Education: What Good Old Days?

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The editor of The Clearing House, a secondary-school journal, was tired of complaints that school kids learned fundamentals better in the good old days. He didn't believe it. Last week Editor Forrest Long said it wasn't so: measured by a ninth-grade examination given in 1846, youngsters of 1947 had proved a little better taught than their great-grandparents in spelling, a lot better in arithmetic.

To make its point, The Clearing House sent out copies of the old exam to teachers from York, Pa. to Fort Worth, Tex. It was a tough one; the school kids in Springfield, Mass, who took the examination 101 years ago averaged only 40.60% in spelling, 29.40% in math. In the past eight months 20-odd schools have given the tests. Even though some words were beyond their ken, 1947-5 boys & girls batted 44.68% on such items as accessible, chirography, descendant and evanescent. In math they scored 52.16% on such questions as this: "There is a certain number, one-third of which exceeds one-fourth of it by two; what is the number?"*