Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: August 7, 2008 - # 8832 - Title:  Educational examinations in 1897 (818)

Back in May, as the school year was ending promotion examinations for certain grades here in Cherokee County were examined closely, especially by the parents of those children who failed had the exams. This controversy even generated a number of Tribune headlines.

            Recently I decided to discard years of accumulated “stuff.” It turned out to be an interesting activity focusing on pleasant memories of the long ago and of those things that were important to me those many years ago.

For one of my family history books I included a chapter dealing with education in my mother’s Appin one-room school where one teacher taught eight grades. Mother attended this school for eight years. Both her father and her grandfather served on that school board. During my clean-up efforts I found a Huron County (Michigan) Promotion Examination dated March 1897. It was “the test” fifth graders had to pass on geography in order to move up to the sixth grade. I found it ironic I had found this examination at the time of this local controversy over examinations, especially for those who had failed their promotion exams recently.

There were ten questions on this 1897 geography examination. The questions intrigued me so I took the test but I won’t reveal my score. But if you are bold enough here is the test and you may want to test yourself to see if you would have been promoted to the sixth grade in 1897. The questions were:

1. What is the surface of the earth? Of what is it composed?

2. How many great land masses are there? What are the called?

3. What is a hemisphere? Name the great land masses in the western hemisphere?

4. What is a river, an island, an ocean, a peninsula, an isthmus?

5. What is the shape of the world? How do we know?

6. On what continent do you live? What countries are on it?

7. Of what is the United States composed? What water is east of it? West [of it]?

8. Name and locate the principal mountain ranges and rivers of the United States?

9. Name the North Central States with some of the chief products of each [state]?

10. Which state produces [the] most cotton, iron, salt, horses, lumber, gold, wool, wheat, tobacco, silver?

            Can you imagine a teacher teaching eight grades at the same time? Or can you imagine that each of the students had to walk to school or to ride a horse or be driven, in a horse pulled buggy. And school was basically a winter activity. It began after harvest and ended before planting. This test was dated in March.

            Walking to school was the norm, even for me in my early grades, before school buses were introduced in 1935, a progressive project my mom and dad helped bring about and a project that would ‘change’ the community forever. An eighth grade education was all that was expected by the community. They called busing ‘progressive.’ And it is important to remember that this was the generation that protected America’s freedoms by fighting World War I and II, and then built a nation of economic prosperity the world had never seen before – and mostly by those who began their education in a one-room eight-grade schoolhouse – heated by a pot-bellied stove the kids had to chop the wood for.

            As I held this yellowing piece of paper in my hands many thought came to mind. One thought was about how much education has changed since mother started school in 1911. Another was how universal education became a major contribution to the world by the United States. Adams pushed universal education in Massachusetts; Thomas Jefferson pushed it in Virginia. The Congress in session in 1787, the year our Constitution was written, passed the Northwest Ordinance that required all territories applying for statehood to establish schools and specified that “religion, morals, and knowledge” be the major subjects taught. The McGuffey Reader was the basic text book. I often wonder to what extent the McGuffey Reader played in building a God fearing nation able to provide for most things people never dreamed possible years before.

            With all the hype we hear about our educational system today I wonder if our schools are any better than they were in 1776 or in 1911. Do we have anyone today in politics who can match the wisdom and knowledge of George Washington; John Adam; Thomas Jefferson; or James Madison? They were the men who molded a nation together that would bring freedom to an enslaved world and change that world forever. But they did it “with the help of the Supreme Judge of the World,” their “Creator,” not by removing God from our society. I often ponder what it would be if this nation was still using the McGuffey text book to teach moral behavior?  I believe America would be a stronger more humane place for all people – of all races.