Education in the 1920s

The deterioration of public education in this country is well known. Students are getting low scores and suffer from a lack of motivation, enrollment is shifting from public to private and home schools, and grade inflation is on a runaway train, etc. Most people say that we need to pour more money into the system. But what the students are learning, who they’re learning it from, and why they’re learning it is far more important than whether or not they have a brand new laptop to study on.

Here’s an example of what students learned in 1924 without the massive government programs we have today. This is part of a preparatory booklet to prepare an 8th grader for the test he would have to take to get into high school.

Arithmetic: A wall 77 ft. long, 6½ ft. high, and 14 inches thick is built of bricks costing $9.00 per M. What was the entire cost of the bricks if 22 bricks were sufficient to make a cubic foot of wall?

Geography: What waters would a ship pass through in going from Duluth to Buffalo? With what would the boat be apt to be loaded? What, probably, would it be loaded with on a return trip?

Grammar. Define five of the following terms: antecedent, tense, object, conjugation, auxiliary verb, expletive, and reflexive pronoun.

Physiology: (a) Beginning with food in the mouth, trace the course of digestion, naming the juices with which the food is mixed and the results. (b) What is the reason that spitting on the street is dangerous to the health of a community?

Spelling and Orthography: Select the proper prefix and place before each word in the following list (up, under, out, fore, over): Spread, balance, hold, sight, ground, shine, current, brush, roar, burst.

Writing: Give five movements to develop accuracy in pen­manship. Tell what you seek to do in using each movement.

History: (a) What colonies were founded in America because of religious reasons? By whom was each founded? (b) Give the cause, time, and result of each of the wars in which the United States has been involved.

Civil Government: Name three township, three county, and three state officers and state what office each person holds. Why do so many men dislike holding township offices?

Music: Draw a staff. Place on it the scale in half notes in the keys of G, D, and F. Write the scale that has a sharp on the fifth line and another sharp on the third space.

Reading: Who was Hamlet? Lochinvar? Naomi? Socrates? Gathergold? What are the three most important topics now being discussed in the newspapers? State two reasons for reading a newspaper. Give five uses of the dictionary. Do you use the dictionary while studying?

Stephenson’s Iowa State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book, published in World Magazine, Feb. 4, 2006.

How many did you answer correctly or at least think you did? That’s an example of what quality education that is applied in the right way can do. In my opinion (which could be completely unfounded and false) most high schoolers today, let alone 8th graders, would have trouble with that quiz. For Joel Belz’s complete article, go to the link for World Magazine on the upper left.