taking the liberty to make this clickable:

http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html

thanks, paulb! I was looking for that a while back. I think what's happening here is we (and especially schoolkids today) have so much more information to deal with than kids did a hundred years ago. Plus, many of the "givens" have changed. But I, as an old liberal arts type, lament the shift from "genteel" knowledge to tech knowledge. Would you like fries with that?