8th Grade Final Exam from 1895

[danielwang]

These questions seemed TOO mediocre. I practically DON'T give a damn about most of them.

Same here.

We dn't need that much rote memorization, factual learning and US history. Education should be about understanding concepts, not about "what happened in 1872".

And some of the things they are taching the students are completely biased and opinionated.

Betsy Ross did NOT sow the first States flag, in fact, the flag was used for mostly naval and military purposes before it's place as a patrotic symbol.

Alexander Graham Bell did NOT invent the telephone, by that time Europeans already could transmit voice and more.
In France, before Bell's "discovery", researchers were senging voice and DATA with what could be argues was the first digital fax machine - electrically sensitive paper and scanning needles to darken the paper.

And every time we teach abouyt some war, we always seem to justify it in a way that benefits us. Sure, every country uses propoganda, but do we?

If we privatized the schools and gave parents more input into curriculum standards through their money, students in The States would actually enjoy learning like students in other countries. I enjoy learning becuase I do it myself.

Instead of giving a midterm and final, quiz frequently to encourage study.

WHY IS OUT EDUCATION SYSTEM F*CKED UP!
HOW TO FIX:
Japanese cram schools
The Minister of Education and Tony Blair
PhDs from leading universities
Let them design our education system.

[Mroni]

The reason we don't have tests like this anymore. Is because of goddamned liberals and the teachers unions that attack essentialism Ie the teaching of reading,writing and arithmetic as the main focus of school. Many schools don't even give tests now claiming they are unfair according to the students background etc. Anyone remember the citizenship test? Gone, why should anyone have to be knowledgeble in the way their govemerment works? I confess I suck at math and I would have flunked that test really quickly I can't tell you what a predicate is. But I should know it.


Mr Oni

[Mroni]

Why would the exam ask who people were, when some of them were still alive.

That would be like a quiz today asking who Bill Gates was

The only one mentioned still alive was Bell he died in 1922 but he invented the freakin telephone so it's not unreasonable to teach his name in schools even if he was still alive. What has Bill Gates invented?


Mr Oni

[jonmartensen]

The intarweb

[MistyCaldwell]

Why would the exam ask who people were, when some of them were still alive.

That would be like a quiz today asking who Bill Gates was

I was thinking the same thing. I was trying to find date errors in the history section (the quiz was conducted in 1895 it said) but everything happened beforehand.

I knew who each one of the people in history section was (Robert Fulton was a relative of mine my mother's side, so I'd know that one) but it was amusing...because those people and events were relatively recent at that time.

It's also not going to take much time to tell the history of your state considering it has only existed as a state for 30 years at that time.


Class size and individual attention was much more intense at that time of US history. The school system may 'suck' but at least they still try. And no student is ever stopped from learning on their own.

[kthulhu]

I'm not really sure how many of the subjects those questions cover are relevant or essential to our modern world.

Certainly, though, we're not even teaching basic, essential stuff (reading, writing, and math) that well . If it were up to me:

1. Essential, important stuff in elementary school.

2. Advanced essentials in middle school, but allow students to choose some of their classes. If someone doesn't like biology, don't make them take it. Let the kids who DO like it utilize those resources. Leave it up to the parents to encourage their kids into other classes.

3. Let the students choose what they want to take in high school. Those students who want to can opt to enter a technical/occupational school and learn a trade.

4. College or the workforce or even the military.

And stress the importance of education throughout it all. Sounds like a good way to have an educated populace, in my opinion.

[Mroni]

These questions seemed TOO mediocre. I practically DON'T give a damn about most of them.

Same here.

We dn't need that much rote memorization, factual learning and US history. Education should be about understanding concepts, not about "what happened in 1872".

And some of the things they are taching the students are completely biased and opinionated.

Betsy Ross did NOT sow the first States flag, in fact, the flag was used for mostly naval and military purposes before it's place as a patrotic symbol.

Alexander Graham Bell did NOT invent the telephone, by that time Europeans already could transmit voice and more.
In France, before Bell's "discovery", researchers were senging voice and DATA with what could be argues was the first digital fax machine - electrically sensitive paper and scanning needles to darken the paper.

And every time we teach abouyt some war, we always seem to justify it in a way that benefits us. Sure, every country uses propoganda, but do we?

If we privatized the schools and gave parents more input into curriculum standards through their money, students in The States would actually enjoy learning like students in other countries. I enjoy learning becuase I do it myself.

Instead of giving a midterm and final, quiz frequently to encourage study.

WHY IS OUT EDUCATION SYSTEM F*CKED UP!
HOW TO FIX:
Japanese cram schools
The Minister of Education and Tony Blair
PhDs from leading universities
Let them design our education system.

The first voice transmitting device over wire was the telephone sir. Sorry give me a link to whoever you are talking about. The union army had a telegraph reader that would decode and print out the telegraph message. Why this didn't make into general use is beyond me.

Mr Oni

[jonmartensen]

Perhaps Dwang is thinking of the fax. It was patented before Bell was even born Interestingly enough, Both Bell and Bain were Scottish.

The first fax machine was patented in 1843— 33 years before the telephone— by Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. His device read text written in raised metal letters and transmitted it through telegraph lines. Eight years later, Frederick Bakewell, an English physicist, demonstrated a similar machine at the Crystal Exhibition. A commercial fax system was established in 1865 by Italian Giovanni Caselli between Lyon and Paris in France. German inventor Arthur Korn upgraded the fax in 1902 by adding an optical scanner and started a wire photo service for newspapers. In 1948 Western Union started its DeskFax service. Xerox introduced the first general-purpose fax machine in 1966, which operated over telephone lines. In 1980, fast digital faxes using uniform data standards appeared. Now that most computer modems can function as faxes, the stand-alone fax may vanish within a decade.