Could You Pass Harvard's Entrance Exam From 1869?

erfnet writes "The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"

Comments

Nope

[heptapod]

I doubt they'd be able to pass a modern test either. These people grew up with a different curriculum than those at the latter half of the 20th century / new millennium.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm a Harvard grad, and I can't answer any of the questions involving Greek and Latin translation on this test. I'm about 50% on the History and Geography section off the top of my head (i.e. without looking anything up), and the math sections look pretty trivial. All this proves is that we don't learn as much History and Geography these days, even at Harvard, and Greek and Latin simply aren't important parts of the average high school (or college) curriculum and are no longer considered mandatory knowledge for an educated gentleman as they were in the 19th century.

Re:Nope

[PFI_Optix]

I think the whole thing speaks volumes to the disconnect between academia and reality. While an education in the high points of historical philosophy might be of limited use, much of that is pure nonsense intended to filter out undesirable applicants who, while quite capable of learning and performing, lack the "breeding" to be accepted. It was a great way to ensure that only like-minded people got degrees and continued the cycle.

Colleges have gotten a lot better in the past century, but they still spend a lot of time making sure you think how they want you to think, or at least can pretend to.

Disclaimer: I'm a college opt-out who was accepted to Harvard but didn't go (I applied just because I could). I decided there was a better way into the real world that the bullshit you have to endure at university. Take that how you want.

Re:Nope

[perpenso]

Yet it's interesting to note that they were expected to know Greek and Latin from high school (or equivalent.)

There was also a much greater emphasis on Geography back then. Nowadays that's an optional course.

Math is an optional course today. Last I heard my former HS is only requiring one year to graduate, pathetic.

Re:Nope

[Garble Snarky]

Just curious - how did you acquire enough experience to decide not to go to school based on that reasoning, if you never wen in the first place?

Re:Nope

[PFI_Optix]

I did go to school, just not Harvard. A year in university before dropping out and going to work, then three more semesters at other schools before deciding I was right to stay away.

Re:Nope

[zill]

I've never even heard of Greek being taught in high school...

I heard Greek is mandatory in Greek high schools.

Re:Nope

[Archangel Michael]

They learn that Heather has two mommies, that Islam is a religion of peace, hurt feelings run the world, and how to throw all of that into a inspirational powerpoint presentation.

Modern School is nothing more than a giant social engineering program that is failing our kids.

Re:Nope

[metlin]

The idea behind a liberal arts education is to become a well-rounded person, with a (hopefully) better understanding and appreciation of the world around you.

This is something that is sorely missing in the vast majority of the population today, thanks to the transactional view of education. The idea of applicability to real life is something that was perpetuated by the likes of corporations, who needed skilled people but did not want to train. In fact, until fairly recently, companies offered training programs outside of your acceptance, and it was a given that you would learn those skills when you joined a company. These days, that is passe.

Colleges have become trade schools, and are expected to teach trades that are applicable to a job, with little else. Except for a handful of top notch schools, the vast majority lack depth in what they teach. This lack of appreciation and understanding stretches to both the sciences and engineering as well as the arts and humanities. No one wants to learn computer science, they want to learn programming. No one wants to learn the philosophy of morality, they want to get a law degree. No one wants to learn how to paint or understand the fundamentals of the visual arts; they would much rather learn "animation" and "game design" join a design studio.

The unfortunate side effect is that this is a shift in perception, one from when people wanted to be well rounded and enlightened, to one where people merely want to learn a skill and make money.

And if you think that historical philosophy is not enlightening, or even applicable to the real world, you are missing out on some of the greatest thinkers that this world has ever produced.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that, I'm not sure the demographics are even remotely comparable either. The college-for-the-masses thing in the US didn't really start until after WW2. In the 1890s, high school wasn't even mandatory yet for most of the country; checking wiki (history of education in the united states) that didn't happen until decades later, and initially it was only mandatory to age 14. In 1890 there were only 200,000 high school students. Period. In the entire country. And that's a few decades after the given test date. And we're not told what was a "passing" grade for that entrance test (it was unlikely to be the "this test is geared such that if you don't get at least 90% of the points, you have failed to master it enough" that we use today for the more serious stuff like college admissions).

From another direction, we have dropped the Greek-Roman fetish that was the style of the 1800s, when it was a point of pride that ALL western history and culture (and therefore all history and culture of any value) descended in a direct unbroken line from them to us. Heh. Once freed of that notion, there's a lot more history to cover, and it's more complex, and we're fairly more honest about it, there's 150 more years worth of it, and we're informed by modern anthropology (didn't exist yet, back then... not as the serious science it is today). For that matter, biology and chemistry have completely changed too. And we have more great native-english literature, such that you don't have to build the whole literature curriculum on another language anymore. Oh, and much more math. Hell, you can get into math in high school today that we hadn't even agreed on the notation for yet in the mid 1800s.

Re:Nope

[gadzook33]

Ok, could you pass the math part? I have several degrees in engineering and I don't think I could. But then, upon reaching grad school I always felt I was woefully under-prepared compared to the 98% of my class that wasn't from the US. Looking at this exam just reminds me of that. And it doesn't look like the inclusion of general relativity would have slowed these guys down much.

Re:Nope

[demonlapin]

Have to learn how to read those church inscriptions somewhere, right? I've not learned any Romance languages using my Latin as a base, so that's pretty much all I can do with it. You're totally right about the beauty of the language - being able to stand in St. Peter's and read TU ES PETRUS, ET SUPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM... that was pretty cool.

Re:Nope

[jdpars]

Learning Latin and Greek open up an entire world and culture to a student. When they are taught outside of the terrible rigor and memorization we always hear about or see from Hollywood, they are terrible. But when instead they are shown to be gateways to the rise and fall of whole civilizations, well, it gives a student perspective. Another way to think about it is like this: few subjects have what my teacher-education classes call "enduring understandings." These are supposed to be more than facts, but knowledge that stays with a student throughout their life. There are so many of these with subjects like classical languages that they permanently affect a student's life. Yes, many of the elite would educate their children in Latin and Greek, and the knowledge or lack of knowledge on these subjects was probably used unfairly to judge applicants. But the languages were studied because there was value in them, and to this day there still is.

Re:Nope

[jdpars]

Just some more info to aid metlin, "liberal arts" comes from Latin "artes liberales," literally the "freeing arts." Up until very recently, these included science. The modern definition (at least in the USA) of liberal arts is art, music, literature, language, social sciences, and history. That's a horribly lacking bunch. I spent almost two years as an engineering major before switching to a "liberal arts" degree and I feel I am only just barely well-rounded because of my strengths in math and science.

Re:Nope

[PhunkySchtuff]

And before any of you think that the PowerPoint presentation is in jest - I've got a client who's son is in grade 7 this year. He has to purchase the school "blessed" laptop and in return must run Microsoft Office 2010 (they heavily use OneNote, which has no alternative, free or otherwise), as well as the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection.

Now, this suite of Adobe software retails for over $4k here (sure, there's a massive edu discount) but I can't believe they're being taught this when in school I learned BASIC and LOGO.

Re:Nope

[Entropius]

OT: That inscription is CREEPY, if you know all the symbolism behind it.

All the other cathedrals are expressions of some sort of artistry, or aspiration to heaven, or whatever.

St. Peter's is this imposing thing that says I am the Pope; I am the most powerful man on Earth; do as I say or suffer the consequences. And then there's that inscription -- "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church", said by Jesus, for those who don't know the Latin -- inscribed above the canopy where only the Pope can say Mass, as if to say "I am Peter's descendant as Pope, and Peter is Jesus' successor, so to slight me is to slight Jesus, so do what I say!"

Re:Nope

[Sir_Sri]

the question becomes: is it the same greek as being asked here. In 1869 Greece was 20 years independent from ottoman rule and still basically a nothing state on the world stage (not that it's much of anything today). Greek as taught in modern greece (or in this case 1860's greece) is not necessarily the same as the various versions of greek that would pre-date the modern world. There are classical language courses you can take at some schools, including universities, but the version of greek harvard is asking about in 1869 probably has relatively little bearing on contemporary greek of that period let alone modern greek.

Today you can find greek in a smattering of countries, italy, turkey and greece being the big ones, but armenia, ukraine, cyprus and a few others as well, but no more than a person today could do well with old english (which is nearly unintelligible), or middle english (shakespeare and KJV bible era, which is somewhat comprehensible).

