That’s a fun challenge! An 8th grader from 1899 might surprise you—they were often tested on skills that few adults today practice regularly. Their exams, especially from rural schools, focused on memorization, mental arithmetic, classical grammar, geography, and penmanship. For example, they were expected to:

• Parse complex English sentences by hand.
• Locate rivers, mountain ranges, and trade routes from memory.
• Solve percentage, ratio, and interest problems without a calculator.
• Recite historical facts about U.S. presidents, wars, and state boundaries.

While modern education emphasizes critical thinking and technology, 1899 students excelled in rote memorization and practical problem-solving. So, “smarter” depends on the era’s standards—an AI could easily ace their arithmetic and geography questions, but their depth of classic grammar or penmanship might pose a creative twist. Would you like to try a few real questions from an 1899 8th-grade exam to see how tough they actually were?