8th Grade Final Exam: Salina , KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie,' 'play,' and 'run'.
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Children Taken Hostage

Since its inception, state education has always been about ownership of the child. Who has the right to take possession of a child's mind and determine his worldview? See what the educators have to say:

“We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.”  --Horace Mann, (1796-1859) Father of American Public Education.

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.”  --John Dewey, (1859-1952) Father of Progressive Education, honorary president of the National Education Association, and co-author of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto.

“Only a system of state-controlled schools can be free to teach whatever the welfare of the state may demand.”  Ellwood Cubberley, (1868-1941) dean of Stanford University’s School of Education

“Every child entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.  It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well—by creating the international child of the future.”  Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Harvard psychiatrist.  From his keynote address at the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Boulder, CO.