Lessons Learned?

The following article begs the question(s)...Are we serving our modern day students adequately or did we EVER cover the fundamentals in this test? I'll wager we'd have to review some of the words, before we could even tackle the questions!...parse, modes of a verb, decline, indicative, subjunctive, minuend, subtrahend, Avoirdupois, farthings. On the other hand, imagine what our contemporary students know that would baffle the best students of the 1800's! 

​There is good chance the following tests were designed to check the quality of the one-room school education against urban schools.

Getting Into High School In 1860
by Michael Day

In the mid-19th century, a high school education was beyond the needs - and the finances - of the average person. Many smaller communities did not even have a high school and those students who wished to attend one often needed to apply for admission to the high school of a nearby community. To be sure that students coming in "from other areas" were sufficiently prepared, many high schools had entrance examinations.

Here are the questions from one such test as reported in the 1860 edition of the Annual Town Report of Chicopee, Massachusetts.
​ 
GEOGRAPHY
1. How much of the earth's surface is land? 
2. In what direction from Chicopee to New Orleans? 
3. Mention the principal mountains in North America.
4. Where is the Black Sea? Yellow Sea? Baffin’s Bay? 
5. Where is the Caribbean Sea? Hudson’s Bay? 
6. Mention the political divisions of South America.
7. What is the Capital of Arkansas? Of Ohio? Of Maine? 
8. Name the Southern States; the Middle States.
9. What is the capital of Austria? Of Spain? Of Prussia? 
10. Where are the Pyrenees Mountains? The Alps? 
11. Where is Cape Horn? Cape Sable? Cape Cod? 
12. Bound Brazil, France, and the State of New York.
13. How many Zones are there? Name them.
14. How many motions has the earth? 
15. What is Latitude? What is Longitude? 
16. In what Latitude is Europe? S. America? Australia?
17. Name the oceans. Which is the largest? 
18. Name the principal manufacturing towns and cities in New England.
19. What is an Isthmus? What is a Peninsula?
​20. Suppose you were to go all the way by water from Chicopee to St. Petersburg: through what waters would you sail
GRAMMAR
1. How many parts of speech are there? 
2. What is a Conjunction? Pronoun? Interjection? 
3. What is an Adjective? Noun? Verb? 
4. How many cases have nouns? Name them. 
5. What are the different modes of a verb? 
6. What is a regular verb? 
7. Write the principal parts of the verb to write. 
8. How many tenses has the imperative mood? 
9. In the sentence, "John is a better boy than Samuel", parse, is, better, boy, and Samuel and give the rules. 
10. Decline the pronoun I, also the pronoun, he. 
11. In the sentence, "The bird flew swiftly over the house", parse, flew, swiftly, over, and house. Which is the subject and which is the predicate? 
12. Correct this: "Mary and me called to see Aunt Nancy but she had went out before we reached her house". 
13. In the sentence, "I will tell you what I saw at Paris", parse will, till, you, what and at. 
14. Give the indicative mode, perfect tense of the verb to come; also the subjunctive mode, future tense of the same verb.
ARITHMETIC
1. Write in words these numbers 87000039, 49701342641714. 
2. What is Subtraction? What is the  Minuend? The Subtrahend? 
3. If a man’s income is 8467 dollars a year, and he spends 269 dollars for clothing, 467 for house rent, 879 for provision, and 146 for traveling: how much will he have left at the end of the year? 
4. Multiply 105070 by 8145. Divide 79165238 by 288. 
5. Mr. Nelson supplied his farm with 4 yoke of oxen at 98 dollars a yoke; 4 plows at 11 dollars apiece; 8 horses at 97 dollars each, and agrees to pay for them in wheat at 1 dollar and a half per bushel. How many bushels must be given? 
6. How many mills in 8 dollars? 
7. How many kinds of Reduction are there? 
8. Write the table for Avoirdupois Weight. 
9. If a vessel sails 5 L., 2 m., 6 fur., 36 rds. in one day, how far will it sail in 8 days? 
10. In £15, 19s, 11d, 8 far., how many farthings? 
11. Reduce 87 & 11/24 to an improper fraction. 
12. Add 9, 2/3, 1/15, 5/6, and 2/9 together. 
13. If a house is worth 320 dollars, what is 9/16th of it worth? 
14. What will 15 & 2/3 cord of wood cost at 8 & 6/7 dollar a cord? 
15. Divide 7 & 11/17 by 3 & 3/5 and reduce the answer to a simple fraction. 
16. What is the amount of $125.75 for one year, 9 months and 27 days at 7 per cent? 
17. A owes B, 600 dollars; one third is to be paid in 6 months, one fourth in 8 months, and the remainder in 12 months: What is the mean time of payment?
 18. How many days have you lived?

It would be interesting to see how many of today's high school students - or for that matter, their teacher - can pass this test !
 
Michael Day has been a regular contributor to our former CSAA Newsletter and was the owner of Clippership Publications providing reprints of country school educational materials from the 19th century. We thank him for his articles of particular interest to schoolhouse enthusiasts,  published earlier.