Talk About Old School!

[la_samtyr]

Ok, this is an 8th grade test from 1912 (meaning age 12-ish, maybe?) Anyway, how much of this could you pass? Teachers -- and Parents: what do you think would happen if this type of test was brought back today?

Under the cut because it is *really* big. Well, more like the pic is long rather than big but anyway...

Or use this link: ht tp :// history daily .org/ 8th-grader-test-100-years-ago/

Comments

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Okay, the math in particular brings back that awful feeling when you look at the question and have NO IDEA what they want. Or wny :D

That's a really high standard for 12 year olds, wow.

[dawn_felagund]

Such a test today would be a complete waste of the students' and teacher's time. It would be completely useless.

Most of the questions are strictly factual recall. This was necessary in a time when information was not readily available. Today? Kids much younger than 13 could find the answer in seconds on a computer or smartphone. Technology has made much of rote memorization and factual recall unnecessary.

Fwiw, I think that there are certain things that students should memorize nonetheless. They should know the three branches of government and the process/structure of U.S. government. They should understand how the human body works. They should be able to identify major world nations and know roughly where major cities are located.

Today's students are expected to use (not memorize) information to engage in deeper thinking (inferencing, synthesis, evaluation of sources/information, etc). The only question on that page that taps into those higher levels of thinking is "Why do we study physiology?" and perhaps the math problems. (Although I also suspect that students had been well drilled in those types of problems and were probably answering them using an algorithm and, again, memorization of facts [number of feet in a mile, for instance) rather than using higher levels of thinking to actually reason through and solve the problem.) Everything else is very shallow and anyone with the time, energy, and focus to memorize a bunch of facts could easily pass this. But it was a different time, and having a compendium of facts readily on hand was more useful then than now.

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

I don't know about 8th grade, but I was very surprised when a friend who is a 1st grade teacher showed me a typical test for first graders, and it covered information that I know I wasn't exposed to until at least two to three grades later on. It floored me when I saw what 1st graders are expected to learn now.