Standards

An excerpt from the 1891 entrance examination for Cornell University has been posted online (pages 15-17).  (HT: T-19) See also the full entrance exam from 1889 here. (Thanks to a blog reader via email.)

It seems to me that the state of education in this country is largely a product of the egalitarian idiocy that has become predominant in the post World War II era. People wonder why a college education is not worth what a high school education was a half century ago. Standards have fallen so dramatically that it is shocking. In those days if you didn't know the material you were not passed from one grade to the next, and you were not graduated from high school. Of course back then it was not presumed that everyone had a “right” to go to college, or that everyone should. As a general rule, dolts and the otherwise functionally illiterate were not admitted to college.

This may also go hand in hand with the disparagement of honest labor that while not requiring a college education, is not for novices or the unskilled. Once upon a time, being a plumber, electrician, carpenter etc would have been regarded as an honorable and good paying job worthy of some respect. For the record, they still pay pretty well, often better than jobs requiring a four year degree. But today, too many college students seem to look down their nose at that kind of work as being only for those who couldn't cut it. When in fact only a very small percentage of those with supposedly advanced degrees could pass the entrance exam linked above.

The real problem with egalitarianism is that it rarely seems to involve pulling one group of people, or standards, up. It always seems to involve pulling people and standards down.