Eighth Grade Exam Part 1

Thanks to the dumbing down of America by the public school system, I doubt today's graduate student could do much with that.

 

In the late 1960s I was in a church. The Financial committee seemed amazed to find that I could figure out that if they wanted to spend $27,000 for salaries office costs and building costs plus 10% of the Tithes & Offerings to missions. I was a college student getting a Secondary Education degree majoring in mathematics. l (this isn't rocket science /which I can also do, you know / ).

I can do it in my head. The total budget needed to raise would be $30,000.
(if it had of been $28,000 and 12%, I'd have to jot a few numbers down. These committee members were the smartest business men in church.

 

This is an e-rumor and, according to Snopes, is NOT TRUE.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

 

Here is one they never would have gotten in Kansas in 1895:

Name the winners of the first twelve Super Bowls. Half the guys in High School also know both the team's lead quarter back.

When I taught the 10th grade's Geometry class, the hardest time I had teaching was: Some of you know more tlhan some of your teachers about a particuar subject. My problem was I'd taken a graduate course where I made 10.3 on a spelling test (at the 3rd month of the 10th grade, half the 10th graders could spell better than I could).

 

Thank you Sue, why people insist on spreading untrue unjunk, and others treating it as if it were true I don't know.

 

I thought the test was laughable, asking kids in 1895 to describe scientific principles concerning the climate. when considering much of what we know concerning the climate is a product of the 20th century.

 

Without seeming to brag, in either case, my bride was the HS Valedictorian for a graduating class of around 700, and did extremely well in college. (R.N.) She is very intelligent, obviously, and exceptionally talented to boot, and seen as outstanding in all her fields, as she is a highly trained cardiac-care nurse/Clinical manager at a large regional Medical Center (Whenever my bride is at work, she is the one in charge of the cardiac unit, and she is usually the one who takes the toughest patients, as a rule.); she builds and flies her own fairly large model airplanes, including rebuilding the motors herself, when necessary; does photography at a professional level; and is a computer expert, and can build, assemble, rebuild, and teaches computer classes, sometimes at the hospital where she works. (She was on-call for Y2K, had there been a problem.) I fully have my doubts that she could make, or ever have made, above an 80-85% on this alleged test.

(FTR, I am a farmer and am also seen out standing in all my fields.) :thumbs:
Without bragging, the consensus of opinion was that I was easily qualified (as was Bobby, below) to be "MENSA material", when I was in HS and college, although I never pursued it. And I was easily considered to be in the top 10% of my HS class of 110. MY SATs and ACTs showed I was easily qualified for admission to any college, anywhere, that used these tests for admission.

I seriously doubt that I could have possibly made a 75% here, even then, were my life to depend on it. A fellow schoolmate of mine named Bobby (the HS Salutatorian) and I went to the same university (~25,000 students) where when we both had "ordinary" freshman college chemistry, and although in different lecture classes, we had the same labs and were "lab mates". At the end of our freshman year, all students had to take an overall comprehensive chemistry lab test. There were close to 1000 students in freshman college chemistry, that year. (The grad student teachers, and the director of the labs, also took the test annually, for comparison.) The test was so tough, that a perfect "raw score" was 50. Bobby and I managed to rank as No. 2 & 3, where I actually beat him for the second spot by .25 points, at 39.75 and finished, myself .50 behind the student who did first place, who had easily led the class in the far more difficult "honors" chemistry, section. Both Bobby and I topped some of the grad-assistant, aspiring Ph.D.s. and the long-time lab director, who could spout this stuff off in his sleep, actually scored a 40.75, and admitted that it was better than he had done on the comparable test, the previous year.

I said all that, merely to say this. We were a right "fair-to-middlin'" bunch of students. Overall, our 1966 HS class, from top to bottom, was considered, at that time, to be far and away the best to ever graduate from the Garrard County High School.

So what, that we were only the 2nd graduating class. :laugh: :laugh:

Ed

 

My own education in public schools beginning in the early 50's was vastly superior to todays.
We have several text books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including many McGuffey Readers. They are absolutely far better teaching aides than anything else I've seen taught in my life time.

 

My wife, and I and most of our classmates ('65')can perform general math, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, etc. and can figure out most problems, as they come up... We've had children and friends children in public schools all these years, and have seen first hand the deliberate movement in mathematics, science and even physics, that confuses, and demoralizes children. It is way too far off to be anything but deliberate...

We have many Christian friends that are teachers, and my own father was a life long educator. Not all of them, including my dad, see the problems, but many do....

 

I know I couldn't.

 

My hope would be that your situation is normal and ours is abnormal, but I'm sure that's not the case.....We will always have the standout students like your daughter, and my son, but the average student today would have never graduated from my high school. period..

 

I guess it all depends on where you live & the public/private schools in that particular area. We have excellent high schools in the area - both public & private - with many more programs and programs that are at a much higher level than my own public high school (30 years ago). As a general rule, the students today come out with a much broader and better education than I did.