Back to School Part Two – Putting One-room Schools to the Test
Monday, August 29, 2011 at 4:01PM Tweet By Bennett Owen
Credit: Pictoscribe - Moseying Back to The Wild
I don’t know about their self-esteem but it appears the rural eighth graders ‘back in the day’ actually knew a thing or two when they left those creaky clapboard temples of learning. For a truly humbling experience, check out this document that purports to be the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas.
Credit: alansheaven
The actual exam is extensive but for brevity’s sake I’ve provided a quick overview along with some helpful hints:
Grammar:
Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar. – I fail that with every post at My-West.
Arithmetic:
Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. - I find absolutely no interest in that.
US History:
Give the epochs into which US History is divided. – That’s easy. The pre and post wireless Internet eras.
Orthography: (yes, I had to look it up too!)
What are the following and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals? - I think a diphthong is something Lady Gaga wears.
Geography:
Describe the movements of the earth. - That’s what happened the first time I kissed Rita Grand.
Health:
Where are saliva, gastric juice and bile secreted? - Hey, let’s keep Washington, DC out of this.
Credit: JohnsonCreekHistory.com
At any rate, here are some people who most likely could have passed that test with flying colors:
Herbert Hoover - the first US president born west of the Mississippi, Hoover attended a one-room schoolhouse in West Branch, Iowa – He spent much of his youth with his pioneer uncle in Newberg, Oregon.
Laura Ingalls Wilder – Attended a one-room school in De Smet, South Dakota, the basis for her Little House on the Prairie books. She also taught at one-room schools beginning at age 17.
Grant Wood – One of America’s best-known painters taught at a one-room school in Iowa in the early 1900s.
Clifford E. Paine – designer and engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge attended Peachbelt School in southwest Michigan.
The Graduates of the “One-Armed School” – The wives of atomic scientists transported to remote Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1940s, started up a one-room school in a log cabin for their kids. Early estimates put the pupils’ average IQ at 150. The local joke was that anybody who couldn’t make the grade at school could always qualify for a job at Los Alamos labs.
And finally, if a kid has to go to school, it really should be in places like these:
6. Mesa Schoolhouse, Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Credit: DQmountaingirl
Credit: DQmountaingirl
5. The Old Schoolhouse, Jefferson, Colorado – Built around 1901
4. Schoolhouse with the Hearst Castle in the Background.
Credit: KatRya
2. Grafton Schoolhouse, near Zion Park, Utah – One of the most photographed structures in the western US.
Credit: motionblur
1. Calf-A, Dell, Montana – Originally built as a schoolhouse in 1903, it is now a café with some of the best pies in the western United States.
Credit: My-West.com
Credit: My-West.com
Send us your one-room school photos and anecdotes!
Credit: t.magnum
California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Utah, final exam, one room schoolhouse | in Back to School, One Room Schools