Nice find. What I would be more interested to find out is how it compares to tests that are presently being given to 8th graders. It might be difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison though. I don't seem to recall having an actual final exam in 8th grade.
I don't think I did, but Texas has something equivalent: the TAKS test. I doubt actual copies are available, but the social studies practice test is at:
Holy cow. I took that test (it was called TAAS back then) and was basically just an easy day in school. It was nowhere near as tough as some of those questions look.
It had only one history question. The rest were reading comprehension questions that anyone with fairly basic English and logic skills should be able to answer.
I'm not a fan of memorization. But it seems plausible to argue that contemporary education hasn't added anything very challenging in it's place.
That page gives no evidence that it is fake, it's all just making excuses for how people shouldn't be expected to do well on it. I followed a couple of links bac and found Snopes's definition of "False" as "claims which cannot be established as true by a preponderance of (reliable) evidence." Which is easy enough, if you don't want it to be true under this standard, just don't look too hard for evidence.
I had never really looked into Snopes before, this just knocked its reputation back a good bit for me.
What do you propose we use to determine veracity if not evidence? Should we just believe everything we hear?
And isn't what you just did with Snopes a pretty good example of not wanting wanting something to be correct and not looking too hard for evidence to the contrary?
Snopes' notes suggest that the exam was first printed in the Salina Journal. Their website includes this page, which includes some more backstory, as well as answers: http://www.salina.com/1895test/
The claim at the top that they're saying is "false" is: "An 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards", a claim that's usually attached to this document when it's being forwarded around the internet. It's true that this post doesn't make that claim, but I posted the Snopes link just to try to head off the conversation from going in that direction. My comment would have been much better if I'd added more than just the link, though.
As soon as I saw this title I was going to post the Snopes rebuttal, but you beat me to it.
A non-tech family member will send this in an email chain at least once every six months along with some variant on this message: "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING, OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS POOP!?!!" (All caps used for quote truth/ accuracy).
A statement being contradicted on Snopes isn't automatically rendered false. The education system, in at least some locations and some subjects, is indeed declining, based on the statements and experiences of several public school teachers I know personally.
An example of education system decline, since apparently at least one person doesn't believe me:
In the state where one of my teacher friends works, the statewide high school math curriculum currently consists of Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-calculus, and Calculus AB or BC. Advanced students can take Algebra as early as 7th grade, while struggling students take it as late as 10th grade. Soon, Algebra through Pre-calculus will be replaced with Math 1, Math 2, and Math 3, with Math 1 being mandatory for all 9th graders, Math 2 for 10th graders, and Math 3 for 11th graders. There are "honors" versions of each class available that differ little from the corresponding non-honors class.
This change, as it was explained to me, hurts both gifted students and struggling students. The gifted students are held back by as much as 3 years from where they could be in math, while struggling students are advanced regardless of competence.
"I have heard from someone that there is a specific instance where students do not partake in an education that is optimal for every single of them" != "The education system, in at least some locations and some subjects, is indeed declining"
Just describing the current state of affairs is by definition insufficient to be able to say something about the evolution over time of the quality of said affairs.
Not over the past 100+ years, no, but between two years ago and two years from now, yes. Further, this isn't a change that is not "optimal for every single [one] of them," this is a change that is significantly suboptimal for the majority of students.
May be, we don't know; if you have data or (somewhat) robust theories on why and how, please tell. My point was that your 'proof' wasn't proof at all for your stated premise. I suspect this will be hard for you, because I don't have rational reasons to believe that such a sudden drop-off is happening. I don't really know though, I'm just trusting on an abstract 'common sense' approach; the best I have in situation like this where objective measure are not available (to me).
Anyway please feel free to share your theories and data on why you think that over such a very short amount of time the level of education will take a sharp drop-off.
Maybe I missed it, but at no point did I see Snopes give an alternate age or source for the test. They only argue that the test isn't any harder than a modern test, which is IMO debatable.
Hmm, snopes doesn't seem to be saying that this is not, in fact, an exam from 1895, just that current educational standards haven't declined since then. So? Neither the HN headline nor the article make the claim that snopes refutes. Strawman.
This is interesting, just because it illustrates how the world has changed since 1895.
Pointing out a classic fallacy is hardly a quibble, and certainly not a question of semantics.
On the other hand, yes, it's quite true that all arguments appear in a specific context. I think we must live in quite different political contexts, though, because I don't see anything in the article that implies a decline in educational standards.
