Skills
My daughter and her boyfriend turned me on to a show they’ve been watching. It’s a competitive reality show called Alone. Each season, 10 contestants are dropped off at various locations in the same wilderness area, separated by natural features that make it impossible for them to collaborate. Each contestant has ten survival items they are allowed to take; they have to choose from a list—for example, guns and matches aren’t allowed—but different contestants may choose different survival gear. Popular items are a bow with nine arrows; knives; tarp; fishing line; cord; sleeping bag; etc. Participants also get camera gear to film themselves while they’re out in the bush; a first aid kit; and a satellite phone. The phone allows them to communicate to a support team in case of emergencies, or when they decide to “tap out,” i.e., end their solo outdoor adventure because of illness or injury, or overwhelming physical, emotional, or psychological challenges. Last person remaining in the wilderness after nine of their colleagues have tapped out wins $500,000.
I love the show for a couple of reasons. First, participants tend to get hungry after they’ve been out for a month or more. They are so excited to catch a fish or trap a squirrel, and so appreciative as they film themselves preparing and eating their quarry. It’s an excellent reminder of the absurd luxury of having grocery stores overstuffed with edibles, and of how complicated our diets have become. It’s humbling.
By extension, the simplicity of their shelters, their wardrobes, their collections of stuff reminds me of how much extraneous detritus populates my life, all of it requiring maintenance, attention, and storage.
Second, I’m so impressed by the mad skills that these contestants exhibit. They make elaborate and beautiful fish traps out of branches that they bend and weave. Their shelters are often handsome and ingenious. They know how to make fire with ferro rods (I never even heard of these before watching the show) and bow drills. They fish, they hunt, they trap, they know how to forage mushrooms and wild plants safely. Some make rafts and canoes to access better fishing or to explore more thoroughly. Others craft chairs, rock fireplaces, and carved musical instruments. They make repairs and solve problems with the limited materials at hand.
My daughter’s boyfriend and I were discussing the show recently and I said to him, “You know how many skills I would have to survive in those kinds of situations? Zero. Absolutely zip.” I find that striking because I suspect that it’s only two grannies ago, maybe one and a half grannies ago in some locations, that these skills—which are foundational skills, how you live and survive and do well in a place, simply and without the scaffolding provided by global corporations—were diffuse, were had and practiced by most people. Clearly, some people still have and practice these skills. But most of us in the first world rely on cars and trains and computers and truck drivers and Amazon and grocery, drug, and big box stores to meet our needs. If the grid went down for reals, or the supply chain got more compromised than it has been since Covid, or some other interruption short-circuited our elaborate chains of consumption, wowza. I know I’d be in big trouble.
So here I am getting into this survival TV show, and somebody sends me a copy of an eighth grade final exam from an 1895 Salina, Kansas school. It was a five-hour test, which totally kicks the butt of our 3.25-hour SAT tests for high school juniors. It has sections on grammar, arithmetic, U.S. history, orthography, and geography. The test is extraordinary for what it expects of its students. To pass, they need to know stuff, and they need to know how to do stuff. Here are the arithmetic and geography portions of the exam:
Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10.Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.
I couldn’t pass this exam, with my master’s degree. I appreciate both the exam’s granular practicality and its breadth. The math questions are clearly relevant to a population that worked on farms and in small businesses. Most have to do with value and cost and how to calculate those things. I suspect that there is a basic, cultural appreciation for thrift and carefulness around money undergirding this knowledge and its practical application. The tenth arithmetic question—write a bank check, promissory note, and receipt—suggests that eighth graders were stepping into an adult world where they would need to generate these kinds of documents. There’s nothing infantilizing about this test.
The geography section of the exam expects both a knowledge of local natural history, and a sense of larger questions, such as the essential role water plays for life on earth. I work as a horticultural therapist. I’m often discouraged when young clients—and older clients and staff for that matter—don’t know the names of any of the plants in our world, even the ubiquitous, ecologically essential ones like our northern California coast live oaks. They also don’t know how to identify poison oak, and thus they don’t know how to avoid it; and, when walking in woods or even in a garden setting, they basically see a sea of green without the familiarity to identify discrete plants.
So I love the natural history questions. But this test expects more. “Name all the republics of Europe and give the capitals of each” suggests that there’s a big, wide world out there in 1895 and it’s important to know something about it. By the way, I’m not at all confident in my ability to “name all the republics of Europe.” A quick Google search tells me that San Marino is the oldest republic in the world, “founded more than 17 centuries ago.” I definitely would have forgotten to include San Marino, among, I expect, many other oversights and errors.
It has to be said that not everybody made it to eighth grade in 1895, so this may be a more elite group than a cohort of eighth graders in our modern world. Still, a lot of questions are raised: This test looks like it derives from an elaborate, interesting, and relevant curriculum. How are we doing with that today? Who was teaching these children, and how was that person trained and compensated?
And this question: What happened to us? We used to be a population of capable people who knew how to do essential and valuable stuff. Where do we land on that spectrum of competence now?