The ‘dumbing down’ or ‘Why you should Home Educate’
January 25th, 2008
Dumbing down: the proof (may have to register)
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=5313&issue=2004-11-27
Issue: 27 November 2004
As a service to Spectator readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.
ENGLISH GRAMMAR
1. Write out in your best handwriting:-
‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o’ Dee.’
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land –
And never home came she.
2. Parse fully ‘And call the cattle home.’
3. Explain the meaning of o’ Dee, dank with foam, western tide, round and round the sand, the rolling mist.
4. Write out separately the simple sentences in the last two lines of the above passage and analyse them.
5. Write out what you consider to be the meaning of the above passage.
GEOGRAPHY
1. On the outline map provided, mark the position of Carlisle, Canterbury, Plymouth, Hull, Gloucester, Swansea, Southampton, Worcester, Leeds, Leicester and Norwich; Morecambe Bay, The Wash, Solent, Menai Straits and Lyme Bay; St Bees Head, The Naze, Lizard Point; the rivers Trent and Severn; Whernside, the North Downs, and Plinlimmon; and state on a separate paper what the towns named above are noted for.
2. Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from?
3. Name the conditions upon which the climate of a country depends, and explain the reason of any one of them.
4. Name the British possessions in America with the chief town in each. Which is the most important?
5. Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?
LATIN
1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of:- operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.
2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque.
3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.
4. Give in columns the perfect Indic. and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo.
Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.
5. Translate into Latin:-
1. The general’s little son was loved by the soldiers.
2. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
3. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
4. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.
6. Translate into English:-
Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.
ENGLISH HISTORY
1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?
2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.
3. State what you know of – Henry II’s quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.
4. What important results followed – the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?
5. How are the following persons connected with English History,- Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?
ARITHMETIC
1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.
2. Add together £132 4s. 1d., £243 7s. 2d., £303 16s 2d., and £1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)
3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles.
4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.
5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at £5 3s. 71/2d. each.
6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.
7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s., and 16 sheep cost £22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.
8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.
9. Simplify 183/4 – 22/3 ÷ 11/5 – 31/2 x 4/7.
10. Find the square root of 5,185,440,100.
11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 11/2ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.
12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to £108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?
These papers were kindly sent in by Humphrey Stanbury, whose father took the exam, and passed.
[…]
http://www.rense.com/general75/pass.htm
The image at the top is from this site:
A standard 1954 civics test on the U.S. Constitution on which student Kenny Hignite received a 981/2% score.
You will remember Naomi Wolf and our post about her:
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations.
Only the weak minded and people who never watched Star Trek re-runs have a hard time ‘considering’ this. This person is of the exact age she needed to be to have this built in apprehension. Also, the American Constitution and its founding fathers designed the country SPECIFICALLY to stop the emergence of tyranny; every REAL american understands that ALL government, ESPECIALLY your own is capable of turning to tyranny. Americans of her generation were taught about this ever-present danger in great clarity; everyone who did ’social studies’ class was given lessons in this, in healthy distrust of government. it is bewildering that an american of that age can even say this.
Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government
You did, and you forgot!
[…]
I wonder if Kenny Hignite remembered his ‘Social Studies’ lessons in his adulthood and realized that his country was being dismantled. Even if he did not have a full grasp of the meaning of everything in that exam, he was able to memorize all the facts and reproduce them on the day of the exam in fairly neat handwriting; I know a ten year old and an eight year old who have better handwriting by the way.
I am of the opinion that the principles of freedom, the very core ideas of it are what need to be instilled in the young, and they need to be fully understood before you start talking about government. That is the only way you can be fully prepared and made to see clearly just how unjust and bad government is.
This is the threat that the Germans understand fully; Home Schoolers produce people that are able to think for themselves in ways that are unpredictable, non standard and, to them, undesirable. The Buskeros child simply walked away from the detention centre where she was being held, reminiscent of the scene in THX-1138 where the two felons and the hologram penetrate the infinite white void and SEN, astonished says, “nothing stopped us!”. This is the ultimate nightmare for all governments; the tipping point when people understand that their cage is an imaginary one and that there is no one there to stop them from being free.
Of course the Germans are insane for suppressing Home Schoolers; it is precisely those people who create the greatest most imaginative works in the future.