It's a dumb question that implies a conclusion that the text doesn't support. Snopes addresses the falseness of the implication adequately, and we're reproducing much of their reasoning here.
It's not a dumb question at all. The world has changed in 115 years, and it's not at all a obvious that the average HN reader has the knowledge and skills that were deemed important in Kansas in 1895.
The question its self doesn't imply a conclusion. If you come to one, it's because you have knowledge of the questioner's intentions that I do not.
The title is, "Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895? Take a Look". Snopes does a perfectly good job of making the point that merely "taking a look" will not help you to answer that question.
Is it fake? Snopes says a lot about it not really demonstrating a decline in education, but I didn't see them make a strong call on whether they were or weren't actual questions from 1895?
Simple interest would be calculated by simple division, but for compound interest you would definitely need more information. Maybe it was safe to assume at the time that students were taught about simple, rather than compound, interest.
Here comes the flame war about how our educational system has declined in the past hundred years. In an attempt to head that off at the pass (Hey, if you're going to have a cliché argument I get to use a cliché) here is the problem with that. This is a test designed to review the material deemed important by one person in 1895 (If it is really from then). The class would have gone over what "epochs into which U.S. History is divided". This is the same thing with the stupid joke that I always heard when I was doing calculus and adults were around "When I was growing up, you didn't have to spell out your math homework". That is code for "I have no idea what's going on here" and let's be honest, that is fine.
I would bet that most people who read this could have answered almost all of these questions at some point in their life. We have to remember that the purpose of education is to teach you how to learn and how to adjust to your current situations. You learn what you need to get the job done and you relearn what you can't remember to complete the job.
EDIT: It's good to see that Snopes already did this. Thank you Snopes and thanks glhaynes for pointing us to it.
More importantly, many of the test questions are dependent on rote memorization of facts that are nearly useless in the accomplishment of successful life. How many bushels in a tare? What is a "principle part" of a verb? These things can be found on Google. I have all the skills tested by this test, but lack some of the knowledge. Since my brain is just a cache for knowledge, I can always fault it in if the need arises.
I think of it more as a look at how different life was in 1895. You couldn't Google anything. A farm owner probably would benefit from being able to do those math problems in his head.
I think you are right about how it reflects a different time.
I doubt many average farmers kids made it through to 8th Grade though. Anyone who was taking the 8th Grade exam was probably reasonably wealthy, looking to continue studying, and take on a profession of some kind.
But the long-term memory is a memory cache that shrinks when not used. That's why the ignorant are always thrashing about, no matter how clever they are.
I don't agree with you, I rather think farmers would need to know how to convert things like bushels just as much as I need to know how to convert milliamps to amps. The only difference is metric is easy, so you don't need to get tested on it.
My point is that I am not a farmer, thus whether I can pass this test from memory is totally uninteresting and means nothing about whether or not education is declining in America. (I.e. I agree with the parent.)
The "tare" is the weight of the container holding the item being weighed, in this case presumably the weight of the wagon, which is why the question specifies that weight. If you ask Google "tare in bushels", your comment itself shows up as the top answer :-).
It's hard for me to feel inadequate when looking at this test—regardless of whether it's real or not—because tests are typically dependent on your retention of what you are taught. If you're an 8th grader whose teacher doesn't explain what elementary sounds are, it would have no impact on whether or not you could pass the 8th grade.
More specifically, this is a test heavily based on facts. Nothing wrong with that. Knowing and retaining facts is important to life. Even if you have Google.
But the relevance of facts is based on context, and will change through time. Many of the facts tested for just aren't relevant in today's life. It's likely several of these weren't even relevant back in 1895 and were just added because 'they were always asked' or something.
If that teacher doesn't explain it, but there are such questions on a test, it certainly would have an impact on whether or not you could pass the 8th grade.
In either case, it does have an effect on whether you know what elementary sounds are. If you missed out on a lot of such mere knowledge, you may also grow up without understanding that the world, and the powers of human beings, can be analyzed in that way. This is likely to have an effect on whether you can analyze at all.
Have capitalization rules changed over time? IIRC, German capitalizes most nouns, and German was very nearly chosen for America's national language. Further, reading a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, one can see that Rights, Happiness, and other important words were capitalized.
It seems to me that this still falls under the current rule of capitalizing proper nouns, though in this instance the nouns are made proper for exactly the reason you stated.
This always makes me think of Isaac Asimov's classic essay, "Forget It!" in which he gets a hold of a hundred-year-old math textbook and writes about what's in there that isn't taught anymore. (A lot of stuff about computation using long-forgotten English units of measurement, for one.)
