Exam fail

[neo2810]

A work colleague was telling us his son had an English Literature exam this morning when a text came in from said son. He showed us the text which simply said "PAST"

facepalm!

[blaggard]

Current thinking would be that there is no need to be able to use language properly in order to understand it, having said that I would not be surprised had it NOT been a Lit exam. The rot started with Comprehensive schools, not BECAUSE of them but that was when just about every sensible, tried and tested teaching method got thrown out with the bath water!

[Morph]

Aye ATE bad grammer

[Mule]

They did the exam and got the result in the same morning?

[supraman54]

Current thinking would be that there is no need to be able to use language properly in order to understand it, having said that I would not be surprised had it NOT been a Lit exam. The rot started with Comprehensive schools, not BECAUSE of them but that was when just about every sensible, tried and tested teaching method got thrown out with the bath water!

I agree entirely.. the grammar school I attended became a comprehensive within a couple of years of me leaving and became a villains' training school...
Note the position of the apostrophe when the subject is plural.. LOL

[blaggard]

I agree entirely.. the grammar school I attended became a comprehensive within a couple of years of me leaving and became a villains' training school...
Note the position of the apostrophe when the subject is plural.. LOL

And now it's the Brit ffs!

[TwoPlAnKs]

A work colleague was telling us his son had an English Literature exam this morning when a text came in from said son. He showed us the text which simply said "PAST"

facepalm!

Sounds like you and your mate have missed a fairly obvious joke to me

[blaggard]

Sounds like you and your mate have missed a fairly obvious joke to me

Oh yes, of course

[TwoPlAnKs]

Oh yes, of course

No need to disagree with me in every thread mate, I'm half tempted to post something that I know you agree with just to see what you do. FYI you've not mentioned how far above sea level your school was yet.

On a serious note, I know a guy who uses passed instead of past when writing about directions like "walk passed the shop" which I thought was a bit strange. The words sound the same but it's not a mistake I've ever seen anyone make or been inclined to make. An odd one, maybe more common than I've seen.

English literature also doesn't have much to do with grammar, but I still think it's a pretty funny thing to do if you have just passed an English-related exam. I'd possibly use some sort of bad grammar when telling somebody I passed one anyway, but maybe that's just my sense of humour.

The older generation are so quick to judge youngsters' intelligence, but the fact is that the IQ testing people have to adjust their bell curves upwards periodically and score the tests more harshly because people are always doing better. They'd have preferred to have invented a test, found the average score to call IQ 100 and used that test forever to ensure everyone is always being tested in the same way, but the average slides upwards to the extent that they have to score the same test more harshly every year to compensate.

I saw a quote from somebody ranting about this, possibly on a news website or here after a story about best ever exam results coming out. They claimed exam results improving across all students was a "statistical impossibility" if the exams were not getting easier. They hadn't even thought of considering the other possibility - that people are getting brighter. It stands to reason that we would as the species and education develops, and it seems from the IQ tests that we are.

QI briefly mentioned this topic on a past series, and the fact they used was something like your great great great grandparents would almost certainly be clinical retards (IQ less than 70 I think) if they were alive today because of intelligence levels rising.

I'm not saying for sure that this guy didn't make a mistake, but totally writing off the possibility that he did it on purpose would be a bit presumptuous I think.

I agree entirely.. the grammar school I attended became a comprehensive within a couple of years of me leaving and became a villains' training school...
Note the position of the apostrophe when the subject is plural.. LOL

Apart from the fact that 'villains' is the determiner of the object and not the subject in that case of course. And to think I was like well a teenager two years ago and went to a propa gangsta state school innit.

[blaggard]

No need to disagree with me in every thread mate.

Easily sorted, stop posting bollocks!

[Godscrasher]

Fuk me, you can babble on somewhat.

[blaggard]

Fuk me, you can babble on somewhat.

Empty vessels

[neo2810]

They did the exam and got the result in the same morning?

Good point, at least we know where the son gets his intelligence from!

[BBK]

They hadn't even thought of considering the other possibility - that people are getting brighter. It stands to reason that we would as the species and education develops, and it seems from the IQ tests that we are.

QI briefly mentioned this topic on a past series, and the fact they used was something like your great great great grandparents would almost certainly be clinical retards (IQ less than 70 I think) if they were alive today because of intelligence levels rising.

I'm not sure I agree with your thinking here. Are people genuinely more intelligent, or is it just that we are more exposed to knowledge and information these days, and therefore suck it up like sponges, meaning yes, in general, we may well be more intelligent than our ancestors, but only because of the availability of information? Are we not as a society also more generally exposed to the type of psychometric questioning you would find in an average IQ test, and therefore find it easier, as our brains are more conditioned?

As a parent I find myself questioning teaching methods today. There is little doubt in my mind that some of the methods these days create confusion. My eldest daughter struggled with some maths when she was younger using the concept of the number line, then I showed her how I used to do it and it suddenly became much clearer to her. Same with reading, all this phonics stuff. Phonics is great for northern kids where g-r-a-s-s can be sounded out, but it doesn't work down here, you should see the look of confusion on their faces, especially when their mum is from Yorkshire and I'm a real southerner! Have the standards dropped? No, because the children are forced to do a hell of a lot more work now. When I was the age my kids are now, I'd not done a single piece of homework. Some weekends my daughter (10) is doing homework for 4 or 5 hours.

