interpretation of the earlier work based on the PAL assumption? Does any of the new data save the cause? Bring-up any points that you like.

5. Elicitors: Elicitors come in all sizes and shapes. For example, they can be oligosaccharides, proteins &, although we havent discussed them much, lipids. In spite of this diversity, they all initiate the same responses. Sometimes, the same organism can make more than one type. Now I like my concepts to fit into neat little patterns and boxes. This one doesnt. We also know that we need wounding & SA accumulation to permit elicitation. This is too much for me. Take some time & develop a model to describe this system. Have we considered any evidence that different elicitors have different receptors? Note: Make it one that I might accept.

6. Salicylic acid: We have discussed the central role of SA in activation of defense responses. Therefore, we would expect that plants that can rapidly produce high levels of SA would have an advantage & would be more disease resistant. However, willows constitutively produce & accumulate high amounts of SA & its derivatives. Yet most willows are so disease susceptible that they are difficult to grow [this is from personal experience & excludes the beavers]. How would you explain this?

6. PR proteins: Why do you think that plants have evolved the capacity to produce enzymes with lysozyme activity? Most phytopathogenic bacteria are Gram negative & , therefore, relatively insensitive to lysozyme. Plants also are capable of producing class I chitinases. Among other properties these enzymes contain a chitin binding domain & a catalytic domain connected by a unique hinge region. Why would plants evolve such complicated, bifunctional proteins?

7. About Arabidopsis: Would an acd2 mutant require wounding to respond to elicitation? Would a nim 1 mutant continuously produce protease inhibitor in response to insect attack? What would you expect jasmonic acid production to look like in an isd5 mutant?

This test is several years old and some of the facts have changed. But, I would be interested in the responses from those that think our educational system is in failing.

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

In 1950, the average American 15 year-old had a vocabulary of 25,000 words. Today, the average is 15,000. Anybody want to guess what new words this includes?

-- Bee Spelling (abc's@RRR.edu), May 31, 2000.

Ordinarily I discard claims of the collapse of our educational system as motivated by something other than a desire to see quality education. But this forum (and its predecessor) have made me wonder. It's been a remarkable display of poor grammar and spelling, illogical trains of thought, and responses to criticism that often don't rise above schoolyard taunts in terms of maturity. And it specialized in drawing wildly incorrect conclusions by protecting flagrant bias at all costs, though the costs ultimately were more than the forum could pay.

So I wonder -- have we been witnessing a recruitment function, whereby the y2k issue tended to selectively attract the more educationally challenged? Or are these independent variables, and we can regard the generally abysmal level of demonstrated thinking ability as a representative sample? If so, criticisms of our educational system have real force and should not be lightly dismissed.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), May 31, 2000.

Bee Spelling:

Yeah, I was one of those old types; but you haven't taken my test. Give me you answers. Do your words include transposition? I just want to know what those that complain are talking about. I know what I am complaining about in my position.

Best wishes,,,,,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

Flint:

If your are complaining, answer the questions on my test. If not, I agree with you. Then we can get on to the problems that do exist. There are areas that existed when I went to college, which have been financially marginalized. That is important, but not part of this discussion.

Best wishes,,,,,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

Uncle Deedah, you said "I didn't post a citation because I am not your step-and-fetchit . . . Why don't YOU post a link to refute it?"

Not to be rude, Uncle Deedah, but if you're going to suggest that someone refute something, it might be sporting of you to give them a citation to refute.

I used to teach English at the college level before finding more lucrative work, and honestly, few people, even at the doctoral level, could correctly answer the Grammar and Orthography questions off the cuff. It's not that the 1895 questions are hard, or that English scholars of today are slow; it's that the questions themselves smack of rote memorization. I suspect there's a textbook out there, a contemporaneous partner to the test, in which the answers might be found.

I myself, in my days as a writing coach, told students that "I don't care if you can't quote chapter and verse from a grammar text or from Strunk and White's "Elements of Style. As long as you can spell, punctuate and conjugate correctly, and STILL produce coherent sentences and paragraphs that are understandable and cogent, you'll get an "A" from me."

Forced memorization (especially through drills and repetition) was a typical teaching method in days long past. Therefore, testing a class that's been taught by that method isn't testing knowledge and reasoning capacity -- it's simply testing memory.

And you can teach a rat to remember which lever to press for food.

-- Ambrose Bierce, Jr. (devil@dictionary.com), May 31, 2000.

Finally:

Since I must leave again in a few days, I would like to say the following: The quality of the US students that we see [US students] has improved over the last decade [I only deal with PhD students]. The change has been large. To be honest, I don't know at what level the change has been made, but the results will be felt.

