Are You Smarter Than A 1954 8th Grader?

My grandpa never went to high school. They didn't even have one where he was, but he went to 8th grade multiple times and was easily better educated than a college student nowadays.

During WWII, he'd write-out poems like Thanatopsis from memory so his buddies could have reading material. You were expected to memorize and recite the entries in the McGuffey's readers. I studied McGuffey's, too, but was given an exercise book to go along with it that told us to ignore most of the recitation assignments.

Study gov't for a whole year in the 5th grade. Some of the questions weren't much different than I've been asked at one time or another. I recited the Preamble in the 3rd grade. Of course, I studied Abeka/ACE, etc. until the 5th grade then went to public school and spaced out until college.

The listing the names of the members of the cabinet seemed like over-the-top regurgitation to me.

Why didn't that generation do a better job defending the Constitution if they knew so much about it? Well, how to do that wasn't on the test.

An interesting exercise I did in school was to take history questions around to older members of the community. People consistently knew full dates of historic events like D-Day. That was surprising, but, again, is that useful information?

I actually was an 8th grader in 1954! Yes, I could recite the Declaration of Independence and I would have aced this test back then! (Remember, this kid had studied for the test!) I also had memorized ALL of the times tables, (and remember them to this day) and I was expected to spell correctly on assignments.
I would have written neater because we all took Penmanship, and learned to write each letter perfectly.

No way am I smarter than a 1954 8th grader

HOWEVER, I jsut got my head out of the sand 2 years ago, so iam a work in progress

Cheers,

TimB

Those are some real questions. I'm reminded of the fact that my grandmother studied Latin in high school---in a tiny country school in Indiana. Many colleges don't even offer Latin any more--and I'll admit, I dropped out because I realized that I didn't even understand English!

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