Just got this email.....puts my 10th grade education to shame!
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, 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, 65 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 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 meter?
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, and 1865.
Orthography (Time, one hour) (Do we even know what this is???)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, and syllabication.
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, sub vocal, diphthong, cognate letters, and lingual.
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-, and sup-.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, r ise, 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 FIVE HOURS to complete. Gives the saying "he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning, doesn't it? This also shows you how poor our education system has become... and,
NO!
I don't have the answers.
People don't seem to realise how society is being watered down and how pathetic law and order as well as moral values are being excused as being normal. Things were not always as they are now, and I can tell you, in many ways they used to be very much better!
Being educated in the 1950s, if you didn't come up to the expected standards for the year/grade then you simply didn't move to the next grade. You stayed behind and got it right. It was a good incentive to put the effort in and get it right the first time and most did.
Most kids by the end of primary school, (7th grade) could do a half decent job of managing the English language and basic arithmetic.
From my experience these days that is no longer the case.
Kids leave high school still unable to do basic arithmetic, add things up, multiply, divide etc. as is amply demonstrated at the supermarket checkout when the operator who tells me that this is their part time job while they are studying for a commerce degree, are struggling to work out the change due from a $50 note for the $43.20 worth of shopping I got.
Regarding modern day so called 'law and order', in the 1950s our house didn't even have a lock on the door. It was impossible to lock the house up even if we wanted to. And we never did.
We went off to school and left the doors and windows open to let the breeze in so the house would be cool when we got home. Not once in the 20 years we did this did anyone enter the house to rob us.
Most of my friends houses were the same.
On summer nights, the windows and doors were left wide open to let the breeze through. It never crossed our mind that someone might enter the house illegally because it almost never happened to anyone. If it did it was front page news and the offender was dealt with accordingly.
If dad took us to the beach we left the car unlocked and the windows open so the car wouldn't be hot to get into when we went home.
One of our cars didn't even have an ignition key. It just had a switch on the dashboard. They were never stolen or robbed.
Compare this to today where you have to keep your house locked and windows closed and locked, even when you are home!
If you don't and someone enters your house and robs you, it is reported that the police hold you partly responsible for not keeping yourself safely locked up.
Your car not only has to be locked with the windows up, it has to be fitted with an immobiliser so that when someone breaks in, they still cant steal your car. And if you don't fit an immobiliser, and it gets stolen, then it is your fault!
And this is now seen an 'normal'. 
Is this the price we have to pay for being seen as an 'educated, caring and tolerant' society?
If so then I think it's time we became a little less educated, caring and tolerant.
Though this has nothing to do with windsurfing here are my thoughts.
The grammar questions I feel I could have a shake at, mainly because I studied Latin for a few years at school. Grammar has not been part of the English school curriculum since the early 70s. As I started school in the late 70s I missed out.
I had no idea about most of the maths questions. I have no idea about what the fundamental rules of arithmatic. Are they we are using base 10 number system or what? I cannot tell my bushel from my inch. If the questions had metric equivalents I would give them a go and get some marks for correct working.
I have a history major so I could answer most of the American history questions but some of them I have no idea about.
Some of the othography questions I know but others I don't. I have never heard of the term othography.
Geography I could answer most. If the question of extreme temperatures was asked of politicians today how would they answer? "Climate change". Of course that answers the question of extreme weather today. However this answer ignores the fact there was extreme weather one hundred, one thousand and one hundred thousand years ago. Long before the first piece of coal was burnt in a brazier.
No point in answering these questions as it proves nothing online.
In regards to standards, being a teacher I agree with pweedas in that the biggest problem in school education is the automatic advancement of students from year to year. I guess in primary education its fair enough.
However by the middle years of high school when pupils are around 15 years old it becomes a problem. There are kids who clearly cannot cope with the curriculum. They lack basic literacy, cognative and learning skills. Despite this they can keep going to year twelve.
It ends up in the embarrasing situation of a year twelve student having a reader/writer to help them with their HSC because they lack the skills to read and write.
I believe society, culture and values move in cycles. We get nostalgic about the good old days and view them through tinted glasses.
