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This is the test Thomas Edison gave to potential employees. It’s 146 questions. You have to get 90%. Compare that to current Standardized tests where 55 is considered passing. When I was a HS junior the passing grade was 65. My senior year, they lowered it to 55. Shockingly, our school got so much “smarter” that year.
I have the entire test below. I got maybe 3 right. To be honest, I didn’t know the first 5 and gave up and scrolled quickly through. I knew 1 or 2 and thought maybe I would guess another one right. I’m not proud of this.
But the questions do seem a bit random.
But this was on purpose. He wanted employees with good memories.
This is a Scientific American magazine article in 1921,
If I had a man in my employ who was right only half the time, or a little more than half the time, he would last just long enough for me to find him out, and that would not take very long. But our schools consistently and persistently give passing grades to students who are right above 60% fo the time. I consider this a disgraceful procedure. If they can’t teach the boys and girls to be right more consistently than that it is about time they admitted their failure and gave up the effort to teach them at all. In the good old days when a student had to be right practically all the time or take a caning and occupy a position of general disgrace, the school and the college produced far better results. I consider that a man who makes a grade of 50 on one of my tests has scored da total failure…
A man who has not got 90% of these facts at his command is deficient either in memory, as discussed already, or in the power of acquiring facts, as I shall presently make clear. And either deficiency is fatal for my purposes.”
We talk a lot on the radio about raising kids to maintain their natural curiosity. Kids growing up LOVE to learn about the world, but schools KILL curiosity in kids around 3rd grade.
This is Thomas Edison, “Somewhere between the ages of 11 and 15, the average child begins to suffer from this atrophy, this paralysis of curiosity, this suspension of the power to observe. The trouble I should judge to lie with the schools…it is clear to me that our schools and colleges are turning out men who not merely have failed to learn, but have been robbed of the capacity to learn.
I think of Frederick Douglass. He was born a slave and later sold to someone in Baltimore. He got his first taste of reading from his master’s wife. His master put a stop to that. But the seed was planted. Young Frederick became obsessed. When he would go on an errand he would bring pieces of bread and meet up with the poorest little kids in the city who were desperate for food. He traded with them. In his words, he would trade them bread for “that more valuable bread of knowledge.”
The obsession he had with learning to read – with learning about the world – our kids are all born with that, but the modern education system kills it.
This TED Talk is a must watch on this issue:
But back to Edison’s point specifically, I think it’s important that we memorize things. I want to learn to memorize again. It’s a part of my brain that has atrophies over the years. For all of human history, men memorized everything. My challenge is to memorize a poem. I’m going to start with Rudyard’s Kipling’s IF.
Then Invictus. Whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. Memorize the Declaration of Independence with your kids.
Let’s first agree that memorizing is a long lost art and we as humans should improve this muscle.
What poem will you start with? How can you do this with your kids? I’m excited to hear your memorizing goals. I’ll join you!