Anonymous said...
Perhaps the whiners should take the tests and see how they score. Might give them a different view on whether the tests are too easy. Might stop them from undervaluing the work of the students.
That's one possibility. There are subject areas taught now that didn't exist when most of the high-and-mighty were at school. Let's give them a quantum-physics paper and see how they do.
On the other hand, maybe our wonderful "unbiased" press should point out that schools now allow students into A level classes only if they are certain the student will pass.
Pass grades are up not because the exams are easier, but because those students who are unlikely to achieve high marks simply don't get the option to sit the exams.
This happens because schools are assessed on performance. Performance is measured by exam results. Exam results have to improve every year.
If they don't, the school risks losing funding.
If they do, the school is accused of making exams too easy.
Is it any wonder that it's now very difficult to fill teaching jobs? Why would anyone want to take on a no-win job like that, on a teacher's salary?
Imagine what it does to a teacher's morale. That has an effect on the teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. That affects the students.
If the class racks up a high failure rate, the teacher is blamed. If the class racks up a high pass rate, surely the teacher should get some credit?
No. The exams were too easy. It's the teacher's fault.
I can think of no other profession where you get punished for success.
This situation is spreading into universities. I know, as soon as I mention Administration, you're all going to say "Oh, here he goes again." But those are the people making up these 'goals'. They set the hurdles at any level they like, because they won't have to jump them. They set impossible deadlines they won't have to meet.
The administrators have caused this mess, but they are under no obligation to do anything about it, and they'll never get blamed for it. I'd like to stake them all out on the beach at low tide. If I had the right forms, signed and countersigned, I'd probably be allowed to do it.
While I was at Marchway University, there was an advertisement for an assistant to someone in the education offices. The minimum qualification required was two standard grade passes.
So we were getting instructions from someone who is considerably less qualified than the students we teach. A little digging revealed that most of the education department had in fact experienced very little of it. So the lunatics have taken over the asylum. These people decide whether or not students are suitable for acceptance, yet none of them can meet the criteria themselves. These people decide whether a lecturer, educated to PhD and sometimes to DSc level, is suitable for teaching a particular class.
This is why we have chemists teaching microbiology in our universities and colleges.
Blame stops at the teachers, because they are the visible face of education. Look behind them at the figures in the shadows. The idiots who we have allowed to take charge of the intelligent.
That's where the blame lies.
7 comments:
"students who are unlikely to achieve high marks simply don't get the option to sit the exams."
That's not right. If a student has the price of the test, he should be allowed to take the darn thing. Elitists!
Well, in the UK, there's no 'price' for exams at school. In some forms of higher education, students who fail first time round can pay for as many resits as they want.
The issue of 'price' has a different connotation here: the cost of attending a university is rising to the point where we will soon be back in the 17th century. Only the wealthy will be able to afford it. The halls of learning will once more fill with the idle rich, with their monocles, receding chins and shrivelled brains.
There's also a more difficult issue.
What if a student excels at maths but is lousy at music, but he wants to drop maths and do music.
His teachers try to persuade him otherwise.
-Yes, the school has a vested interest. If he does maths he'll pass, and improve the school's score. If he does music he'll fail, and reduce the score.
-There is also the matter of that student's future. If he does maths he leaves with a qualification. If he does music he won't.
It's my view (feel free to differ) that the student would be better to leave with the maths qualification, get work, then study music at an evening class. However, the student might not want to be a mathematician, even if he's brilliant at it and could soon earn enough to buy himself an orchestra.
So it's not a clear, black-and-white issue.
Going to a university is not a right. You do have to qualify. But no one should be denied the opportunity to attempt to qualify.
Ah. No-one is denied the right to qualify. That's dependent on school results.
However, with the current fees system, students finish university with a massive debt hanging over them. Some simply can't afford to do that.
It's not too surprising that a lot of very clever people are electing not to bother.
Of course, if they're really clever, they'll become electricians or plumbers. We're fast running out of them. Those professions are soon going to earn more than stockbrockers.
Which I consider fair, since they're considerably more useful.
Maybe it's different here in the U.S. Top tier schools do look at the whole package - grades, test scores, community involvement, entrance essay, etc - before deciding whom to accept. But there are many publicly funded institutions that don't look too closely at grades. They want to see your test scores. If those are high enough and you can pay the tuition, they'll take you.
A top exec at one of the most profitable companies in the U.S. was asked in an interview what a guy like him with a degree from NONAME college did all day at a cutting edge multi-billion dollar company. His reply: hire and supervise guys with fancy degrees from places like Yale and Harvard.
For Top Tier schools, you forgot one thing (which I suspect is the same the world over).
They also look at your family.
You can be an utterly brilliant student, but if you're the son of a coalminer you'll have a tough time getting into the top colleges or universities.
As your anecdote suggests, that doesn't necessarily matter.
Employers (those with any sense at all) will look at individuals, not background. They want people who will bring in profits, not acceptance into High Society.
So get a degree from NoName college by all means. If you're good enough, you just need to get a foot on the ladder.
By the way, it seems that even schoolteachers are now prone to making stupid assumptions based on demographics. If you're a council-estate kid (I think the US version would be 'trailer park kid') then you're not expected to do as well as a spoiled, arrogant little bastard from a mansion.
Seventeenth century, here we come again.
Seems strange that teachers would make that assumption, since I'm guessing that few of them grew up in mansions.
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