I think probably if you could pass that exam today you could probably still do well in most liberal arts programmes at least. It shows an ability to grasp foreign languages (always handy), and a relatively diverse reading set. Not that there wouldn't be better measures of success today though. I think a modern scientist faced with an exam from 140 years ago might have a lot of trouble. There's language, terminology and style advances, skills that have largely been obsoleted (by for example the calculator), and then well, we know more now than they did then of course. Even if the math is the same, the way the math is written has changed quite a lot (hello matrices!). Any test carries with it the context of its time, and there's probably a ripple effect. What is today a challenging entrance exam at harvard or a PhD level topic in programming will 20 or 30 years from now be pushed into the highschool curriculum, and then 20 or 30 years later it will likely be long forgotten as it is supplanted by new problems and techniques.

Re:Nope

[Kjella]

There's a substantial difference between teaching you to reason and teaching you reason in the same way as other academics, inevitably reaching mostly the same conclusions. It is not without reason that academics have been accused of living disconnected from the real world, having convinced themselves that their highly theoretical model of how the world works actually reflects reality. Or perhaps ideological models is the right word, most working men have a more pragmatic approach.

Then again, I'm not so worried about academic people out of touch. Far worse are the career politicians that have never had a "normal" job in their life, all they've done is to work for political organizations. They have some very funny ideas about how the world runs plus an overinflated ego about their own importance. They only decide how to split the cake, they're not the ones baking it.

Re:Nope

[JanneM]

there isn't an innate sense that 10 is smaller than 12

I have a hard time believing this. Got any references (except mentally retarded and seriously underage ones)?

I think the OP may refer to the fact that above some small number (5-6 or thereabouts) we no longer have a preconscious sense or relative magnitude. If you put one set of five objects and one set with six objects, you can immediately, unthinkingly point out which set is the larger one. And so can anybody, including children with not a day of education, and even some other animals (their limit may differ of course).

With 10 and 12 objects, you need to count. More to the point, you need to learn how to do so. You can longer rely on any kind of automatic perceptual or cognitive ability to do so.

Re:Nope

[demonlapin]

Meh, I'm not Catholic, so it didn't really bother me. The Church is a human institution, no doubt, but it spent a long time as the only civilizing influence in a lot of Europe. I know why people condemn it, but (like any other institution) its bad sides aren't the entirety of it.

Re:Nope

[blahplusplus]

"The unfortunate side effect is that this is a shift in perception, one from when people wanted to be well rounded and enlightened, to one where people merely want to learn a skill and make money."

The problem is there is too much people want to experience today and too much work. Over the centuries education as we know it was not a requirement for existence. Over the last few hundred years public schools were invented to deal with the demands of the industrial revolution. You have to understand the very origin of schooling for the masses. What you're talking about is schooling for the elite, the people who could afford to be learned. People who had enough money/sheer interest to enjoy education for it's own sake.

The educational requirements today just to exist keep going up and hence this is why universities are flooded with applicants who want skills for money. It's the natural outgrowth of needing more and more just to earn a living, or at least it is from societies perspective whether it is true or not.

Re:Nope

[dingen]

Seriously? Wow. Here in the Netherlands, both Latin and Greek are still very common on the highest level of high schools (gymnasium). You don't have to pick both of them to graduate though, but one is usually mandatory.

Re:Nope

[Ecuador]

and still basically a nothing state on the world stage (not that it's much of anything today).

Us Greeks appreciate your insight...

Anyway, I don't hold grudges, so I will still answer your "question".
Looking at the exam, the "Greek" it refers to is, of course, ancient Greek (the easiest form though, similar to what was used in the Hellenistic period). (At least written) Greek of that period (katharevousa) was actually pretty close. But in any case, ancient Greek is still a mandatory part of Greek high-school (Latin is optional) - I can read Hellenistic period works with no University level training in the subject.
The difference is that in 1869, the classical languages were a big part of university education, since the ancient body of knowledge was comparable in volume to the -at the time- modern one. So if you wanted to go to the University, you had better learn your Greek/Latin well. So, even if ancient Greek is currently taught to all in high-school, students who want to study engineering or math in college, usually do the minimum and end up not learning much in those courses. But high school students who want to go into classics, literature, philology etc, will know the Latin and ancient Greek for this exam. They would find the particular test quite awkward though, as nowadays the focus is translating FROM Latin/ancient Greek, while this test is the reverse, although it tries to make it easy by translating most words for you.

