The Garden of the Blind

The following is the body of an email forwarded to me. A few people had added comments when they had forwarded it, which I deleted, along with the name of the original sender (who probably was just the last person who took any effort to clean up the excess tags). I also added one quotation mark and fixed a number of spacing errors. The same content can be found with little variation on a variety of websites.

Do you think that education has made great progress? Would you pass? 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? (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.
Subject: Actual 8th Grade Graduation Test from 1895

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.
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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.
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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.
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Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication? 2. What are elementary sounds? How are they 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, 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.
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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.
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Notice that the exam took SIX HOURS to complete. This gives the saying "he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning, doesn't it????

As a well-educated individual of the last half century, I have something to say about the relevance of comparing this test to a modern education.

I would like to point out that I wish I had learned enough as a student to do most of these problems. Some few of them are truly obsolete, but most of the problems merely relate to learning that we don’t often do these days. I will consider each section of the test in turn.

Grammar (Time, one hour)

This section is brimming with pedagogical rote learning. It’s one thing to capitalize correctly, and it’s another thing to be able to give nine rules (several of which are likely quite similar to each other) for capitalization. Questions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 all are quite specifically of this type. Question 3 is a semantic question, which almost certainly was covered while the children were learning about poetry. Question 5 seems to be incorrectly transcribed. Why is the word “each” used when there is no other indication that there might be more than one case (upper/lower case? The Case of the Missing Bologna?). The question is just so vague and awkward as written. Problem 7(-10) looks to be a pretty good type of question for determining a student’s mastery of grammar, although the text being written would almost certainly be self-selected, making it easier for a student to fake. The emphasis with the whole section seems to be specific knowledge of the detailed minutiae of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

While this section also touches on the pedantic type of learning found in the grammar section, it only does so for one question. I don’t think that the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic are still taught as such, although I’m certain that they are taught in some form. The rest of the questions relate to examples of everyday problems that students are likely to encounter. Most of these are not really difficult, except that they require students to know conversions between units that modern students rarely have to deal with (cubic feet to bushels, lbs of wheat to bushels, board feet to metre (possibly misspelled here), and square rods to acre). Problem 8 deserves special mention because it is not complete as written. Interest cannot be calculated unless you can know how often it is compounded, unless it is simple interest, and even then, the length of time isn’t clear (8 consecutive months can range between 242 days and 245 days in length, depending on when it starts). The form filling section is not only not arithmetic, but it is also outdated since we typically don’t write many promissory notes these days (receipts and bank checks are quite common still, especially the latter).

This entire section is quite different from the rest of the test in that it focuses entirely on practical use of arithmetic (or some vaguely related field like banking), while the rest of the test is quite abstract, focusing not on usage but rather on memorization of rules (or dates and places in two sections). I believe that this reflects a long held belief that mathematics are only useful when they can be immediately applied to real-world problems, while the subtle nuances of grammar are so inherently valuable that they should be learned on some higher level, distanced from the language to which they apply. While I know that grammar is important, I don’t believe that it is more important, even for people who will never formally work with numbers, than mathematics. To say that a journalist doesn’t need to be comfortable with mathematics is like saying that an engineer has no need for familiarity with writing. Neither could do their job well without being well educated with both letters and numbers.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

This is a section on which most well-educated people could do reasonably well. Sure, we don’t know what specific epochs the authors of the test have divided U.S. history into, but many people could give some reasonable answer for most of the other questions (the Kansas question may have to be changed to match the test taker’s home state). One major issue with this section is that it would certainly take far more than 45 minutes to answer adequately. The grammar section, which can be answered almost entirely in short words or sentences, had a while answer, while this section which requires about 20 answers varying in length from a few sentences to entire essays (what if I could write 20 pages on the history of Kansas?). The version of the test that I received stated that the whole test took 6 hours, while the times for the individual sections only added to 5 hours. Either they had 15 minute breaks between sections, the person who compiled this test really is an idiot product of a fundamentally flawed 20th century education, or this section should have taken 105 minutes rather than 45. Other versions of the test that I have found seem to agree with the 45 minute limit. Apparently they didn't want students to answer the questions in any sort of detail.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

While I feel that this section is even more pedagogical than the grammar section, I feel more comfortable with it. Parts of this section refer to ideas (the listing of elementary sounds, and diacritical markings) that are either specific to the curriculum or fairly outdated, or both. Most students don’t learn any sort of diacritical markings these days (at least not well enough to convert words to them), and even if they did, there are many standard ways of spelling words out phonetically. Actually, I wish that more students these days could tell the difference between various homophones and near-homophones (moot and mute, for example).

Geography (Time, one hour)

As a former geography junkie, I feel quite comfortable with this section, and yet it occasionally stumps me. Problems 1, 3, 4, 6, and 10 seem a little too vague to me. Answering them could take years of research and a lengthy series of technical papers, or at least there could be a wide variety of answers that would meet requirements of the problem as stated. I’m also unclear as to why they ask for students to “name” all the places named in question 5. Monrovia’s name is Monrovia. It is the capital of Liberia. I don’t know where Hecla, Juan Fernandez, or Aspinwall are, but the others are (in order), the capital of Liberia, the capital of Ukraine, the capital of Colorado, a Canadian province (capital is Winnipeg), a Canadian territory, a Mediterranean island (I believe where Napoleon was eventually banished), and a South American river. Also, nobody cares as much about the sources of rivers anymore. I think it’s a little arbitrary anyway (since how do you know which branch of a river to follow when seeking its source?)

Most of these problems can be classified as one of three types. The first kind are problems that reflect some exhaustive rote training. Almost all of the grammar and orthography questions are of this nature, and would likely be quite easy for a student educated in their system. The second kind are problems that require some specific knowledge that has fallen out of common use. The arithmetic problems mostly require knowledge of some conversion factor (cubic feet to bushels, rods to acres, pounds to tons, ect.), and one requires knowledge of how to fill out forms that are not commonly used anymore. A third kind of problem relies on some specific information that would have been taught in their classes.

I doubt that this is a faithful translation of the original test. For one thing, there is no way that any student in any age can address the U.S. history section in 45 minutes. Judging from the comment about the test taking 6 hours and the fact that the posted times add up to 5 hours (an error which takes away from my confidence in modern learning), it seems that the U.S. history section should be 1:45 long. Also, the arithmetic section time limit is 1.25 hours, and the U.S. history is listed as 45 minutes, which is an inconsistent use of units. The interest problem in the arithmetic section fails to specify how often the interest is compounded (which can dramatically change the solution). Several of the other problems don’t really look like they are complete, as they don’t make any sense as written (for example, problem 5 under grammar). TruthorFiction.com also doesn't feel sure that it is entirely legitimate, but they question the purpose of the test, suggesting that it was for older students or teacher applicants, which would certainly make sense.

I find it interesting that the arithmetic section reflects an attempt to apply learning to useful everyday sorts of situations, while the other sections, especially grammar and orthography, were extremely pedagogical with little hint of how the information might ever be useful to a layman. Apparently even then people felt that math was only useful as a tool, while the esoteric nuances of language were of great inherent value.