Well, seeing as everyone is so negative about school education, i thought I would try and quickly answer a few questions
Grammer
1. All names etc (thats all i got?)
3. Verse=part of a song that only a few people know
Stanza=some poem related thing
Paragraph=what hairytestes doesn't use.
5.Case is an interesting topic with many definitions, but usually has something to do with a container.
(yes i nearly failed english)
Maths
2. =13.67
5. Around 18dollars
6. 2000 dollars
History
2. He was happily flying is light aircraft around, and flew over a giant land mass.
3. Morse invented morse code. Whitney and Fulton were his best mates. Lincoln is a president of the future. Penn , Howe and Bell are noone, trick question.
Orthography
4, You, ewe, u, yew
5. If you want to add "ing" to the end of a word ending with "e", "e" runs away and "ing" comes to stay. Eg. Rule=Ruling ................................................. e.
10. Colour. Often said cull-or. It is actually cull-are
Bouy. Often said as boo-ee. Actually boy.
Other than that american is perfect.
Geography.
1. Climate is solely dependent on god.
2. They did wrong 20000 years ago, and are being punished.
3.Rivers fill up the oceans. Oceans are used for fun water sports.
4. HUGE
10. The earth is flat, and spins around on its centre. Everything else in the whole entire universe revolve around the earth.
See. It wasn't that hard, and it only took 10mins. God, kids back then were soft.
And people are getting pathetic. Some kid at school had the writing ability of a newborn, so he did all of his exams on a computer, and I know I can type quicker than i write.
Its quite a shock, they way they spoon feed you at school, making sure you do work, and that if you fail a test or two you get tonnes of help. To go to uni, when you are expected to help yourself, basically teach yourself (the lectures only explain it to an extent, then we have to LEARN it) , with limited experience in doing so.
I almost failed english because I am no good at writing a feminist, pro-religion, pro-people, pro-government essay. However I can spell, and like to think I am alright with my grammar, and can speak relatively fine. Shouldn't that be enough? Yet there are people who can hardly speak the language, and are non-understandable (not being mean, but this is an english speaking country, you should know how to speak it), can't spell that good , but they pull in the 90+% by writting a whole load of crap.
My english teachers didn't like me saying that much[}:)].
Greenpat, greenpat, where art thou?
I bit my tongue on the first post but two posts in a row is too much to bear.
For the record it's spelt "Grammar".
Ahhh there I feel a lot better now 
Edit: Looks like Moby realised the mistake and corrected it, making me look like even more of a doofus than usual...
Me thinks there is something fishy with this paper
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per meter?
What american would have heard of a meter in 1895
As for bad grammar.........its a METRE not a METER. 
Yanks spell differently, to them it's all meters, colors and aluminum.
Speaking of which, I recently came across a source that said that the discoverer of aluminium originally spelled it with an i, then took it out as he thought it sounded better. The seppos dutifully removed the i, but mother England stayed stuck in her ways, keeping the i.
All the other elements have an -ium ending so it seems a bit silly to have an -um ending, but there ya go.
...and "Math" not "Maths"
I dropped out of year 12, and this has yet to affect my windsurfing.
I like to provide a different perspective every now and then :) glad I made you laugh!
Back to the subject - our kids are in lower and middle primary school and we started them doing Kumon this year. Kumon is a system of math and english exercises that helps with all the foundations of the subjects etc - also the system has levels / grades according to an international level (supposedly). Anyway the reasons we have our kids doing Kumon:
- We are not happy with the widely varying knowledge bases being taught between different teachers and schools - everything from emphasis on basic maths mult / div etc, and not happy about the approach/application of outcomes based education.
- Our kids will be going to highschool in their year 7 (new middle/junior high in private schools here) and we want to ensure our kids have the fundamentals totally "down pat" before they reach their senior primary school years - to make it easier for them when they are in high school.
Anyway the plan is that once they get to the end of the Kumon levels that equate to their age/school year (in a few months) we will stop it - then in 12 months have them do it again for another term - the only way we can be comfortable that they are getting the right levels of understanding that I think we enjoyed when we were in school.
Interesting that several WA primary school headmasters actually run the Kumon centres - so shows their faith in the current education system as well.
