Thoughts for: Monday 21st August 2006
And now for something completely different.. :: [10:32:06]Dean e-mailed me with a submission for my little house of madness and so here it is below. It's underneath my own thoughts on the topic but you might want to read his first seeing as he started it. I don't mind doing this and if people have topics they want to discuss or voice then they can feel free to email me with their post and if I feel so inclined (Which I will) then I will post it and add my own opinion on the matter. Could be fun. Get writing.
:: [10:30:24]Do I look like I care? Sorry is that a funny way to start this segment? Well let's put it this way; when someone (older than me) says to me that my education (in general, not specifically A levels) isn't up to much and it was much harder in that mythological land of time/state of being referred to only as my day, I really just have to ask if they actually think I give a flying monkey turd what they think. Times change, things change, shit happens. That is the way of life. Yes exams and education as a whole is a very different animal these days to what it was in what can potentially be referred to in some cases as the days of yore. Most people are guilty of this obscenely stupid generalisation. My siblings have done it before, assuming that what I'm learning or doing is not of any particular difficulty and is somehow easier than their own learning. My parents have done it too on occaision, Taff particularly has told me many times of how maths was a lot simpler when he did it. It's what happens. A lot of people seem to like to pretend that because things have changed they are automatically so substantially different that they are easier or harder than they once were. Why? Pure ignorance perhaps? A lot of people just don't get the way things work now. They are totally oblivious to the way education works and what is being taught and therefore need to shut the fuck up before the open their copious pie holes to spout a cliche and ooooo so tired rendention of shite in audial form (no not pop music) which they like to refer to as an opinion. An opinion is a privelage and not a right. You want to run your mouth then learn what the hell you are talking about, it's only polite and stops your intellectual betters (like me) destroying you in a verbal onslaught which will probably make you cry because if you're stupid enough to run your gob without contemplating the fact that your nut sized brain holds no info' on the topic then you are probably so stupid that the length of the words I use (these sorts of people don't know that words with more than two syllables exist) will break you.
Now, unlike the aforementioned cretins I do know something about current education and exams (having lived through most levels of it) and I know something about the old schooling techniques and exams (I have a lot of older siblings and older friends as well as parents and I have talked about this topic at length with them. My opinion (which I'm entitled to because I actually know something about the topic) is simple enough. Times change and with them education and exams change. The purpose of exams and schooling in general in the past was to prepare people for their careers and their lives outside of the school environment, useful everyday abilities were learnt and nurtured. The focus is somewhat different now. Whereas in the past the mere assimilation and reproduction of a body of information was enough to demonstrate your ability and gain you recognition now you need to not only display this skill but a host of others including the ability to use this body of information to make inferences and use it to argue a point and so on and so forth. From that simple tenet it would seem obvious that modern examinations are more difficult. It's a more complex process with very different demands being placed upon a person. I want to take a moment to sidetrack here though. You can skip the next paragraph if you like it's just about my own experiences of A levels and gives a rough idea of a topic I will start on in the paragraph following it.
When I went to college to do my A levels I found myself in an interesting position. You see GCSE's were little more than a joke to me and for all intents and purposes A levels were the same, to me they were not particularly difficult. Despite this I don't mind admitting that I got an E in Computing. I don't mind admitting this (my lowest grade ever) because it's basically not my fault. The teaching was absolutely and utterly terrible. So below par that Satan is wondering what the hell that thing is beneath him. The description of the course said you didn't need any prior knowledge of computers or computing (Which sounded good because there was no IT GCSE at my school) but that was a blatant and utter lie and when I got there I was faced with a truly incompetant teacher who apparently expected us to already be at a level where we knew enough about computing to write our own computer code. I was less than impressed and that's just on the occaisions he turned up. If you asked for help or an explanation the general response was him mocking you and/or telling you to look it up on the internet. So that was when he DID turn up, which wasn't very often. Not very often at all. I passed the AS with a D and that was because Wes was kind enough to teach me some stuff when he had time (he had years of computer experience before the class and was a web journalist and programmer way before this class so he wasn't faced with the same problems me and others were having). I carried on the subject because I wanted to learn it and knew the next year would see some new teachers who would hopefully be better. As it happens they were not better. They sucked too. As before these teachers assumed that everyone in their class had extensive knowledge of Computing already. This time though if anyone asked for help with work they were told to press F1 on the keyboard for a help file. I have to wonder how much they got payed for telling people to use a help file.. That was one teacher, the other was equally useless although his main problem was attitude and there were multiple verbal conflicts between me and him and Wes and him. The hatred escalated over time and made some very inappropriate situations and I was in fact threatened with legal action and some other stuff.
