We stand corrected, mostly.

I recently wrote about why America is falling apart, complaining about modern education, such as it is. An alert reader did pointed out that my story about the rigors of taking 8th grade exams in 1895 was false, as a simple check of Snopes.com would have pointed out. My bad.

However, the background on Snopes did prove my point in a way. The actual tests from that era do reveal how much "basic" knowledge we're not getting in 2008. While it may not be important to know the feminine of "bachelor," the knowledge expected of teachers in the late 19th century is interesting. Read more:

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp