BROOKINGS – Several recent and somewhat related school announcements come to the fore.

1. Gov. Noem suggests a citizenship test for our state’s high school seniors. 

2. A group of teachers in Sioux Falls are brainstorming for ideas to make school recess “recesses for all.” 

3. We read that 16 of every 100 South Dakota students K-12 are obese, and more are on their way. 

4. And I remembered I had a file of old tests South Dakota teachers devised for students of yesteryear.

Regarding recesses, the Sioux Falls teachers suggested the school grounds be divided into six “rotating, colored play zones with each zone adding a new activity for students every two weeks.” 

The play might be with “oversized Jenga pieces of a large Connect 4 game board.” 

Really?

At recess in Wessington Springs we didn’t have colored recess zones. We had dirt zones.

And never mind Jengas, we all just sort of fended for ourselves, playing on swings, slides and teeter-totters. There was Fox and Goose in the snow, and if it was melting, there were snowmen and snowballs.

I have a scar on my forehead as a reminder of the third-grade girl who was playing recess croquet. One spring day recess she clanged me with a mallet for questioning her croquet skills. I’ve never liked croquet since. 

As to obesity in the schoolyard, I think we all know where the problem really is, and it isn’t in the school cafeteria. 

Finally, Gov. Noem’s citizenship exam. No proposal has yet been introduced in the Legislature, but I would assume it would have a “local option” clause so that school districts can decide for themselves.

Which brings me to my file of old exams.

Like the one students in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, took in 1886. I assume it was for eighth-graders, since few in those days went on to high school or high schools on the frontier just didn’t exist.

Some of the 1886 exam questions were:

A. Define matter, body and substance.

B. Give the atomic theory

C. Tell all about levers and give the law of mechanics.

D. Describe the telephone.

Here are questions prepared by a rural school teacher in the Alpena area near Wessington Springs in the late 1930s.

a. What is the Indo-European language hypothesis?

b. What was “Grimm’s Law”?

c. How was our language introduced into England, and what was the most significant foreign-language influence on it?

d. Define phoneme and allophone.

Please don’t ask me what the answers to all that might be. 

Because even in the third grade back in Wessington Springs I just wasn’t smart enough to know not to tease a female with a croquet mallet in her hands. 

If you’d like to comment, email the author at cfcecil@swiftel.net.