Anyone know if it's online? I have a print copy, but I can't find anything with a quick Googling.
If I remember correctly I was tested on stuff that is just as hard or harder at the end of 8th grade. Maybe with less rote memorization and more thinking, more opportunity to demonstrate that I actually understood everything [0].
Consider also that they talked about all those things prior to the exam. Could you pass it right now? Maybe not. Could you pass it after a few weeks learning about the material? With flying colors.
It’s interesting to read the questions but certainly not at all indicative of any developments in the educational system. You need statistics and creative social scientists to find out something about that.
[0] I personally don’t like rote memorization. I recognize that rote memorization can sometimes be useful – I don’t need a calculator for simple multiplications – but I would much rather just understand something and develop from that understanding a clear picture of which facts are important enough to memorize.
Right, but this is basic, practical stuff for everyday life (except for the stuff about bushels and rods). Even though you can learn it and then pass, the fact that you are past 8th grade and cannot means your education is deficient (mine as well).
Rote memorization is underrated. Yes, memorization alone is useless, but critical thinking without anything to think about is also useless.
So you can still pass all your tests you wrote in school? I certainly can’t and I don’t consider my education deficient because of that. To say nothing of the fact that those questions are more than a century out of date.
I also think you are misunderstanding the point I’m making about rote memorization. What good does it if you can merely name and define all the parts of speech? You can learn that whole list and all the right definitions without ever understanding anything. You can answer that question in the test completely without knowing anything of worth. There are better ways of testing whether you know what the parts of speech are and whether you can identify them.
Disagree completely. I could only answer one or maybe two of the grammar questions and yet I speak and write English just fine. Honestly, I don't even know what the "Principle Parts" of a verb refer to and I certainly can't list them. What bearing does that have on anything?
It's always nice to be able to take a machine apart, see how it works, and put it back together successfully. Language is a tool used every day by everyone, but fewer and fewer people know how it actually works. I wish schools still taught grammar properly. I hardly learned anything about how English (or language in general) worked until I took a foreign language course in high school.
Some aspects of grammar are important, but it's important to reflect on the purpose of its study: The ability to construct a sentence that's cogent, clear and understandable both in writing and while speaking.
Some things are simply not important to know as a native speaker but still manage to get taught in English classes. A couple of examples:
1. The different between "that" and "which" (e.g. The curtains that/which cover the windows). Either way is perfectly clear and rigid adherence to a correct "rule" is just language fascism.
2. Terminology for many things that are specific to grammar are also pretty useless. Words like 'participle', 'split-infinitive', and 'gerund' (I literally had to look that up to remember it) are basically useless. Specifically from the test are phrases which obviously have been taught within the class, but don't have any real meaning outside of the concept it's teaching: "Parts of Speech" and "Define Case".
Grammar is only important insomuch as you can write and speak intelligently and coherently. Construction beyond that belongs in a linguistics class specifically focused on the mechanics of language.
Good communication is crucial to pretty much everything in life.
Additionally, grammar is not merely a matter of formulating sentences properly. Learning grammar structures your thought and allows you to make precise distinctions, important for sophisticated thinking.
"Even though you can learn it and then pass, the fact that you are past 8th grade and cannot means your education is deficient (mine as well)."
No, it means that people forget things that they don't use.
This test is testing specific content knowledge. Learning content doesn't matter. The content of your job or whatever changes depending on what you're doing. Like other people have said, if you were being taught these topics for the term leading up to the test, it's an easy test - there's no thinking involved, just memory.
What matters is the PROCESS of learning, and in that respect, I think the modern methods of education are far better than straight ROTE learning. (Though not optimal by any means)
Right, I definitely feel bad to have forgotten Aspinwall, if ever I knew where it was. Yet I doubt that anyone worth reading has used the word "fane" since about Alfred Lord Tennyson--I won't feign shame for missing that one.
I bet a fair number of HN readers (the Americans anyway), could pass Grammar, History, and Geography. So remind me what critical thinking Orthography feeds.
Actually, rote memorization is overrated, it's not a natural way for humans to remember information. The brain is much better at remembering locations and events, rather than lists of items, I've posted this before, but if you've not seen it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
Comparing compulsory education standards to non-compulsory education standards is unfair and unenlightening. The forces affecting the school are so different they can not be said to be the same thing except inasmuch as they share the word "schooling".