The change has been in part in the technological training; but that is a small part. The big part is that they have thought about the consequences of their work. We can now talk about these things. They have thought about them. We have a new 60's generation; Good or Bad.

Best wishes,,,,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

Mr Bierce, or do you prefer Jr?

Since you were so kind and not rude I will not say "Hey, I got somethin for ya to refute...right HERE!"

;-)

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

Z: What has a biochem exam got to do with a 14-year old in Jr. High school?

Flint: You proved your own point by failing the first question of the 1895 test. 'y2k' is written 'Y2K'. Learn your rules of capitalization, dufus.

-- Bee Spelling (abc's@RRR.edu), May 31, 2000.

Z,

If that test is one you give to *eighth graders*, and they pass (having to *answer* the questions, not multiple choice), then I will freely admit you do one H@ll of a good job as a teacher.

OTOH, if it's a college-level exam, one would expect your students to be able to answer them.

No one says at the *university* level the system is failing, there are qualified students from around the world who want to come to the U.S. to study. The question is on average are American students who graduate from U.S. schools are as well prepared *for college* as their foreign counterparts?

BTW what is an "ellicitor"? Is it anything like an antigen or chemical mediator of some sort?

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 31, 2000.

Bee Spelling:

Not a biochem exam; it is a molecular biology exam. We just get the end product; and I can tell you it is getting better. If you can't answer the questions, you shouldn't criticize the system. Let me tell you that the students can answer the questions and put them in the context of modern life.

It may reflect the fact that we decided to recruit from high quality small colleges. But we are getting really quality students; and they ar choosing their jobs.

Now to the question that should be discussed in the future. Should college education return to being something for the wealthy/elite or should everyone be involved and training limited to the less wealthy and all possible combinations. Something for another thread.

Best wishe

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

Frank:

I am leaving town soon. I agree; but we have a great disagreement on this subject. My experience is that the students that we have seen in the last 10 years [US students] were better than the ones we say 20 y ago.The ones that we say 3 y ago are better than the ones we saw 10 y ago. The question is: what is better. They have better technical training; but they also have thought about the consequences of what they are doing when they transfer genes into something. Our educational system has not raised a group of automatons. We should applaud it for that.

Best wishes

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

Holy comolly! Here's a good one; Ever fill out an electronic job application at Target? 5 minutes (mumble mumble) my butt! Take a chair pad with ya...and maybe a copy of " I'm O.K., You're O.K." and "What Color Is Your Parachute?" :)

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000.

Z,

Good luck on the trip. As the population increases, there will be a larger (numerically, not percentage-wise) cream of the crop. So I would expect at the Ph.D. level (see, I AM reading the posts :-) ) that the students would get better and better every year, assuming a horde of new programs haven't been opening up.

My worry isn't for the people in your program, they would probably succeed under ANY system. My worry is for the marginal students who, if they were forced to, could learn enough to be very productive people, but if allowed to, would coast through to graduation without having learned anything useful.

It seems to me that I'm running into more and more people who can't make change as cashiers, and can only spell to the level of, "mans at work" (seen recently). Maybe there's no difference now, but a few years ago didn't they dumb down the SAT, or change its scoring somehow?

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 31, 2000.

Everyone knows that American public education is going to hell in a handbasket. This is a commonly accepted fact. And yet no one, except Kritter, has provided any citation or evidence for this piece of "common knowledge". Some, Uncle Deedah, get very hostile when asked. Interesting.

Kritter, I read your article, and found some very serious flaws. The article, like the posters on this forum, makes a lot of assertations but does not provide any statistics or other evidence to back them up. In fact, it reads more like an editorial than a news piece. The article purports to be about measures to raise test scores in several states, but curiously, there's only one instance of test scores themselves even being discussed, on a portion of a standardized test, and even then the scores have no baseline. There's no mention of any overall trend in education, and no comparision of test scores over time. In fact, the article itself admits that experts expect to see high rates of failure for new tests, and the only test for which hard, documented facts are available has been in place less than three years. Ultimately, what this article tells us is that several people and states are concerned about test scores without telling us what those test scores actually are.

Over all, not a bad opinion piece, but too short on verifiable facts to be considered a news article. Care to try again?

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), June 01, 2000.

"I didn't post a citation because I am not your step-and-fetchit. I heard the same info on the evening news, or was it the morning news? Afternoon news? Why don't YOU post a link to refute it?"

Okay, my fault for not recognizing when my leg is being pulled. Thanks for making my point Uncle. "Everyone" knows about this article, and yet no one can produce it. No one can, or will, produce it, and yet I'm expected to refute it.

"In 1950, the average American 15 year-old had a vocabulary of 25,000 words. Today, the average is 15,000. Anybody want to guess what new words this includes?"

MORE unfounded assertations. Please provide a citation, Spelling Bee.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), June 01, 2000.

