INTERESTING TIMES

Kayaked both days this weekend on the Wind. Lovely river, waterfalls, hotsprings....fantastic place. Perhaps I should have been studying for boards, but the practice test I did last Friday convinced me that I'm pretty well prepared. I just now studied up on G6PD. There are a few glaring areas of ignorance but overall I feel good about what I've been able to assimilate. Going to buckle down again this week and then the big test is next week.

Two tests to go. I just finished the lab diagnosis final. I think I was the second person to finish it, and I did not hurry. I do not get why students take SO LONG to finish those tests. It is multiple guess. The teacher is tricky, we know that. Expect things to be worded with double negatives, or one small clause in a long answer that makes it false. Look for those. If you see one, mark it. Exclude all wrong answers. Then look at the possibly correct answers. If you have a hunch go with it. If you don't know, and don't have a hunch, just guess and keep going. Don't change your guesses, because you know more than you think you know. If the test gives you information in a later question that changes an earlier answer, change it. Fill in the bubbles with your number two pencil. Done. Pathology next.

I have long suspected as much, and every time that I pass an exam that I should have flunked, I wonder. How long will we continue in this direction? How empty will our educations be, by the time that we realize that we don't know how to run a free society, we don't know how to save the world, we don't even know how to save ourselves? Below you will find an 8th grade exam from Kansas in the year 1985. No doubt I would have flunked that exam, even though its contents appear to be quite important general knowledge. Ironically, the only exam that I flunked in high school was 9th grade grammar. I thought grammar was boring and useless.

Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895?
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