The New York Times presented an amusing blog entry last week, where a scan (PDF) of an 1868 Harvard University entrance exam was presented. Not too surprisingly…it looked very difficult…to anyone who has a modern education. You see in the mid 19th century, a college education was mostly a classical education (i.e. heavy in Latin, Greek, etc.). Nowadays, this original college curriculum has been transformed into what we call liberal arts curricula…But without as much rigor, and with a post modern set of rules…
This blog post has had a lot of coverage online, with some blogs using this exam as a means to: discuss the throes of what it is like to feel stupid, to make fun of the ‘nutty’ things people thought were important (ahem… revisionist history alert here!),and so on…
In many ways this relates to my previous post about Scott Adams article decrying modern college curricula…where he advocates learning how to be an entrepreneur (sic). It seems to me that the entrance exam, and even more so with the Adams article seem to advocate a one size fits all mentality. Ironically, in both cases, since the Adams piece was predicated upon creating a differentiated curriculum for the ‘B’ and ‘C’ students (Because they want to be…entrepreneurs?) and with the 19th century entrance exam in that it represents the last gasp and flowering of the Trivium and Quadrivium (i.e. they fit in the 14th century pretty well, and increasingly les so over the centuries…).
In any case, I have a link to this curiosity…try to do it!
Remembering When College Was a Buyer’s Bazaar
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering-when-college-was-a-buyers-bazaar
This Harvard Entrance Exam from 1899 will Probably Make You Feel Dumb
http://www.geekosystem.com/harvard-entrance-exam-1899
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf
