Posted on 03/30/2009 8:54:01 AM PDT by Leg Olam
Sure. Metric is not new. It was founded by France in 1791. Any International trade (cloth, chocolate, etc.) would have led to an encounter with the metric system.
You've obviously never bought or sold grain. It is done by weight. How is that possible? Because a certain moisture content is supposed and that equates to an exact weight.
If you sell grain today they measure the moisture content and dock the price per bushel if it is too wet.
Thank you. You said it much better than I. I suspected that the piece could very well be a slanted attempt to make our current educational system appear lacking. Having worked in higher education for over 30 years and watched the quality of high school graduates decline I just natually tended to accept the article as true.
Dumbing down: the proof [a copy of a test for 11-year-olds from 1898]
The other site claiming to “debunk” it admits that it is a genuine test, but questions whether it was an eighth grade test.
I’m not “all” that old, but I remember the kinds of things we studied in the first eight years of school, and it corresponds neatly to what is on this test. Lots of geography, lots of arithmetic problems. This exam isn’t that different from what we might have seen in the sixth grade, actually.
Go back a few years before the date of this test, and things were tougher yet. You’ll remember that at one time everyone had to have latin and greek before they could think about going to college. At college they would get more latin and greek and hebrew too.
Wow! From FR in 2004 none the less! My guess is that most students today would not know what the word ‘parse’ ment let alone what ‘nominative singular, genitive plural’ relates to in english let alone latin.
True. My grandparents were farmers, but I never was in the buying/selling end of it. I always understood it to be a volume measurement. I even looked it up, because I wasn't sure, and it came back as a volume measurement. Then I went to figure how they accounted for different products, because I knew a bushel of apples weighed differently from a bushel of corn or wheat, and found each product was given an accepted weight per bushel.
Kind of a really weird way to get to the value.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
e.z., climit is the earth gettin warmer cuz of conservatives n rednecks burnin carbon to make carbon global warmin. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
thats them conservatives agin, kuz kansas done voted fur two menny conservatives, and their global warmin their state till its burnt up. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
rivers soak up global warmin gases, n that aint so bad win the gases goes away to another state, lessin yourin that other state, then you get burnt up stead of the conservatives getin burnt up, the ones thats ruinin the global wit all they're warmin. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
4. Describe the mountains of North America
the mountains ar kinda like the plains but higher n ruggeder, and their turrible places fur wind mills cause them windmills is eyesores, n thats why holland duz such a gud joba hidin they're wind mills, cuz nobodie'd wanna see such ugly stuff, even thow wind mills dont cause global warmin cept they make people think electricijuice iz okay when its not cuz it causes warming n gets us burnt up. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
8. ... Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
ewe guessed it, global warmin agin, them conservative carbon gases iz bubblin in the Pacific n makin it warm up lik a soda bin left out in the sun. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
well, first it swirls round till it forms clouds n soaks up all the acid from conservatives' factories n gives us acid rain n then the acid rain kills the trees and runs off the farms with nitrates that kills the litl fish, n finally the acid nitrate water gets to the dams that kill the salmon n big fish, n if it goes thru a nukular power plant, the acid nitrate water gets all radioactive, so it can burble thru the reactur n make the animals downstream glow in the dark n die, n else the acid nitrate water goes through a regular power plant where it gits heated up to where it kills the aquatic plants n then runs down to poison the cute bares win their tryin to ketch dinner in the acid rain nitrate farm runoff overheated water. Ms. teacher sez alGore tole her so it muss be true,
I admit partial ignorance. I express shame for it. My grandparents farmed and I should know better.
A classical education is a wondrous thing to have. I have some of it, but it was at the beginning of the involvement of the Feds when education was drastically dumbed down.
They most certainly would know the weightof a bushel of wheat. Common knowledge at the time.
How many people actually graduated or even made it to 8th grade in Kansas in 1895? My guess is that if you the same percentage of kids would graduate today as did back in the 19th century (if you taught the same subjects). Or vice versa, how would 19th century kids do if they had to take todays calculus, chemistry and physics classes?
What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft.. Long at $20 per metre?
40 x 16 = 640 linear feet
1 foot = 0.3048 meters
640 feet x 0.3048 = 195.072 meters
195.072 meters x $20 per meter = $3901.44
We look through old textbooks at the family farm which was built in 1830. (We’re a family of packrats - LOL!) What 6th graders were expected to know in the 1800s and early 1900s wouldn’t even be taught to seniors now. Amazing.
“How many people actually graduated or even made it to 8th grade in Kansas in 1895? “
That probably depended upon if you had to work the farm or if you lived in town. Many ‘kids’ in grade school in those days were in their teens or beyond.
So you are arguing that the width is immaterial and that the boards were sold by the linear foot, not by the area?
OK, I can buy that.
What IS suspicious about this question is that the price is ridiculously high for 1895, and looks more like a current price.
$3901.44 would be about 9 years worth of average wages in 1895. Seems a little steep for 640 sq ft of planking!
a home full of items from 1830 thru today!
I would like to see the antiques roadshow visit your farm
well you could always have cut your own lumber, its not like there was a home depot in every town
Very impressive, but if you think about what kids are learning today, we could stump a few 19th century Kansans.
1. When designing a financial spreadsheet, should you start with a DOS or Windows platform?
2. Two cars drive from Altoona to Biscayne, a distance of 120 miles. One travels 50 mph. The other travels 40 mph and makes but drives in reverse for ten minutes. When does the first car arrive? The second?
3. Celia downloads 14 ring tones on her cell phone. Brian downloads 40% more. Brian attempts to download ten from his landline. How many total ringtones are downloaded?
The kids in Kansas would have been unfamiliar with these things, and would have had a harder or perhaps impossible time trying to answer them. A lot of the toughness of the Kansas example is due to our unfamiliarity with the references. Most of us are not farmers any more.
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