Raising Expectations: Education Initiatives in Northern Wisconsin

The following shows what can be achieved but we need to put forth the effort and realize this may take generations.

Children rise to the level of what’s expected of them.

Let me give you a few examples of what was possible before we taught our children what to know instead of teaching them how to think.

John Quincy Adams was eight while drilling with the MA minute men; at eleven he accompanied his father abroad as his secretary; at thirteen he traveled to Holland to attend Leiden University; at fourteen he was secretary and French interpreter for the American ambassador to Russia; at sixteen he was secretary to the Americans in France who were negotiating the peace treaty to end the Revolution.

When John Trumbull, Supreme court justice of Connecticut, was four years old he had finished reading the Bible from cover to cover. At age six he had mastered Greek and defeated his minister in a Greek contest. (Remember much of the Bible was written in Greek). At age seven he had passed the entrance exam at Yale. (Knowing English, Greek and Latin were required)

George Wythe, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was studying the classics (written in Latin) by age three.

When Benjamin Rush, father of American medicine, was fourteen he was graduating Princeton. He went on to do many things. He was the top doctor in the USA in the founding era. He founded five universities. He is known as the father of public education under the Constitution. He was director of the U.S. Mint. He served in three presidential administrations. He was a civil rights leader.

When Thomas Jefferson was nine he began his study of Latin, Greek and French; at sixteen he entered William and Mary College. (It was common for American youth to know at least three languages and enter college between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. In fact, knowing English, Greek and Latin were required to get into college.)

By the time Nathan Hale was twenty-one, he had graduated college, became a teacher and subsequently quit to become a soldier fighting for the independence of the USA. Became a spy for that very same cause and uttered those immortal words, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

When Maria Mitchell was eleven she was a teaching assistant and studying astronomy; at twelve she helped calculate the exact time of a forthcoming solar eclipse; at seventeen she headed her own academy, training women in astronomy and science.

When John Marrant was thirteen he became the first black American to successfully evangelize Native Americans.

When Annie Oakley was nine she was already earning a living for her family with her shooting skills.

These are just a few examples of the norm. As mentioned earlier, thirteen was about the average age for beginning college.

Below are some of the exams required to get into and out of 8th grade, the final year of formal education.

"A boat worth $864 of which 1/8 belonged to A, 1/4 to B and the rest to C was lost. What loss did each sustain at having been insured for $500?

Intellectual Arithmetic before entering 8th grade, 1877 (Intellectual meant you do it in your head.) Ray’s New Intellectual Arithmetic, (New York, Van Antwerp, Bragg &Co., 1877) p.114, lesson LXI

"I insured 2/3 of a shop worth $3,600 and 4/5 of a house worth $6,000, paying $126. What is the rate of insurance?

8th grade graduation exam, 1890 B.A. Hathaway, 1001 Test Examples in Arithmetic with Answers (Cleveland, OH: Burrows Bros. Co., 1890) p. 40

Sadly, people like John Dewey and Stanwood Cobb (people who ‘knew better’) vastly lowered the expectations for children in the 1920s.

Today we have 6% literacy rates in places like Detroit, 5% in Baltimore, 9% in Milwaukee and a national academic achievement rate of around 39%. Since 1979, the advent of the Dept. of Education, our ranking among the education programs of other countries has been constantly falling.

Here’s some good news, again from the past. One of the newly freed slaves had learned English so well in the five years between emancipation and his election to Congress that he destroyed the VP of the Confederacy in a debate about slavery being the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Five years!

If he can do it so can you! So can our children! It all comes down to expectations. We all get what we expect out of life.