Ditto...

Grant,
I think that if we were taught the basic quidelines behind most of these questions, the average student of today would do fairly well. Actually, I for one am happy that not nearly as much emphasis is put on sentance structure and parts of speech. It seems that all you really need to know is how to speak and write correctly. A lot of people are perfectly comprable writers without knowing all the little background rules.
Arithmatic is relatively simple. The stuff they had to do looks daunting to us since very few of the formulas needed still apply to anything. I'd like to see what would happen if these people had to figure out parabolyic equations and all the garbage with the four quadrants like we have to.
History would be no problem as long as you had a good teacher, likewise with geography. Course many of the countries that were prominent in 1895 no longer exist.
I also learned very little in 8th grade, except that a boa constricter can get out of it's cage rather easily, and origional maple field hockey sticks are suprisingle painful.
But, I think that if schools had adequate funding, you'd be amazed by what students today can do. The problem is that they have a death grip on certain useless subjects that apply to nothing, but ones that could actually be enjoyable or beneficial get put on the chopping block. That way nothing is controversial and stupid kids don't have to feel stupid, hooray for beurocracy!
Talk to Ya Soon, Taylor