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Smithsonian Magazine published the 8th grade exam from a county in North Central Kentucky. You will have to follow the link to see the complete exam.
In the early years of the 20th century, the students in Bullitt County, Kentucky, were asked to clear a test that many full-fledged adults would likely be hard-pressed to pass today. The Bullitt County Genealogical Society has a copy of this exam, reproduced below—a mix of math and science and reading and writing and questions on oddly specific factoids–preserved in their museum in the county courthouse.
But just think for a moment: Did you know where Montenegro was when you were 12? Do you know now? (Hint: it’s just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. You know where the Adriatic Sea is, right?)
Or what about this question, which the examiners of BullittCounty deemed necessary knowledge: “Through what waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?” The Bullitt genealogical society has an answer sheet if you want to try the test, but really, this question is just a doozie:
A ship going from England to Manilla by way of the Suez Canal would pass through (perhaps) the English Channel, the North Atlantic Ocean, Bay of Biscay (possibly), Strait of Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden/Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Thailand (may have been called Gulf of Siam at that time), South China Sea.
Eighth graders needed to know about patent rights, the relative size of the liver and mountain range geography. They had to be able to put together an argument for studying physiology. Though some of it is useful, much of the test amounts of little more than an assessment of random factoids. …
James Carafano writes on the president’s problem with history. Perhaps, comments Glenn Reynolds, he gets his history lessons from Howard Zinn.
Whatever the opposite of a charm offensive is, President Obama is on it.
In Chicago on July 24, Obama delivered an hour-long speech in which he complained [3] that “with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.” The mother of one of the four Americans murdered at the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi immediately objected [4]. “He’s wrong. My son is dead. How could that be phony?”
A short while later, Obama was at it again.
Describing an Oval Office visit with the Vietnamese president Truong Tan Song, Mr. Obama reported [5]: “We discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.”
That assertion registered pretty high on the gaffe meter. Noted [6] the editorial team at Investor’s Business Daily, “Few comparisons have been as odious as the one offered by the president linking one of the great mass murderers of history to one of America’s Founding Fathers and authors of our liberty.”
It’s alarming when presidents engage in the practice of sloppy history—especially sloppy war history. …
More guffaws about the president’s lack of history knowledge from Larry Schweikart and Burt Folsom. Schweikart is from Dayton, and Folsom is from HillsdaleCollege.
For almost five years now, President Obama has been making the argument that government “investments” in infrastructure are crucial to economic recovery. “Now we used to have the best infrastructure in the world here in America,” the president lamented in 2011. “So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads? And let Europe build the best highways? And have Singapore build a nicer airport?”
In his recent economic speeches in Illinois, Missouri, Florida and Tennessee, the president again made a pitch for government spending for transportation and “putting people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure.” Create the infrastructure, in other words, and the jobs will come.
History says it doesn’t work like that. Henry Ford and dozens of other auto makers put a car in almost every garage decades before the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956. The success of the car created a demand for roads. The government didn’t build highways, and then Ford decided to create the Model T. Instead, the highways came as a byproduct of the entrepreneurial genius of Ford and others.
Moreover, the makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs—Henry Joy of Packard Motor Car Co., Frank Seiberling of Goodyear and Carl Fisher, a maker of headlights and founder of the Indy 500.
Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. One exception was in Michigan, where the state tried to build two railroads but lost money doing so, and thus happily sold both to private owners in 1846. …
For another history lesson, the NY Post has located Tawana Brawley and has the story of a court in rural Surry County, Virginia that has garnished her wages. We have the added bonus of a period photo of a fat Al Sharpton.
Twenty-five years after accusing an innocent man of rape, Tawana Brawley is finally paying for her lies.
Last week, 10 checks totaling $3,764.61 were delivered to ex-prosecutor Steven Pagones — the first payments Brawley has made since a court determined in 1998 that she defamed him with her vicious hoax.
A Virginia court this year ordered the money garnisheed from six months of Brawley’s wages as a nurse there.
She still owes Pagones $431,000 in damages. And she remains defiantly unapologetic.
“It’s a long time coming,” said Pagones, 52, who to this day is more interested in extracting a confession from Brawley than cash.
“Every week, she’ll think of me,” he told The Post. “And every week, she can think about how she has a way out — she can simply tell the truth.”
Brawley’s advisers in the infamous race-baiting case — the Rev. Al Sharpton, and attorneys C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox — have already paid, or are paying, their defamation debt. But Brawley, 41, had eluded punishment. …