Issues in Education

Remember when our grandparents, great-grandparents, and such 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, KS, 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
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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, 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 rule 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 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 around 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 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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Also 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?

As students across Canada head back to classrooms in this high-tech Information Age, there's a question in the front row that demands to be heard:

Researchers say students weaned on collaborative learning with high-tech devices are suffering in classrooms ruled by defenders of lecture-based orthodoxy wielding overhead projectors and reciting from dog-eared history textbooks....

Do Kids Need a Summer Vacation?
Why our schoolchildren get to take three months off
Article by Juliet Lapidos, slate.com, July 11, 2007

Most American school kids are about three weeks in to their three-month summer vacation. Yet working adults (the Explainer included) spend the better part of June, July, and August toiling away as usual. Why do kids enjoy such generous summer breaks?

Fiscal limitations, century-old developmental theories, and outdated medical concerns. The now-standard 180-day academic calendar with a long summer holiday didn't come about until the early 20^th century. Previously, urban schools operated year-round with short breaks between quarters. In 1842, Detroit's academic year lasted approximately 260 days, New York's 245, and Chicago's 240. But since education wasn't mandatory in most states until the 1870s, attendance was low. Despite the official schedule, many kids ended up spending the same amount of time in school back then as they do now. Brooklyn school officials, for example, reported in 1850 that more than half their students showed up just six months a year.

State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know.

"States tend to have too many standards attempting to tackle too many content topics," the report says. The report examines science, math, reading and English.

High school teachers believe state standards are preparing student well for college-level work; however, roughly 65 percent of postsecondary instructors responded that their state's standards prepared students poorly or very poorly for college-level work in English/writing, reading, and science. This finding strongly suggests that a gap still exists between what colleges believe is important for college readiness and what state standards are requiring teachers to teach.

Participatory democracy hinges on a social compact between adults and children that we shall together prepare them for a brighter future. For too long we have maintained a status quo in education that has at best prepared children for our past and at worst marginalized those families least able to access a better life for their children through means other than education.

We have been committed to time structures, coursework, instructional methods, and assessments that do not reveal to our children the marvel that they are and, instead, often leave them questioning their worth and the purpose of education designed more than a century ago. It is time to put the students at the center of the education system and align resources to their multiple needs to ensure a balanced education for all.

One Size Fits Whom?
The core curriculum stymies reform
Commentary by Ronald A. Work, Teacher Magazine, March 1, 2007

Curriculum is the engine of our public education system. To a large degree it shapes the allocation of financial resources and time, the preparation and assignment of teachers, and the formulation of academic standards and standardized tests. Despite its importance, curriculum doesn’t get much attention from parents, politicians, or the media, except for calls for more rigor and a national curriculum (God forbid). Nearly everybody just accepts curriculum as it’s always been—without questioning whether it is appropriate for a very diverse student body and a high-tech, rapidly changing world.

The standards movement and the increasing emphasis on accountability (especially since the enactment of No Child Left Behind) tend to make the core curriculum even more impervious to criticism or change. And that is unfortunate because the key to significant improvement in student learning might well be a serious examination of—and national debate about—the traditional core curriculum.

"Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer, once observed that cave dwellers froze to death on beds of coal - lying on the very resource that could have saved their lives. But they had no way to find the coal, mine it, or use it. Today, several millennia later, the same phenomenon is happening again - this time, in education.

"America's K-12 education system is asleep on beds of best practices. They come from thousands of workable solutions that exist right now - down the hall, across the district, across the nation. Like coal to the cavemen, however, these best practices are hidden, untapped and unmined..."

"American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside...

"This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries, business leaders and a former Governor releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy."

In preparation for a recent meeting, I had to read half a dozen documents. Among them was a copy of Lauren Resnick’s brilliant presidential address to the American Educational Research Association in 1987. Titled “Learning In School and Out,” it focuses on what I view as perhaps the central issue in education: the gap between the real world and the world of school.

Resnick, now a distinguished researcher and education reformer who heads the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, offers a clear premise in her opening sentence. “Popular wisdom,” she writes, “holds that common sense outweighs school learning for getting along in the world—that there exists a practical intelligence, different from school intelligence, that matters more in real life.”