That page gives no evidence that it is fake, it's all just making excuses for how people shouldn't be expected to do well on it. I followed a couple of links bac and found Snopes's definition of "False" as "claims which cannot be established as true by a preponderance of (reliable) evidence." Which is easy enough, if you don't want it to be true under this standard, just don't look too hard for evidence.
I had never really looked into Snopes before, this just knocked its reputation back a good bit for me.
The claim at the top that they're saying is "false" is: "An 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards", a claim that's usually attached to this document when it's being forwarded around the internet. It's true that this post doesn't make that claim, but I posted the Snopes link just to try to head off the conversation from going in that direction. My comment would have been much better if I'd added more than just the link, though.
What do you propose we use to determine veracity if not evidence? Should we just believe everything we hear?
And isn't what you just did with Snopes a pretty good example of not wanting wanting something to be correct and not looking too hard for evidence to the contrary?
Snopes' notes suggest that the exam was first printed in the Salina Journal. Their website includes this page, which includes some more backstory, as well as answers: http://www.salina.com/1895test/
Comments
That page gives no evidence that it is fake, it's all just making excuses for how people shouldn't be expected to do well on it. I followed a couple of links bac and found Snopes's definition of "False" as "claims which cannot be established as true by a preponderance of (reliable) evidence." Which is easy enough, if you don't want it to be true under this standard, just don't look too hard for evidence.
I had never really looked into Snopes before, this just knocked its reputation back a good bit for me.
The claim at the top that they're saying is "false" is: "An 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards", a claim that's usually attached to this document when it's being forwarded around the internet. It's true that this post doesn't make that claim, but I posted the Snopes link just to try to head off the conversation from going in that direction. My comment would have been much better if I'd added more than just the link, though.
The Snopes page gives no evidence that it's fake because the snopes never makes the claim that it's fake.
Read the actual 'claim' statment. The claim is that the exam demonstrates a decline in education, not that the exam is real.
What do you propose we use to determine veracity if not evidence? Should we just believe everything we hear?
And isn't what you just did with Snopes a pretty good example of not wanting wanting something to be correct and not looking too hard for evidence to the contrary?
Snopes' notes suggest that the exam was first printed in the Salina Journal. Their website includes this page, which includes some more backstory, as well as answers: http://www.salina.com/1895test/