Re:Nope

[Tom]

*wave* - over here.

I want to a public school that taught latin starting 5th year (i.e. when I was 11) and greek starting 10th year (pupils aged 16-17).

Ok, this is good old Europe, we're not being bred to become burger flippers. Maybe that's a point. And yes, it's not your average school, but it's neither an expensive place (free, in fact, just a regular public school) nor very special.

Education can be had if you want it (for your kids). But you do have to look around and make a good choice. It's not everywhere. And - and that's probably the main point - you have to have some yourself in order to understand how to make that choice.

hmm...

[ShiftyOne]

I wonder if they were allowed to use calculators?

Re:hmm...

[Convector]

I feel certain there was no rule forbidding the use of calculators.

lol@Exam [hint:joke]

[buchner.johannes]

Man, if the examiner had been smart he'd written page 3-4 in LaTeX and saved himself a lot of handwriting!!!!

Re:Would they do the same exams again?

[zill]

To be fair, there weren't exactly a whole lot of science back then. Plus much of the scientific knowledge in 1869 were available exclusively in Latin, hence the emphasis on the "dead language".

Educational standards

[girlintraining]

Could any of us pass the exam today?

Well, the theory of relativity, evolution, anything about computers, most modern medicine, etc., would be straight out because they didn't exist then. And I doubt many people here would disagree that knowing how to use a computer and a basic understanding of physics something every college would want in its students. It's no use trying to test ourselves according to the standards of over a hundred years ago... we know so much more about the world it's not even fair. The smartest person of that era would look like a total idiot today just trying to get by with what we take for granted -- driving a car, using a cell phone, browsing the internet, etc.

Re:Educational standards

[daniel_mcl]

If your idea is that the average person alive today -- never mind the average high school student -- has any knowledge at all of relativistic mechanics, evolutionary biology, computer science/engineering, medical science, etc., I think you'll find you're sadly mistaken. Yes, the average teenager knows how to use a cell phone. Clearly this is an insurmountable obstacle, and Isaac Newton himself would be unable to figure out my Nokia.

At any rate, the material on the "arithmetic" and "algebra" sections is still taught and used in schools today, and I'll outright guarantee you that if I printed those out and took them to a Calculus III section at the local university I'd be unlikely to get a very high pass rate, despite the fact that most of them have memorized how to take dozens of integrals or apply Lagrange multipliers.

Knowledge isn't worth as much as people seem to think; at its heart, it's just trivia. What matters is the ability to think, and that doesn't change from generation to generation.

Re:Educational standards

[ChrisMaple]

OK, here's a revision. With a week's training, I'll bet the 1869 man could drive a car, use a cell phone, or browse the internet. Could you, with a week's training, learn algebra, geometry, trig, history (in depth), geography, Latin and Greek? The two sets of tests aren't equivalent. (Sorry, I'm being a bit unfair. You did mention relativity, evolution, computers, medicine. But relativity isn't taught in high school. Evolution is a simple and obvious concept. Medicine, beyond the germ theory of disease and other easy bits, isn't taught in high school. That leaves computers.

The obvious lack in the old test is science, there should have been something on agriculture or animal husbandry, or medicine or astronomy.

The obvious "We don't care" for modern times is Greek and Latin.

The sad lack in modern education is history. One reason our modern politics is so thoroughly screwed up is that a high quality understanding of history has been lost to the general population for a century.

Re:Educational standards

[mgbastard]

The sad lack in modern education is history. One reason our modern politics is so thoroughly screwed up is that a high quality understanding of history has been lost to the general population for a century.

I was looking hard to see if anyone had a glimpse of why greek and latin are important to education. You almost nailed it.

