Would you have gotten into high school in 1912?
Over our regular Saturday morning breakfast, my friend Marty dropped a piece of history on the table: a printout of an 8th-grade final exam from Bullitt County, Kentucky dated 1912.. Students who passed were deemed well-enough educated to move on to high school. Students who didn’t, couldn’t.
It reminded me of my mom, Ruby, who, in 1919, started first grade in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Montgomery County, Missouri. She wrote in her memoir that, “an examination was sent from the office of the county superintendent of school, Mr. Hupe, to be taken by eighth-grade students and sent back to be graded by him. In the spring of 1927 I took such an examination and received the happy news that I was eligible for high school.” (Mom always said that Mr. Hupe took her Aunt Grace, one of his teachers, out for a ride every Sunday, but somehow never got around to popping the question. She died a spinster. But back to the Kentucky test.)
My first thought after reviewing some of the questions was that I am glad I wasn’t around in 1912, not only because there was no TV, internet, or A/C, but because I would have never made it to high school, much less kollidge.
I couldn’t help but wonder how eighth-graders of today would fare on the same test. Those kids would have no clue what some of the questions were about. For example:
“Find the cost at 12 ½ cents per sq. yd. of kalsomining the walls of a room 20 ft. long, 16 ft. wide and 9 ft. high deducting 1 door 8 ft. x 4 ft. 6 in. and 2 windows 5 ft. x 3 ft. 6 in. each.”
Today’s kids would ask, as I did, “WTF is kalsomining?” I looked it up on my phone. It means “whitewashing.” Which would lead to the next question: “WTF is whitewashing?”
Times have changed. Schools have changed. Kids have changed. Technology has changed. It wouldn’t be fair to ask 2026 students questions that were asked to pupils 114 years ago, just as it wouldn’t be fair to ask kids from long ago to answer questions about a world they could never in their wildest dreams have envisioned.
Below are some of the questions from the 1912 test and my suggestions for how they can be updated and made relevant for today’s eighth graders.
The answers are at the end of this post.
1. Geography
1912 Question: Name the capitals of the states that border the Ohio River.
2026 Question: Name the capital of the state that borders Lake America.
2. Arithmetic A
1912 Question: A school has 120 pupils. The number of boys are two-thirds the number of girls. How many of each are enrolled?
2026 Question: A school has 120 students. The number of gender-fluid students are two-thirds the number of cis-gendered students of which one-third identify as female and the rest identify as male. How many of each are enrolled?
3. Arithmetic B
1912 Question: A man bought a farm for $2,400 and sold it for $2,700. What percentage did he gain?
2026 Question: A woman bought a studio condo in Fresno for $240,000 and six months later flipped it for $270,000. What was her gain after paying 37% plus 3.8% of the Net Investment Income Tax to the Federal government, 13.5% income tax plus 1% Mental Health Services tax to the State of California, and a 5.5% realtor commission on the total sale price?
4. History
1912 Question: What president was impeached and on what charge?
2026 Question: What presidents were impeached and on what charges?
5. Grammar
1912 Question: Diagram this sentence: The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.
2026 Question: Diagram this sentence: My Fortnite squad threw me in lava.*
6. Innovators
1912 Question: Who invented the following? Magnetic Telegraph, Cotton Gin, Sewing Machine, Telephone.
2026 Question: Who is the controlling shareholder of the following? SpaceX, Neuralink, X Corp. (formerly Twitter), xAI, The Boring Company, Tesla.
Be honest with me. Would you have gotten into high school in 1912?
Me neither.
ANSWERS
1. Geography
1912: Harrisburg, PA; Charleston, WV; Columbus, OH; Frankfort, KY; Indianapolis, IN; Springfield, IL
2026: Albany, NY
2. Arithmetic A
1912: 72 girls, 48 boys.
2026: 48 gender-fluid, 48 cis-gendered males, 24 cis-gendered females.
3. Arithmetic B
1912: His profit was $300, or a 12.5% gain.
2026: Her gross profit was $30,000. But after subtracting Federal taxes ($12,240), California taxes ($3,990), and a realtor commission ($14,850), there was no net profit. The seller lost $1,080 on the transaction.
4. History
1912: Andrew Johnson for Violation of the Tenure of Office Act.
2026: Andrew Johnson (Violation of Tenure of Office Act), Bill Clinton (Perjury and Obstruction of Justice), and Donald Trump (2019 Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress; 2021 Incitement of Insurrection).
5. Grammar (Sentences diagrammed by Gemini AI to whom/which I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks since I don’r remember squat about sentence diagramming but … I did know the capital cities of all six Ohio River states so I ain’t a complete idiot.)
1912:
Subject: Lord (The) | Verb: loveth | Direct Object: giver (a, cheerful)
2026:
Subject: squad (My, Fortnite) | Verb: threw | Direct Object: me | Adverbial Phrase: in lava
6. Innovators
1912: Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, Elias Howe, Alexander Graham Bell.
2026: Elon Musk. All of them.
*Thanks to my 10-year-old grandson Isaac who plays the video game “Fortnite” in which characters are thrown in lava for inspiring this question.
