Resurrecting an old post

[wellinghall]

8th Grade Final Exam Salina, Kansas - 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 do, 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 rules of grammar.


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 50 cts per bu, 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 m?

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.


US History (Time: 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which US 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


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, super.

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.


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 Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give 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 inclination of the earth."

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Is this one of those things where you are supposed to marvel at the learnings of people in the Olden Days? My gran loved that sort of thing, she was convinced education was all downhill since the Tudors...

Of course the timings are the giveaway, there must have been rote learned answers for almost all of these: they want 'educated' citizens with an identical basis of accepted fact...

Do you have the answer sheet?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Exactly. No doubt there would have been classes of pupils sat in rows reciting the answers by rote and being taught very hard that they must never, ever think for themselves. I'm into trivia and general knowledge as much as the next person (well, let's be honest, more than most), but still I have to wonder how any of this knowledge would have helped them in life.

Also, quite a few of the questions make no sense:

"A wagon box is 2 ft deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?"
Doesn't that rather depend upon how big a bushel of wheat is (which they don't tell us) and how much you squidge it down?

"Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent."
Doesn't this need to specify whether simple or compound interest, and if the latter, how often interest charges are levied?

"Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus."
To which the answer probably should be something like: "Columbus didn't discover America, at least not mainland America, since a) he never got as far as the mainland and b) others got there before him like Ericsson and for that matter the Indians."

"What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?"
God, if we'd only looked up the answers on a Kansas school exam paper from 1895, we'd have been spared Al Gore.

"Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?"
What???

"Describe the mountains of North America."
Like hills, only pointier.

"Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco."
The first part's easy: "Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco."

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that rather depend upon how big a bushel of wheat is
One and a quarter cubic feet (later standardised to 60lbs).

(which they don't tell us)
You're expected to know these things.

and how much you squidge it down
You don't squidge it down if you're selling it, because that would result in you giving the buyer more than was absolutely necessary, which would be tantamount to Communism and thus bad.

Name and describe the following...
Well, I know the last one is a Womble. (Remember, remember, remember you're a Womble.)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

My knowledge of 19th century US agricultural measurements is indeed lacking. However, I remember enough of my Greek & Roman History A-level (now that's a properly useful educational course) to know that in 5th century BC Athens, the highest strat of society were the pentacosioimedimni or 'five hundred bushel men' who could produce 500 bushels of produce a year.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

And this knowledge has helped you in life how, precisely...?

:-D

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I don't see you showing off your knowledge of post-Solon Athens...

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was struck by the earthy practicality of the Arithmetic paper. I had a vision of future Kansas farmers being well-trained to figure out how much they'd get for their wheat, how many wagons they'd need to carry it in and how much they'd pay for a bank loan. I'm sure the size of a bushel of wheat was one of the things they'd rote-learned, and similarly, presumably there were standard practices re interest on bank loans.

The rest of it, I agree, bit scary. I specially loved how they were given 5 minutes to "Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War." Not even "Summarise"!

Neuromancer

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The arithmetic paper definitely has an air of grim practicality about it - the most time devoted to it too.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

That last bit reminds me of the Simpsons episode where illegal immigrant grocer Apu has to take the US citizenship test:

Proctor: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter–
Proctor: Wait, wait… just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Also, we have no idea what the pass mark, or indeed average attained score, was. The traditional way (not often used today) to discriminate between levels of achievement was to set Really Tough Exams.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

France, Paris. Italy, Rome. Switzerland, Geneva. That's about it for 1895, I think!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

You're forgetting the world's oldest continous republic (arguably) - San Marino.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Italy was a kingdom in 1895.

[gurthaew.livejournal.com]

It's a curious mix of questions. I had to look up the conversion factor for a bushel (32 quarts dry, 4 pecks, 35.24 litres). It does seem to be a measure of volume used specifically for dry produce and as such, should be known to any offspring of arable farmers. The same with question 8 under arithmetic (1 rod is 16.5 feet or 0.25 of a chain).

I liked: "Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters".
How about not capitalising improper nouns.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Note that an American bushel (dry goods measure) is not the same as a British Imperial bushel (liquid measure), and both are volumes whereas the "standard" bushel that replaced them is a weight measure. (Although I suspect that the British bushel had largely vanished by then anyway.)