Learning for its own sake
Emmy Jansen
MSMU Class of 2023
(1/2022) I have always loved to learn. Even at a young age, I loved the rigid structure of schools, especially when I was old enough to have multiple classes a day and got to be told where to go and what to learn. I grew up in a family of history buffs, spending every summer at American battlefields and crawling inside restored tanks and planes. We watched documentaries instead of the latest Hollywood blockbuster and I remember reading a John Wilkes Booth biography in the sixth grade, for fun.
Imagine my surprise upon coming to college and realizing that that was not the norm. I came face to face with the truth that education is not equal across the United States, or even in the same town. I was public schooled, which often gets a bad rap for its quality of learning, however I strongly disagree. During college, I interacted with a healthy mix of public, private, Catholic, and home schooled students, and there isn’t a noticeable pattern in the knowledge and education of any of the groups. It seems less that there is one sure way to receive a well-rounded education and more that education is as diverse as the people in this country.
Upon first glance of the 1895 Kansas eighth grade test, I loved how regional it was: common knowledge of the size of a bushel of wheat, emphasis on the inventions of farm machinery, focus on extreme Kansas climate, and deep understanding of the state’s history. Many years of my primary and secondary education were spent on state history, which I am very thankful for. I hope this is the trend at all types of schools around the country because it provides a rich background that serves as a foundation for how we live our lives. Our environments shape us, but we have to understand them in order to utilize them to their fullest.
There are, of course, some stark contrasts in the 1895 test and the curriculum I and other students experienced, no matter what type of school in which we found ourselves. It does ring true today that schools do not teach us things that are necessary and sometimes teach us things that are even unnecessary. I’m not intending to go into a STEM field, yet I was in upper-level math and science classes all through high school. I took a year of organic chemistry in junior year, even though I had already declared in the liberal arts. These facts and skills have proved all but useless to me, while I also graduated high school without an understanding of personal finance, car mechanics, or first aid. There are evident lapses in education today.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the past is to be preferred. This test is from a period during which education was for only a privileged few, especially in a rural farming community where most children would’ve worked on the family farm. Today, secondary education is expected for youth. It’s more accessible, so it’s logical for things to be left out of the curriculum in order for the general population to acquire high school diplomas. Would we rather have more rigorous education and less people educated or more people educated with a less rigorous education?
This might not even be a choice between which we must deciding. If we account for cultural and regional differences between 1895 and 2021, there isn’t much that’s different. The arithmetic section seems unrecognizable at first, but if we translate it into terms this generation would understand (for instance, what the size of a bushel is) the technique is the same as what is taught in basic algebra classes. Just because something looks different doesn’t mean it is, or that it’s any worse because of it. The same goes for U.S. History; I aced that section, as long as you change Kansas history to Virginia history, which I was taught starting in the second grade.
Most of the inconsistencies in today’s knowledge and yesterday’s is just how it’s packaged. I know what the fundamental rules of arithmetic are, but I don’t know them by that name. I know how to use capital letters but I wouldn’t be able to verbalize nine rules for their use or explain why they’re used. This marks a change in how we view education, with less emphasis on memorization and rules and more focus on applications and use.
Some things do not, and should not, change. Grammar and literacy are foundational and need to be taught, arguably more rigorously than they are being taught now. I’m an English major, yet I struggled in the sections on grammar, writing, and diction. Another interesting part of this exam is that penmanship was graded. Cursive has stopped being taught in schools. There are great arguments as to why: unnecessary, time consuming, less critical than other information. But we’ve also lost an art in the meantime; quality of handwriting, and therefore communication, have also suffered.
But, there are things we have gained since 1895. There is no section on biology, chemistry, or physics. The closest is physiology. From early in elementary school, I learned about stars, planets, plant cycles, weather, chemical reactions, and energy. Not only are these subjects important today, but they’re also enjoyable. I can vividly picture learning about planets in third grade, with the entire class hanging onto every word my teacher spoke about moon landings, space expeditions, and rocket ships. Arguably, this is a lot more interesting than syllabification.
It would not be fair to say that one of these two systems we view here is correct, or better than the other. They reflect different cultural values and social conditions of their times. But there is something I see that has not disappeared from 1895 until now. Like the public-private-home school debate, it is based on the idea that education is important. Perhaps it is less about what we learn or how we are learning but that we learn. I may not use any of the formulas or notations from my year of organic chemistry, but I proved over those months that I could conceive of concepts outside of myself. Viewed in that light, 1895 and 2021 aren’t that different after all.