We've lost the art of teaching of how to think. The gentlemanly Greek and Latin were taught towards skills in reading texts, not in conversing to Joe Greek on the street about how he feels today; the pupil is then empowered to read many great and early works documenting the foundation and thought, and its progression, that form the fundamentals of our knowledge in philosophy, government, sciences and mathematics. Reading the literature of the time in the original source language conveys the subtext much more fluidly, thus enabling full comprehension. Individual languages are colored by the culture speaking it: Much is lost in translation. If you are to understand how to think, and achieve parity with where we have already tread in thought, then you need to understand first-hand how we arrived at the present knowledge, complete with the traps and tangents, not just the right answer. You learn how temporary some right answers are, giving you the humility and perspective to grow beyond the works of mankind thus far.

PDF Files?

[LazloHollyfeld]

I find it hard to believe they had PDF files in 1869.

Apparently you fail in reading comprehension

[Calibax]

True, the ink stamp on the documents is 1899, which is likely to be the date they were added to the Harvard library. You will note it is stamped on top of the content on each page and is clearly not part of the original page.

However, at the bottom of each page it gives the date as 1869. This date appears to be part of the original page.

Apparently you failed to read each page completely. One fundamental rule of all examinations: read the questions fully. That hasn't changed.

If you ain't moving....

[Wintermancer]

With the exception of the arithmetic, logarithms and trigonometry, algebra and plane geometry, not a chance in Hell.

Now, how well would a prospective applicant fare with some of today's knowledge? Introductory quantum mechanics can be taught at the high-school level. Now someone out Victorian era and give them the mathematical equations and they would fail due to not having the conceptual foundation to understand it.

Hold onto your seat for the big reveal: Knowledge advances over time, but correspondingly, some knowledge is made obsolescent. How well would any of do at knapping flint knives and spears? You might make a passable one, but not one that would qualify as a quality tool in the Paleolithic era.

Progress, folks. It's a good thing.

Latin is critical to the web today ...

[perpenso]

What use is Latin and Greek today?

Latin is very important today, especially with respect to the web. Have you tried to come up with a short decent sounding company name that is both trademark-able and has an available .com domain? I found it easier to accomplish with Latin than English, Perpenso.

Re:different time

[daniel_mcl]

Please tell me you're kidding. Latin != Italian.

And for that matter, heaven forbid that college should be about getting an education instead of necessary vocational training. Clearly knowledge is worthless except as a bullet on a résumé.

Re:re Maybe

[zill]

PROTIP: Latin America does not speak Latin.

Tricky, but aimed at a specific type of knowledge

[parmadil]

I'm two weeks away from a master's degree in Ancient Greek. I'm not sure I'd pass the Greek portion of the exam. Why? Because it focuses on extremely rigorous memorization of obscure details (and I'm talking obscure details of an arcane dead language, mind you). I can read even difficult Greek pretty well, but that doesn't mean I can decline 'trirs' (a noun in a highly unusual declension), or form the correctly-accented participles of 'histmi', or decline much of anything in the unusual dual number, off the top of my head and without consulting a grammar. Nor, I think, could most of my colleagues. The translation *into* Greek, however, is quite easy. It's a hard test for college freshmen, to be sure, but it's also testing based on a very different sort of educational objective. Passing the Greek section requires more memorization than actual competence in the language.

Latin answers

[dsanfte]

Translation:

1. Me non refero quam divitem esse Gygen. (Unsure how to decline 'Gyges' but we'll go with that for accusative. I guess it's a Greek paradigm.)

2. Quis clarior Graeciae quam Themostecles? Quis, cum in exilium expelleretur, injuriam suae patriae ingratae non tulit, sed idem quod ante viginti annos Coriolanus fecisset?

3. Primo veris venit consul ad Ephesum, et militibus ab Scipio acceptis apud milites contionem habuit, in qua, virtute sua collaudata, adhortabatur ad novum bellum cum Gallis suspicandum, qui (ut inquit) Antiochum auxiliis iuverunt. (I left in 'ut inquit' and 'in qua' although they were meant to be omitted. I wondered if the last bit should be infinitive/accusative construction due to indirect speech, however I think 'ut' demands the indicative.)

Grammar:

You could copy this out of Wheelock so I don't see the point of reproducing it here.

Re:You got it

[mini me]

The world is no longer a place where most people are labourers and an elementary education is all that is needed (if that). It is a complex, information based, place where people need to know more. That means more schooling for all.

If anything, higher formal education is less important now than it was in years gone by. Today, the complex, information based, place we live in allows one to learn about anything on demand, in seconds. Unless your interests are purely academic, you don't need the full background of a given study crammed into a short time period to solve problems in the real world. Like someone commented earlier, knowledge is just trivia; being able to think is all that matters.

What really happened is that the universities found the appeal in money. More students equals more income. The lure of higher incomes advertised on false premises attracted people in droves. One of the best marketing campaigns to date, in my opinion.

University is a fantastic place for one to pursue their passions in the study of a given topic, but to say more schooling is needed to survive outside of academia seems a little misguided. I do agree that you can never stop learning; if university is the only place you can learn, more power to you.

Re:Distorted idea of the University

[Doctorer]

The thing omitted in that observation however is that until only this very generation, being able to recall with precision what one has learned was a crucial skill in any kind of study. Moderns don't bother remembering anything (even their own phone number) because they can just "look it up". High school students unceasingly complain about having to learn the first principles of mathematics "because I can just do it with my calculator" - how much more in any other discipline (which is not so clearly procedural as mathematics) would students need a "specific education" if there is to be any hope of them learning further?

I do think that universities are mostly to blame here, having flocked to the fashion of generating money-spinning faculties (like "commerce" and "journalism") while abandoning the faculties that gave the university its identity for centuries (philosophy, history, theology).

There are some overlapping faculties (such as engineering) which both teach a mostly technical discipline while also requiring a more advanced theoretical foundation, and these probably do still belong at the university... but perhaps the time is coming when we will have to look more closely at the "BS/BA only candidates" and the "graduate studies material". Actually that's already happened, with a sharp divide between the undergrads who happily toddle off to their careers in industry and never darken the doors of the academy again, and the lifelong academics who seem never to leave at all.

Perhaps the thing I find most objectionable is the indignantly anachronistic egalitarianism on display in the comments here, for the most part by people who know nothing of education (or scholarship in general) beyond their own experiences as a one-time student. Latin and Greek are not "stupid shit" put up as a wall to keep the unwashed masses out, they were (and remain) an exceedingly useful foundation for any advanced study in any discipline with a European vocabulary. At the turn of the (last) century, French may well have taken a dominant role in European correspondence but it only worked because everyone worth writing to had a working knowledge of Latin and Greek.

Problem is where, not how much?

[perpenso]

Also, Biology including evolution, Astronomy, Chemistry; Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus; Computer programming; Print shop, metal shop, and actual knowledge about health. If you want to see more of that and less "social engineering", then more money should be put into them.

The US spending per student is already comparable to the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Israel, etc. Perhaps the problem is not the current spending level but how/where it is being spent?
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.PRIM.PC.ZS/countries/1W?display=default

Middle English

[cdecoro]

This is a minor point, but Shakespeare and the King James Bible aren't Middle English; they're Early Modern English from the early 1600's. They are almost completely recognizable to a speaker of modern English, especially once the "thou/you" distinction is explained, and with the occasional vocabulary word. For an example of Middle English, the best known example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (late 1300's), http://www.librarius.com/cantales/genpro.htm. That's significantly more difficult to understand, though if you sound it out, and read about the rules of grammar, it doesn't take too much practice before you can read it without trouble.

But you're right, the big change was from Old English, which was a Germanic language that is far more intelligible to modern German speakers than modern English speakers. Our current language is highly influenced by the importation of French and Latin words after the Norman invasion of 1066.

Re:Middle English

[avgjoe62]

So when I was a kid, and that old guy from Sussex was always yelling, "áwiergedon cild! tengest min ediscum!", he really was making sense and not just yelling gibberish?

Re:Money, motivation, and prestige in 1869

[demonlapin]

And I have to wonder just how prestigious the Ivy League schools were in 1869.

It is worth noting, in this context, that Harvard once offered the chair of astronomy to Galileo. They've been around for longer than most think. At the time, of course, admission was much more predicated on pedigree than intelligence, but then again a good pedigree is actually a reasonable first estimate of intelligence.

Re:re Maybe

[antifoidulus]

Better nutrition, especially during early childhood, is probably a bigger factor. Studies have shown that kids who go hungry in the first 5 or so years of life tend to score markedly below those that do not.

Origins of our Culture

[catchblue22]

I think the whole thing speaks volumes to the disconnect between academia and reality.

