For those outside of the US, 8th grade would be about 13-14 years old.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    321·
    10 hours ago

    The priorities are interesting.

    Nowadays, eight grade is typically where we start some pre-algebra concepts. Fractions and percentages are something that they do typically still struggle with. The formatting of the problems would probably through them off - word problems always do - but I think most of the 8th graders I’ve worked with who weren’t totally behind could pass arithmetic.

    Diagramming grammar is out of a fashion - my middle school English teacher buddy confessed to me had he stole all of his grammar material from his colleague because he didn’t really get it. (Which perhaps this general lack of grammar education is why the Right is melting down over “pronouns”)

    They would all 100% bomb the spelling test. High schoolers would bomb that spelling test. They are reliant on auto-correct.

    Eighth grade probably couldn’t do the physiology - I think NGSS has that all in 6th grade, IIRC, and it the vocab would probably be unfamiliar. But an eight grader could give a better particle level explanation for how sound works or a chemical reaction. Those questions sound like they’d be something that I’d see when working with a high school biology student (typically 9th/10th grade).

    History and geography just show a difference in priorities. The history is especially weak, with the focus on names an extremely out of date approach to both understanding and teaching history.

    The real impressive thing is the civics. No one talks local politics. “[State] History” is always a class taught by the most unqualified coach.

    • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      2 hours ago

      This makes sense to me. I recognize that the point of the meme is to shock people, but it seems like a pretty reasonable test for 8th graders. Sure, we do some things n a different order now, and our focus is different but none of this is crazy.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
      16·
      9 hours ago

      They don’t mean literally “sketch” him as a drawing. They mean write out a short outline of his character. This is very “Great Man” style of thinking about history - the class would have probably spent a lot of time discussing his character traits (and probably very little about his time in Ireland).

      The purpose of teaching history was to teach character and morals. Any K-12 history exam you see before 1970 or so is going to want students to think about what George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s values and morals as the cause of their actions. History as a type of Sunday school.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
    16·
    6 hours ago

    I cant believe how nonsensical the grade system in the US is

    In Romania. 8th grade would be 14-15 year olds, which makes much more sense