Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 27 Sep 2015.
Below is a copy of Elsie Johnson’s 8th grade music final from 1910, Lake County, Indiana School District. Music is taught today as an optional elective and the course title would be either Chorus, Band or Orchestra. Classical composers aren’t usually covered, either, as “noted musicians.”
The music class content is extremely basic, much like is taught in our elementary curriculum today:
This is the last document I have on Elsie’s school experience. In addition to the final exams I’ve published (Reading, Grammar, Math, Geography, History and Music) Elsie was tested on spelling and penmanship.
Ahh, penmanship. In Florida, penmanship is no longer taught. I’m sure, like many of you dear readers, you learned cursive using the Palmer method. D’Nealian became in vogue in the 1990’s as it was a transition between printing and cursive. In the last 5 years, cursive is no longer taught in elementary in Florida. The reasoning is that keyboarding is more important, printing is more legible, there is less time due to the increase in rigor of core courses and a student can learn cursive on their own. It will be interesting to see if signature lines disappear from documents when the present generation reaches adulthood!
