I used to know Morse code. I still have my Navy-issue cardboard blink trainer (and probably my old rotary semaphore trainer, too). I was never more than minimally competent with it, and I’ve long since forgotten most of it, but I was still tickled to see this:
Via Grouchy Old Cripple.
I don’t know if I used this algebra book when I was in high school, but it certainly looks familiar. Part 2 of the discussion of the book can be found here.
I used to read a couple of education blogs fairly regularly a few years ago, but I haven’t recently – at least one of the ones I used to read shut down, and my daughter has graduated from high school, so horror stories about elementary and high school shortcomings are no longer of quite the same interest to me.
The reproduced pages from the algebra book certainly bring back memories, and the comments about the type of questions and the grammar really highlight the dumbing down of education over the years. Concentrating too much on social indoctrination, I guess. I do enjoy how the article ends:
And you wonder why we geezers can make change and these kids can’t?
I’ll have to dig out my old high school yearbook – I placed in the top ten in Texas for mental arithmetic competition my senior year (for my size of high school, at least). I may even have one of the old tests hanging around.