Your post, and the fact that you are rated as "insightful" speaks volumes to the shift that has occurred. Your statement, and the rest of your post, where you claim that "...an education in the high points of historical philosophy might be of limited use..." speak volumes of a profound poverty of mind, where education and the search for truth is predicated in material gain. This intellectual poverty forms us into individual intellectual islands floating through time, neither looking backwards nor forwards. We are separated from the origins of our society, our culture, our values. We forget that our society was modelled after ancient Greece. Ideas such as private property, money, justice, freedom of speech, constitutional government all come from ancient Greece, and were refined and developed by the Romans (at least during certain periods of Roman history).

Before you write off classical education, read Plato's "The Apology", where you start to see the beginnings of the ethical underpinnings of our modern world. Read Plato's Gorgias, where Socrates carries on a debate about many issues that still rings true today. See if you can see in this quote a great summation of the modern field of advertising and public relations in his statement about "oratory":

Socrates: The same is true about the orator and oratory relative to the other crafts, too, then. Oratory doesn't need to have any knowledge of the state of their subject matters; it only needs to have discovered some device to produce persuasion in order to make itself appear to those who don't have knowledge that it knows more than those who actually do have it. Plato - Gorgias - 459c

Reading the first volume of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has given me a great appreciation for how civilizations develop and change, and about how valuable our current stable democratic systems are. When you look at long succession of Roman emperors who were all removed by various methods of murder, you start to realize the value of electing leaders.

When you speak of the "disconnect between academia and reality", I think you minimize the work of centuries of great thinkers. When you look at the world logically, you begin to realize that it is very strange. You start to realize your own limitations. It gives you a sense of humility, both for yourself and for the poor sods who think they have figured it all out. You start to realize what pathetic creatures we are, how we weave illusion upon illusion. It is the way we are, and the best we can do is to try to understand the world. However, we should never believe that we have "figured it all out", because when we do that, we effectively stop thinking. Socrates said that "as for me, all I know is that I know nothing". He spent his life questioning and seeking knowledge, but he always remembered his limitations.

Education cannot simply be about utility. It has to also be about making us more complete as human beings. It should help us in our search for wisdom and truth in the world. Socrates said that "the unconsidered life is not worth living." When you do not consider the purpose and meaning of your own life, you become a football, being kicked around in someone else's game.

you're all liars

[Hazel Bergeron]

Predictably, half the comments here reply, "Oh, wow, this test is easy except the Latin/Greek because that's not important!"

Well, bullshit on all counts.

(1) The purpose of learning Latin and ancient Greek is not to enable you to speak Latin and ancient Greek. They've already been dead languages for millennia and they were arguably even more dead then (Greece being even less relevant). It's an exercise in the study of language and of foundations of European culture and literature. You don't get the same experience by learning "Japanese for anime fans".

Anyway, I "aced" Latin at school - that sort of thing was something I enjoyed and came reasonably naturally. Many years later, I have forgotten enough of it that I could not do a good job of these questions. The translations into Latin would today leave me hopeless without a dictionary. What is more, these aren't trivial Latin beginner questions.

(2) History/geography - at least some people are admitting that they don't know some of these, though I see a lot of "oh about half". Really? Did you actually sit down with that sheet and no references and write detailed geographical and historical answers? Did you then go one by one checking at the end that they were all correct? Or did you just think "oh yeah I've heard of that before" and sneak in a "check" to Wikipedia, confirming knowledge you didn't really have to mind?

The subject of my masters thesis was the history of an area of mathematics; background reading required me to be familiar with specific areas of classical Greek and Roman history. I enjoyed History at high school, though none of it was classical. Latin class included a certain amount of Roman history surrounding Pliny the Younger and Virgil, with an earlier school covering the historical context of the Odyssey and the Iliad. And yet I don't think I could do justice to any of the essay-type questions. "Pericles - the Man and his Policy" - really? Are even a significant minority claiming they even know more than a sentence or two about Pericles?

(3) The maths section. Oh, what a surprise, everyone is claiming that the maths section is trivial. Well, bullshit again. I have a postgrad mathematical education and, yes, I can probably answer these questions. But I would have to think about the plane geometry proofs (which, it is likely, the candidate would be expected to have simply memorised for this test) - I can't recite all of them off the top of my head and I bet I'd stumble on some details for some of them if I were to actually write the answers all out rather than just wave my hand over the paper dismissively and say "this is easy".