[TwoPlAnKs]

I'm not sure I agree with your thinking here. Are people genuinely more intelligent, or is it just that we are more exposed to knowledge and information these days, and therefore suck it up like sponges, meaning yes, in general, we may well be more intelligent than our ancestors, but only because of the availability of information? Are we not as a society also more generally exposed to the type of psychometric questioning you would find in an average IQ test, and therefore find it easier, as our brains are more conditioned?

As a parent I find myself questioning teaching methods today. There is little doubt in my mind that some of the methods these days create confusion. My eldest daughter struggled with some maths when she was younger using the concept of the number line, then I showed her how I used to do it and it suddenly became much clearer to her. Same with reading, all this phonics stuff. Phonics is great for northern kids where g-r-a-s-s can be sounded out, but it doesn't work down here, you should see the look of confusion on their faces, especially when their mum is from Yorkshire and I'm a real southerner! Have the standards dropped? No, because the children are forced to do a hell of a lot more work now. When I was the age my kids are now, I'd not done a single piece of homework. Some weekends my daughter (10) is doing homework for 4 or 5 hours.

Well I agree that the reason why we are becoming more intelligent is due to more exposure to that sort of information, especially as it's an average across society. Now everyone is massively exposed to words and numbers, hardly any jobs can be done without a detailed knowledge of it.

Maths teaching in the English Primary School system is notoriously terrible, there was a decent documentary on it on channel 4 recently. I watched it as I was working as a maths tutor at the time for much older kids and found myself explaining fractions to them whilst they breezed through calculus. If you are interested it's probably still on 4od, I think it was Dispatches that did it but somebody probably remembers the exact name to search for.

Unfortunately all the trainee teachers I know are obviously training for the Scottish system and we don't have a documentary about how terrible it is, but I'd imagine it's just as bad. They are just normal people, not maths type people, and although you might think maths teaching is so simple at primary level it's actually relatively complicated to explain something like dividing two fractions together, especially if a kid wants to know "why" the method works. Also, I can't imagine how you explain the concepts of adding or subtracting to a kid who doesn't get it straight away. Frankly it would be like trying to explain Twitter to a member of one of the remaining uncontacted tribes from the rainforests. Impossible to know where to even begin frankly.

Of course maths is just an example but I think it probably stretches across all subjects, especially depending on the particular teacher. I also don't think new-fangled attempts at teaching things is new. When I was in primary school (1992) we were taught "sets of" for the first time which was their pointless re-naming of multiplying. To do this we were given enormously complicated plastic things that folded and rotated in order to divide the table up into a different number of sections, which you could put beads into. Once you'd made the right number of sections and put in the right number of beads in you counted the contents of the table and that was your answer. I remember being totally baffled by it at the time, and frankly for a 4 year old child to be able to do all that whilst learning to multiply is just mental.

Think of all the teaching methods of old too, we did a historically accurate re-enactment of a Victorian classroom at school and the bollocks they spent time on was mental. Things like breathing exercises in class. We can all be glad those days are over.

I read recently that a copy of the Sunday Times contains more information than a working class victorian would have been exposed to in a life-time. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a massive contributing factor to us getting more intelligent, but I don't think the reason really matters. It's certainly not fair on young people to immediately claim their exams were really easy after they've done well in them.

[super mike]

When I was the age my kids are now, I'd not done a single piece of homework. Some weekends my daughter (10) is doing homework for 4 or 5 hours.

Is that down to being made to work more, or differing attitudes to homework Mainly between boys and girls)? As up to the end of my A Levels I don't think I ever had that much work to do at home, apart from the night before a major deadline and many of the lads around my age would be thinking the same.

[Lighty]

If you ask me kids are much much much thicker nowadays, they think they know it all cos they read it on a blog or a forum or fuckin facebook! The truth is they dont know shit, and I see this all the time as running a small business in building and construction, I employ lots of young uns and believe me they dont know shit! I have recently started a Bachelor of Engineering Degree via Open University and my son who has some ridiulous amounts of Maths Homework hasnt got a clue how to do half of themaths im doing. Truth is its the same as he has done but he's taught in the most stupid manner ever. Where as Im using simple mathematical annotations and methods, you know the stuff I got taught at school by those stuck in the past old fuddy duddy teachers that everyone seems to want out of teaching nowadays, you know the ones who had time to help you out when you didnt understand, cos they didnt have a wine party to get home to with all their rich friends or need to tweet to the famous people that they so desperately think are their friends! Teachers today come up looking great because the education system makes them look great. Hands are maybe tied somewhat so I dont just blame the teachers but I do believe the education today is not as good as it used to be, theres a fine balance of brains and common sense and today it seems to concentrate too much on the latter.

/RANT MODE OFF

[TwoPlAnKs]

Is that down to being made to work more, or differing attitudes to homework Mainly between boys and girls)? As up to the end of my A Levels I don't think I ever had that much work to do at home, apart from the night before a major deadline and many of the lads around my age would be thinking the same.

Yeah I think I'm approximately your age too and I feel the same, I remember homework being a fucking massive drama (especially in primary school) but in reality it was usually something like 15 minutes work max.

Secondary school and uni were both a farce really, excuses would be used with the more careful teachers but hardly anything got done if it wasn't for a specific assignment.