I say this as one who is carefully refraining from going any deeper because I have as rich an opinion on the topic as anyone else around here, one not friendly to current practices (to put my cards on the table), but this is a non-data-point, at least without a lot more context, so much as to dwarf this little tidbit anyhow.
This is similar to the kind of tests we had in India when I was in the 4th-8th grade. We had world history instead of US history, and did not have Orthography, but those are the only differences that I can see. I might have aced it back then, but it would be hard to get about 50% if I did it today.
I don't think this can provide any insight into our current education system, it wouldn't make much sense to compare them...
However it is a rather fascinating look at life in the late 1800's, and what the common concerns were.
The section on linguistics; back then there was no large (non-print) media and the US English dialects were more splintered. Additionally English hadn't become quite the lingua franca it is today; (educated) people generally knew several languages in order to communicate with people. If you read books written around that time, it's rather common for the author to quote French or Latin without translation, with the implicit understanding that the reader knows them.
The math questions also provide some really neat insight into what were considered "common practical tasks"...in my schooling most of the word problems were phrased in terms of buying things at the supermarket or for more advanced topics building skyscrapers and bridges etc... Here however it's all about bushels of wheat etc.
I don't know. I do know that I could write essays several pages in length, do math up through algebra/geometry, know both American and European history, and have some knowledge of the sciences, which this totally ignores.
In 1895 I would have been too busy being an immigrant farmer with the rest of my family to go to school at all, so I'm pretty ambivalent about what my standardized testing fate might have been.
Had I gone to 8th grade in 1895, I would be familiar with all of the anachronisms.
Also, some of the questions are clearly lists that, were this "real", would be taught by rote memorization. The sort of thing you would be able to chant back without thinking if you were in the classroom where the lists were repeated over and over for you to "learn".
I'd be curious to see the answers for someone who got an average grade on this test.
It's not much of a test by modern standards - it's more a few quizzes strung together with somewhat generous time limits. Some things stick out:
1) Math section is farming-centric, as people have pointed out; it ends on making examples of paperwork. The first question is obscure terminology for something we cover in second grade or so. No algebra. Especially generous time limit for these questions, though you have to remember your bushels.
2) "fane, fain, feign" Those days had a different fashion in popular homophones. Also, interesting the focus on indicating pronunciation and breaking words down into syllables - I remember doing that well before 8th grade.
3) The geography section mentions the rest of the world, huzzah. ...Well, to test memorization of a few names. Otherwise, a better section than the others.
4) No questions about the Civil War except to describe some famous battles and recognize the year it ended.
Regarding the arithmetic, the finance questions stick out to me: Arithmetic questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. Especially #8.
Regarding orthography, I find the mention of etymology, and the morphological question (#7), interesting, as these are pieces in a toolkit for understanding previously-unseen words.
The geography section is as much about meteorology as it is about placenames, which is awesome. This kind of scientific whole-world view is amusing contrasted with the Kansas Evolution Hearings.
What was with the focus on events that happened at specific dates? I understand the importance of knowing when events happened relative to each other, but memorizing dates seems a bit much. Perhaps the lack of easy access to reference materials made that kind of knowledge more important.
If I had attended school for 8 or 9 years prior to 1895, almost certainly. Many of these questions rely on knowing precise terminology no doubt used in that class or its textbook.
The time difference is the only thing that would hinder me. Heck, try asking a college student in 1895 a super easy question like how many states are in the United States in 2010.
Honestly speaking, could I pass this test if I sat down and took it right now? No.
However I do believe that, given a study guide (i.e my notes, and a test book) and a reasonable idea of what would be on the test, I could pass the test--just as I passed many tests during my own educational era. Of course, a couple of days later most answers would be gone from my memory.
I've always been that way when it comes to learning, I don't retain details, I retain general idea's. For mathematics and sciences--problem solving, and for literature and history--that rules exists and many important events have occurred, all of which I can research and reference such material when the need arises. I'll admit, I'd like to able to recall names, and dates, and formulas at will--but frankly, as I obstinately claimed as a child, I've never actually needed such detailed information in real life. Generalizations, or time willing, a quick reference to related material are all you need.
103 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI like how the volume and weight of a bushel of wheat was common knowledge :)
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
It had only one history question. The rest were reading comprehension questions that anyone with fairly basic English and logic skills should be able to answer.
I'm not a fan of memorization. But it seems plausible to argue that contemporary education hasn't added anything very challenging in it's place.
Snopes is TFM for this kind of unlikely forwarded-email fodder. Whoever submitted it was woefully negligent in not checking.