What is more, you annoying geeks, there were no electronic calculators in the mid-19th century. You know what this means? It means that half the challenge is doing the arithmetic quickly and without mistakes. And, whether by reading original Leibniz or the speling errors on /., there is one reassuring thing I have come to know (I am reassured because I do it myself and thought I was the only one): numerate geeky types make lots of trivial mistakes. A good mathematician - perhaps the sort who is intuitively familiar with geometry - might make a bad doctor or accountant, i.e. may fail in a profession where speed and accuracy with numbers is important.

Whenever I visit Slashdot and there's a topic where people have the chance to put their knowledge to the test, I always see a huge number of people claiming that they did wonderfully at the test. And yet, in real life, hardly anyone ever performs at such superheroic levels, whether dumb, average or intelligent. This isn't because /. isn't full of super-geniuses - even though it isn't - it's because the sheer amount of information accessible in the world today means that everyone necessarily specialises a great deal. No particular random test which has not been prepared for is likely to fit the knowledge of a random sample of even fairly bright individuals.

I guess it's just a predictabl

diverging contours of cluefulness

[epine]

You haven't heard from *all* the drop-outs, have you? And many of the people who didn't drop out, but stayed in the system a little too long, are guilty of the converse Kool-Aid.

There have been an increasingly dire series of reports that many (expensive) post-graduate degree mills are steering their studious lemmings over a career cliff.

This as it becomes increasingly unclear why a person needs to pay big money for higher education in a world where it's hard to think up anything you can't find out about in 30 seconds or half an hour.

If I had stuck it out in math class and learned how to do the Laplace transform and other manipulations of the s-domain, it would have saved me a phone call or two to other people who stuck it out in math class. And even without the training, I can fill in the blanks cook-book style, and I have a pretty good idea what the s operator is all about. I'd be hard pressed to improvise, but how many people out there would you trust to improvise on the subject of analog filter design?

I'd also like to figure out the structure of the electromagnetic field in our measurement product, but none of the people I know who stuck it out in math/physics class can do it any better than I can. If we're determined to know the answer, we're going to have to use an electromagnetic field simulator.

Here's an example of the knuckle cracking involved just to warm up to the problem:
The Velocity Factor of an Insulated Two-Wire Transmission Line

But I'm sure Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse could scribble out the answer free hand on the back of his entrance exam, because it occurred to him while proving that "circles are to each other as the squares of their radii" that he had never constructed a Sierpinski curve that carpets the unit circle, and that lead to other things.

In my initial survey of computational options, I discovered MEEP, under the GPL, from MIT. Scheme/C++/Python front ends. I can do all that. Correctly setting up temperature and frequency dependent complex permitivities in several different bulk materials, and not missing out a crucial factor of 1/2 pi somewhere, I'd really want to have someone "educated" to check my work. On that little DIY proposition, I think just opening the box is a three day exercise. With another six years of formal math education, I could maybe even contribute some patches.

Kenneth Arrow

I quote this all the time. And this is old school, already. I'm amazed at the resilience of mass pyramid schemes in the modern workforce. It works this way in pro sports. For every four kids with the talent to "make it big", three drop out due to injury, bad timing, or circumstance with little to show for it, while the kid who makes tenure with the big club reaps huge rewards; not even counting the untold hours invested by kids who dropped out far earlier in the process. The same evolution is taking place in academia these days: $30,000/year as a post-doc shifting test-tubes in some dank over-lit basement. Sign me up.

In the post-Arrow world, the relationship of education to knowledge or common sense is becoming ever more tenuous. I think Temple Grandin has been underemployed in modern curriculum design. On a bad day it feels like the fundamental economic output of the modern labour force is income disparity.

Gone are the days, it seems, that one could get by having the skills and personality to make a positive contribution to the world around us. Yet the opportunity to contribute, as gated by the availability of the core knowledge, has never been greater.

What the world needs is a way for bright kids to drop out of the overpriced educational treadmill without being suspected of having a chip on their shoulder. Or educated voters who give a damn, but the second item seems out of reach. (Is it just myth that back when education was rare, presidents spoke inte