Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-21-2010

[andrewducker]

• U.S. Soldiers Punished for Not Attending Christian Concert
  (tags: religion government military usa EpicFail)
• Are exams getting easier? Nobody knows. (But it certainly seems that way from what we do know)
  (tags: exams uk education)
• New York's True Hallowed Ground
  (tags: newyork tolerance islam)
• The management consultancy scam
  (tags: economy management EpicFail)
• Hydrogen bonds are caught on camera
  (tags: physics)

Comments

[redshira.livejournal.com]

I thought the "exams are getting easier!" thing would aggravate me less once I wasn't in school, but it's just as annoying now as 12 years ago. The exams do seem to be easier to those of us who took our exams in the past, and shockingly so, but to the poor sods taking them now, they're every bit as hard because as simplified as they are these days, that's the level at which the kids are being educated. James' O-level Chemistry books from 1984 would probably be intimidating to current A-level Chemistry students. I remember how I felt my hard work and worry were being dismissed and invalidated when I was taking those exams and hearing all the exams-are-easier-now stuff.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I've not seen any recent exam papers so I can't comment on the content (although I suspect you may be right) but the thing that strikes me with current A-levels is the number of folks taking five, six or more.

When I took mine *cough*20*cough ... some years ago, I did four and that had to be agreed individually by the department head of the additional one I wanted to take (in this case comp-sci). We were a relatively high-performing school (a few pupils to Oxbridge each year) and everyone took three, with a few taking four if the staff thought they could handle the workload.

Nowadays, five or six seems relatively commonplace. If they're doing that in the same timeframe, something must have changed somewhere.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

That is something I've wondered about, yes! What hope does anyone with 3 As have these days, really? My A-levels were only 12 years ago but even then not many people did four. I was strongly discouraged from taking four - my parents and all but one of my teachers insisted I wouldn't have the time for four, and that I would get better grades if I stuck to three like everyone else (as it turns out, they were right, because I became ill during the second year). But five or six sounds like the sort of thing that only hyper-brains did when I was at school, and you'd see all of them on the news at results time because there were never more than four or five students like that in what seemed like the whole country. The whole point of A-levels was meant to be that there was so much more work involved that you couldn't realistically do more than three or four.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

That's the point that the "exams are getting easier!" crowd are trying to make though, isn't it? That kids aren't getting as a good an education as they would have in the past (for whatever reason: league tables + teaching to the test; breakdown of classroom discipline; other possible reasons), but governments don't address the issue because exam pass rates keep going up regardless.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

On that point I agree most heartily. As I'm now 30 it's the point I focus on. But I remember it being used to tell us that we didn't know how easy we had it, we barely had to work at all, etc etc., and the 18-year-olds I know now are getting the same sort of thing. They aren't hearing "we're concerned that you're not getting the level of education you need", they're hearing "you think you're so clever for getting an A but you didn't have to work for it at all compared to students from ten/twenty/forty years ago, your exams were so easy a twelve-year-old should be able to do them".

Soldiers and Christians

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

This is so not good. It's hard to express what a bad sign it is when an ideoloy hijacks the military.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

On the images of h-bonds, and speaking as someone with a significant background in chemistry, my considered and thought-through response is "WOW!".

[andrewducker]

Yeah - I never thought I'd _see_ chemical bonds.

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

Anecdotal, but perhaps worryingly indicitive of the problem facing A-leve students.

When I started working in my University nearly 9 years ago (academic year 2001/2002), the required grades for my department (Medicine) were AAB, with the A in Chemistry, plus a pass at A-Level Biology.

In 2003/2004, this rose to AAA.

In 2005/6, this increased to AAA at A-level plus an additional A in a 4th AS-level subject (if I understand correctly, they aren't actually allowed to ask for AAAA at A-level as a large number of schools do not allow their students to take more than 3 and this would be unfairly discriminatory against their students).

Last year (2009-10) they started adding specialised entrance examinations for "borderline applicants" (it could be inferred that "borderline" refers to applicants presenting just 3 A-levels, though this is just my personal reading of this rather than any official stand).

Even with all of this, for the past 3 years the School has had to run remedial classes in basic sciences and mathematics to get a sizaable proportion of new students (many of whom were coming to us with four straight A's in their A-Levels) to the level of competence expected of first year medical students, something which they never had to do years ago. I have also heard (though without confirmation) that this has been necessary in other science courses, though with a much smaller percentage of students involved.

redshira and mooism have already made the other points I would have liked to make about the exams still being hard for those taking them and education in general being not what it was in the past.

---

Soldiers and Christians: oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Hopefully this General Chambers will get dragged over live coals for misappropriating military funding for something that is not within his remit and for violating the "separation of Church and State" which the country he is paid to serve was founded on. However, I somewhat doubt it. O_O