I had never really looked into Snopes before, this just knocked its reputation back a good bit for me.
And isn't what you just did with Snopes a pretty good example of not wanting wanting something to be correct and not looking too hard for evidence to the contrary?
Read the actual 'claim' statment. The claim is that the exam demonstrates a decline in education, not that the exam is real.
A non-tech family member will send this in an email chain at least once every six months along with some variant on this message: "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING, OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS POOP!?!!" (All caps used for quote truth/ accuracy).
In the state where one of my teacher friends works, the statewide high school math curriculum currently consists of Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-calculus, and Calculus AB or BC. Advanced students can take Algebra as early as 7th grade, while struggling students take it as late as 10th grade. Soon, Algebra through Pre-calculus will be replaced with Math 1, Math 2, and Math 3, with Math 1 being mandatory for all 9th graders, Math 2 for 10th graders, and Math 3 for 11th graders. There are "honors" versions of each class available that differ little from the corresponding non-honors class.
This change, as it was explained to me, hurts both gifted students and struggling students. The gifted students are held back by as much as 3 years from where they could be in math, while struggling students are advanced regardless of competence.
Just describing the current state of affairs is by definition insufficient to be able to say something about the evolution over time of the quality of said affairs.
Anyway please feel free to share your theories and data on why you think that over such a very short amount of time the level of education will take a sharp drop-off.
This is interesting, just because it illustrates how the world has changed since 1895.
Things have implications beyond their explicit claims.
I assumed that a snopes link would credit or discredit the claim (that this was a test from 1895.)
Rolls off the tongue better.
On the other hand, yes, it's quite true that all arguments appear in a specific context. I think we must live in quite different political contexts, though, because I don't see anything in the article that implies a decline in educational standards.
It's a dumb question that implies a conclusion that the text doesn't support. Snopes addresses the falseness of the implication adequately, and we're reproducing much of their reasoning here.
The question its self doesn't imply a conclusion. If you come to one, it's because you have knowledge of the questioner's intentions that I do not.
I would bet that most people who read this could have answered almost all of these questions at some point in their life. We have to remember that the purpose of education is to teach you how to learn and how to adjust to your current situations. You learn what you need to get the job done and you relearn what you can't remember to complete the job.
EDIT: It's good to see that Snopes already did this. Thank you Snopes and thanks glhaynes for pointing us to it.
BTW, tare isn't a unit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_weight
I doubt many average farmers kids made it through to 8th Grade though. Anyone who was taking the 8th Grade exam was probably reasonably wealthy, looking to continue studying, and take on a profession of some kind.
But the relevance of facts is based on context, and will change through time. Many of the facts tested for just aren't relevant in today's life. It's likely several of these weren't even relevant back in 1895 and were just added because 'they were always asked' or something.
In either case, it does have an effect on whether you know what elementary sounds are. If you missed out on a lot of such mere knowledge, you may also grow up without understanding that the world, and the powers of human beings, can be analyzed in that way. This is likely to have an effect on whether you can analyze at all.
#1: Not "Parts of Speech" in #2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_declaration_independenc...
It's not an issue of importance but of making a generic word into one with specific meaning.
(And speaking of capitalization, I can't beleive Deletionpedia has a whole page about whether "Internet" should be capitalized or not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_capitalization_convent... )
Snopes to the rescue once again: http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/german.asp
People had far less to know.
Anyone know if it's online? I have a print copy, but I can't find anything with a quick Googling.
Consider also that they talked about all those things prior to the exam. Could you pass it right now? Maybe not. Could you pass it after a few weeks learning about the material? With flying colors.
It’s interesting to read the questions but certainly not at all indicative of any developments in the educational system. You need statistics and creative social scientists to find out something about that.
[0] I personally don’t like rote memorization. I recognize that rote memorization can sometimes be useful – I don’t need a calculator for simple multiplications – but I would much rather just understand something and develop from that understanding a clear picture of which facts are important enough to memorize.
Rote memorization is underrated. Yes, memorization alone is useless, but critical thinking without anything to think about is also useless.
I also think you are misunderstanding the point I’m making about rote memorization. What good does it if you can merely name and define all the parts of speech? You can learn that whole list and all the right definitions without ever understanding anything. You can answer that question in the test completely without knowing anything of worth. There are better ways of testing whether you know what the parts of speech are and whether you can identify them.
Some things are simply not important to know as a native speaker but still manage to get taught in English classes. A couple of examples:
1. The different between "that" and "which" (e.g. The curtains that/which cover the windows). Either way is perfectly clear and rigid adherence to a correct "rule" is just language fascism.
