<p>So let’s ask the obvious. What % of children even made it to the 8th grade back then, versus having to work in mines or on the family farm or doing piecework or whatever to support the family? Let’s not romanticize the past.</p>
<p>To state the obvious, to compare the children of 1912 and 2012 you need to know not just what questions were being set in 1912 but how well the students did on them. What was the passing score in 1912, and what fraction of students passed? Furthermore, Pizzagirl correctly notes that many students did not make it to 8th grade in 1912.</p>
<p>That said, maybe we should have junior high school exit exams that determine whether students can progress to high school. Question 4 on the math exam was </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I bet at least 25% of U.S. high school graduates cannot answer questions at this level. If so, what do their diplomas mean?</p>
<p>I suspect the idea is that the cost (in time and energy) of the distractions today is greater than the benefits of the improved technology with regard to intellectual development of children. It seems plausible.</p>
<p>I doubt that anyone is suggesting that any significant biological evolution has occurred in four generations, particularly given that it was not directed by some all-powerful planning agency. However, this does call to mind the observation that dogs generally (not my border collie of course!) appear to be less intelligent than wolves, and also that turkeys have been bred over many generations to be far less intelligent than wild turkeys. That is what happens when you weed out all the wild or rebellious ones over many generations, which civilization tends to do with people (partly joking).</p>
<p>And if they don’t pass this hypothetical exam, to the coal mines or factory floor they go! </p>
<p>Really, Beliavsky, your lack of ever caring whether poorer students ever master material is astounding. If they don’t get it first try, too bad so sad. Of course, it just so happens that the fields you prize are the ones you are good in. </p>
<p>Play a thought experiment and suppose passage to high school or college was predicated on the skills of painting a original composition, composing a sonnet or original piece of music, turning in a convincing acting performance, performing a ballet, or compassionately being there for someone in an emotional situation. How well would you do in that up-or-out? </p>
<p>You never seen to care about development and potential, only evaluation.</p>
<p>I don’t necessarily know if I would say children were “smarter” a century or even a generation or two ago…I think the expectations were just different.</p>
<p>If you want to take it at face value, I would say no. On my father’s side of the family, his father dropped out of high school, but this is because he was expected to work. My own father is not particularly bright and nobody in his family would be able to answer these questions. He asks me how to spell words like “neighbor” and “auction” and needs to use a calculator for simple addition and subtraction. Almost nobody in his school went to college. Going straight to work was the norm.</p>
<p>My mother went to college for some time, and she’s very intelligent, but she admitted to me that she dropped out of trigonometry her senior year because it was “too hard” and “wasn’t required of her”. She could not answer most of these arithmetic questions.</p>
<p>/anecdote</p>
<p>I think the vast majority of us could not answer these without thinking deeply about it.</p>
<p>But at the same time, I think the focus has shifted away from rote memorization and recitation, which was popular back in the 1900’s and earlier. Education is more holistic, if you will. Nowadays we don’t make kindergarteners write their alphabet letters over and over and over again in their primers to make sure their handwriting is perfect or needle 4th graders about who invented the cotton gin. Instead, we ask “how was the cotton gin important?” and more critical questions.</p>
<p>These questions are, IMO, far more important than being able to name every state (although it is disappointing that many people can’t).</p>
<p>To put it bluntly, rote memorization will not serve you well in life and hasn’t been relevant for the past 100 years. If you look at South Korea’s education system, the government is desperately trying to move away from their current exam-obsessed model to a more holistic approach, because so many students are fixated on “passing the test” and becoming corporate robots.</p>
<p>You can get your hands on pretty much any information in the world in 5 seconds with the internet. Technology requires new skills and critical thinking that weren’t used a century ago.</p>
<p>I don’t think our brains have changed, but we can use them to do a lot more impressive things</p>
<p>Would they have been smarter if they were given the same opportunities as children today? I have no idea. Were they better educated? Of course not. Nearly 8% of people in the US were illiterate in 1910. Now, virtually no one is.
And that’s not even beginning to talk about what it was like for children from marginalized groups. The illiteracy rate among people of color was 30.5% in 1910. Anecdote time: My grandmother, who was going to school only 70-80 years ago, had to move to a different state to go to high school due to her race. There were not many children in her poor community who could afford to do that or who had relatives elsewhere to live with. When I look at the census done in that area in 1920, my great-great grandmother - who had what approximates to an Associate’s Degree now - is one of the few with an education beyond 8th grade.
The children of the privileged, wealthy upperclass were still often educated by private tutors or at elite boarding schools a hundred years ago. Their education was certainly better than the average one today, and perhaps in some ways better than the best education that can be afforded in the US today. But the average child had no shot at such an education.</p>
<p>Here is something to consider, what accounts to being ‘high achieving’ among most high schools today is to take BC Calc, multiple AP’s that require high level writing and analysis skills, being talented in multiple areas such as music, sports etc.
What accounted as ‘high achieving’ back then was going to school past the 8th grade and the so called ‘brilliant’ students went to college. (today 66.2% of High school graduates go to college*)
Today ‘normal/average’ is passing highschool with pre-calc or Algebra II finished. In fact this is seen as the minimum among many people.
Back then not studying past the 8th grade was the norm, unlike today when those who don’t pass high-school are looked down upon. </p>
<p>We can also look at courses, Algebra is a basic course in highschool, in the past most students didn’t get that far. (The questions in the test can be classified as pre-algebra, or even arithmetic in some cases) Also in regards to the Flynn effect, the article cited states that this is mainly due to a development of skills such as critical thinking that weren’t as in demand during earlier generations. The article also states that in terms of other measures of intelligence similar scores are reached regardless of age group.</p>
<p>To sum all of that up: We learn different things, and are expected to learn at a higher level than previous generations, because our environment demands it of us in order to succeed. Neither group is truly smarter, they learned different skills. Many people today can’t change the oil in their vehicle, doesn’t know how to live off the land, etc. Our skills have changed with time, so we learn differently but we can’t cross apply the standards over time periods.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure I could have aced that test in 8th grade, back when I knew exactly how many feet were in a mile, how many cubic feet in a cord, and just where the Ohio River goes (do I get partial credit for knowing SOME of the states it touches?). Also, I knew a lot more battle names then, although I’m not certain I ever knew what the final battle in the French and Indian War was.</p>
<p>An 8th grade education would have been what a responsible clerk in a trading business had, which is completely consistent with the math in that test.</p>
<p>I think the question is - in an environment where I can look up the final battle in the French and Indian War on Wikipedia in one minute flat, is it important that I know the name of the final battle, or is it more important I have the broader, historic context in which that war was fought? Of course, many smart people have attempted to publish their compendium of “what educated Americans should know.”</p>
<p>There are all different types of knowledge and it’s all context-dependent. This is a trivial example, but I was in a line for a concert a few weeks ago and my sandal broke (meaning the part in between my toes). My H and I could not figure out a way to jury-rig a solution and so I was resigned to just going barefoot in a large stadium. The man behind me in line was a manual laborer of some sort. He saw me standing there, assessed the problem visually in a way that we couldn’t, took a pocketknife to create a new hole in the shoe, took one of my H’s shoelaces and jury-rigged a makeshift sandal that lasted me the whole night and was a really clever solution. Now, for all of our fancy-schmancy degrees, who was the smart one in that situation? But he’s not going to get any points on any SAT test for his ability to MacGyver something.</p>
<p>Ha, Pizzagirl, reminds me of the time H used a pair of my pantyhose to replace a belt in my first car. It got us off a mountain and into town. Course H also scored very high on SATs also.</p>