What's my point? My point is that in ALL of my other subjects I got grades most of my friends would have killed for at the time and I did it without any particular effort. How? I'm blessed with a considerable learning capacity and can soak up information very well as long as it is presented to me well in the first place. The example above illustrates what happens when teaching is woefully inadequeate. When the teaching was excellent my grade was excellent (top marks on most exams) and when the teaching was merely adequate my grade mimicked this (C or B). See the pattern? Everyone threats that exams are easier and thus worth less. Did it ever occur to people that maybe exams aren't easier and that the level and standard of teaching has just increased and become more exam focussed? When I was at college there was a lot of work put in by the good teachers to make sure that we were ready for our exams, knew what would happen and how and what we should do. I would love to see these teachers get some of the credit for these increasingly improving grades instead of people just deciding the exams must be easier. Hell I would be damn insulted if I was them.
I agree with Dean that exams are only going to be as hard as the examiners make them and these people go through rigorous standard tests. It's my belief that the resultant grades that people get are a result of better teaching and not easier exams. In fact as a result of good pass rates I believe it's possible that exams are getting harder and not easier. Frankly it should not be a reflection of a good system that people fail which seems to be what people want. Why would you want people to fail? How does that demonstrate that your system works? You should be proud that teaching is at a level where people are becoming skilled and knowledgeable individuals. Not accusing them of stupidity and claiming that they are worthless because the system is made to let them through. Society has changed and as such education has changed. More people want to make something of themselves these days and go on to further education aiming to be the best they can and as such yes there are more qualified people out there and yes in some cases this diminishes the value of their qualifications in the eyes of potential employees and others. What is the solution? Is it to make things harder as Dean suggests? Maybe it is. But to do that you first need to determine that things are easier and that I'm wrong about improved teaching (I think current teaching as a whole is shit in schools but decent in colleges and universities). Exams are already harder in comparison to what they used to be. There is more to learn and more ways to apply this learn knowledge. The level of complexity of subjects has increased as the understanding of them as a whole has evolved. I imagine that by the time I am an old man things will be very very different indeed and they will be teaching things that I never heard of. If anyone intends to make exams harder they need to make sure they are harder. It's a simple experiment, take a few groups, teach one in an old style using an old syllabus and take a matched group and teach them with the modern equivalent and see who gets the best grades then perhaps if possible in more base subjects, teach a couple of groups then swap the exams, see what happens. It would never be a truly accurate test but it's the closest you're going to get.
The roundup: I don't know if A levels are harder or easier but I do know that people should stop whining about it and those that voice their entirely uninformed opinions should stop take a moment to think then write it down and ram it up their arse because no one gives a fuck. It's like a gen x kid sitting around and saying everything sucks without knowing anything about it. Kindly fuck off one and all. No one can say either way. Does it really matter? Someone up the scale decides these things and they don't care what anyone else thinks.
:: [09:26:04]There has been discussion lately over the issue of exams becoming easier, proven by the rising pass rates among GCSE and A level students.
When I did my A levels I didn't do very well because it was the year that AS levels were introduced. The syllabus was only half done and no one knew what we were supposed to be doing. It was incredibly confusing, and A levels were not a very pleasurable experience for me. However, I just managed to scrape my way into Hull University and have just emerged with a 2:1.
As for exams getting easier; who knows? No one that took them years ago has taken them today! The only people that really know are those that write the syllabi and exams. The issue, I think, is defined by one great question: should A levels be designed to allow everyone to go to uni and reward them for the work they do, or should they be very difficult, thus "sorting the wheat from the chaff"? A levels being easy, remember, is no reflection on the intelligence of the modern teenager: it is merely a reflection on the intentions of the examiners. Some people I know (who are aged over 40 (I am 23)) tell me that my exams mean nothing because they are all easy nowadays, but sometimes I think this is a manifestation of jealousy, as I have a degree and these people have only A levels.
I think exams should be harder. The notion of 'higher education for everyone' is preposterous - if everyone had degrees, degrees would be meaningless, and no one would want to be dustmen, call centre operators and factory workers!
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