2. Terminology for many things that are specific to grammar are also pretty useless. Words like 'participle', 'split-infinitive', and 'gerund' (I literally had to look that up to remember it) are basically useless. Specifically from the test are phrases which obviously have been taught within the class, but don't have any real meaning outside of the concept it's teaching: "Parts of Speech" and "Define Case".
Grammar is only important insomuch as you can write and speak intelligently and coherently. Construction beyond that belongs in a linguistics class specifically focused on the mechanics of language.
Additionally, grammar is not merely a matter of formulating sentences properly. Learning grammar structures your thought and allows you to make precise distinctions, important for sophisticated thinking.
No, it means that people forget things that they don't use.
This test is testing specific content knowledge. Learning content doesn't matter. The content of your job or whatever changes depending on what you're doing. Like other people have said, if you were being taught these topics for the term leading up to the test, it's an easy test - there's no thinking involved, just memory.
What matters is the PROCESS of learning, and in that respect, I think the modern methods of education are far better than straight ROTE learning. (Though not optimal by any means)
I bet a fair number of HN readers (the Americans anyway), could pass Grammar, History, and Geography. So remind me what critical thinking Orthography feeds.
My, how far we've fallen.
Comparing compulsory education standards to non-compulsory education standards is unfair and unenlightening. The forces affecting the school are so different they can not be said to be the same thing except inasmuch as they share the word "schooling".
I say this as one who is carefully refraining from going any deeper because I have as rich an opinion on the topic as anyone else around here, one not friendly to current practices (to put my cards on the table), but this is a non-data-point, at least without a lot more context, so much as to dwarf this little tidbit anyhow.
http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/algebra.html
I suspect so, maybe in the 7th or 8th grade.
However it is a rather fascinating look at life in the late 1800's, and what the common concerns were.
The section on linguistics; back then there was no large (non-print) media and the US English dialects were more splintered. Additionally English hadn't become quite the lingua franca it is today; (educated) people generally knew several languages in order to communicate with people. If you read books written around that time, it's rather common for the author to quote French or Latin without translation, with the implicit understanding that the reader knows them.
The math questions also provide some really neat insight into what were considered "common practical tasks"...in my schooling most of the word problems were phrased in terms of buying things at the supermarket or for more advanced topics building skyscrapers and bridges etc... Here however it's all about bushels of wheat etc.
Really neat.
Also, some of the questions are clearly lists that, were this "real", would be taught by rote memorization. The sort of thing you would be able to chant back without thinking if you were in the classroom where the lists were repeated over and over for you to "learn".
It's not much of a test by modern standards - it's more a few quizzes strung together with somewhat generous time limits. Some things stick out:
1) Math section is farming-centric, as people have pointed out; it ends on making examples of paperwork. The first question is obscure terminology for something we cover in second grade or so. No algebra. Especially generous time limit for these questions, though you have to remember your bushels.
2) "fane, fain, feign" Those days had a different fashion in popular homophones. Also, interesting the focus on indicating pronunciation and breaking words down into syllables - I remember doing that well before 8th grade.
3) The geography section mentions the rest of the world, huzzah. ...Well, to test memorization of a few names. Otherwise, a better section than the others.
4) No questions about the Civil War except to describe some famous battles and recognize the year it ended.
Regarding orthography, I find the mention of etymology, and the morphological question (#7), interesting, as these are pieces in a toolkit for understanding previously-unseen words.
The geography section is as much about meteorology as it is about placenames, which is awesome. This kind of scientific whole-world view is amusing contrasted with the Kansas Evolution Hearings.
What isn't as impressive (and has been pointed out elsewhere) is that those are the only science questions.
The time difference is the only thing that would hinder me. Heck, try asking a college student in 1895 a super easy question like how many states are in the United States in 2010.
However I do believe that, given a study guide (i.e my notes, and a test book) and a reasonable idea of what would be on the test, I could pass the test--just as I passed many tests during my own educational era. Of course, a couple of days later most answers would be gone from my memory.
I've always been that way when it comes to learning, I don't retain details, I retain general idea's. For mathematics and sciences--problem solving, and for literature and history--that rules exists and many important events have occurred, all of which I can research and reference such material when the need arises. I'll admit, I'd like to able to recall names, and dates, and formulas at will--but frankly, as I obstinately claimed as a child, I've never actually needed such detailed information in real life. Generalizations, or time willing, a quick reference to related material are all you need.