Spelling: Y2k was developed as an acronym by the computer technologists. Since K is reserved to mean 1024 bytes, and k is standard for 1000, Y2k is correct, while Y2K is INCORRECT. Capitalization of the Y is at one's discretion. When is year normally capitalized?

I'd agree with Tarzan on this one, although education in America seems to be region-specific as well. Standardized testing wasn't even used until 1983, when the last wave of educational reform began. One might remember the book Why Johnny Can't Read , which came out in 1985.

I would agree further with Tarzan that education today versus yesterday includes the reasons why. My mom is quite fond of believing that the education she received in a one-room schoolhouse was a GOOD education, while the education kids get today is not. After all, SHE memorized her "times" tables. If asked to point to an array in her normal life wherein the multiplication table is demonstrated, she wouldn't know where to start. If asked about a number line, negative numbers, real numbers versus imaginary numbers, she wouldn't know where to start. She lacks understanding of concepts, which is why my father cancelled his checking account when she continued to write checks with no money to back it up. [You thought that was just a blonde joke, eh?]

Certainly, the emphasis has moved from penmanship to ability to keyboard. Certainly, the emphasis has moved from the ability to add $3.81 to $9.94. It's the addition CONCEPT that is necessary. The basic addition skills are still there, but have somewhat been dulled by the more important need to understand what key to hit on the calculator for addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, etc..

The U.S. has been through many phases of education reform since its founding. The current phase began in 1995, and hopes to concentrate on preparing students for the technological society in which they live and will live.

I would also agree that the icons we see daily are an attempt at a universal language. Somewhere recently, I saw someone post that his new lawn-mower had speeds designated by pictures of a hare and a turtle.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000.

Unk:

Gordie Howe was a forward, not a defenseman. That's one wrong for you! :-)

cmr

-- cmr (ironic_detachment@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000.

Oops. My mistake, Unk. You could have been referring to Mark Howe, who was a defenseman (though not the greatest). I'll give you partial credit. :-)

-- cmr (ironic_detachment@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000.

"In 1950, the average American 15 year-old had a vocabulary of 25,000 words. Today, the average is 15,000. Anybody want to guess what new words this includes?"

For the younger set, every 5th word or so seems to be "like" or "I'm like". Extreme and awesome seem to pop up rather frequently, too.

I wonder what will be left for Generation Z to use? I guess they'll have to invent some new ones.

-- Semanticist (it@seems.hopeless), June 01, 2000.

Semanticist:

Didn't you use terminology unrecognizable to your parents when you were a teen? I did. I remember my dad saying, "That's teenage lingo, right?" Oddly enough, we outgrow it, except for an occasion relapse once in a while. It's much like pimples in that regard.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000.

Far-out man.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), June 01, 2000.

Spelling: Y2k was developed as an acronym by the computer technologists. Since K is reserved to mean 1024 bytes, and k is standard for 1000, Y2k is correct, while Y2K is INCORRECT. Capitalization of the Y is at one's discretion. When is year normally capitalized?

Anita,

Y2K is an acronym. The official spelling is 'Y2K'. Look it up in an online dictionary, or continue to make up the rules as you go.

-- Bee Spelling (abc's@RRR.edu), June 01, 2000.

Mr. Deedah (I'd lay odds that you're not MY uncle),

You can address me as you see fit; I'll answer readily to anything recognizably aimed at me. Since you are not my ex-wife, that means that I will not answer to "hey, you, ya lazy, drag-ass worthless sonofabitch who's making my life MISERABLE."

At least when it comes from you. :)

"Since you were so kind and not rude I will not say "Hey, I got somethin for ya to refute...right HERE!"

How considerate, Mr. Deedah! Since you were so polite in your response, I'll refrain from observing that it wouldn't take long to refute something of such limited means and such small consequence. ;)

Anita . . . the "K" is also used, by convention, as a metric prefix indicating 1000x, as in Kg (Kilograms) or Km (Kilometer). The computer-centric K-as-1024 is hardly the only accepted use; I'm surprised you didn't catch that. Computer types may have been the first to start using the Y2K abbreviation, but that doesn't mean that K must necessarily equal 1024.

-- Ambrose Bierce, Jr. (devil@dictionary.com), June 03, 2000.

Ambrose:

I didn't miss it. The Y2k versus Y2K debate unfolded several years ago on technical fora. It was long and heated. The end result was that those of us in the field accepted Y2k. It's one of those nit- picking debates, such as is 2000 the millennium or 2001. Of course most folks know that it's 2001, but for ease many discussed the computer problem as being the millennium problem. Personally, I was more interested in what folks had to offer regarding the computer "problem", so felt it time wasted engaged in nit-picking the terms.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 03, 2000.