GCSE overhaul

I can't think of any career that requires parrot recitation of facts/dates/figures or that assumes that Google or other forms of research are not available.

IT, if you didn't know you looked in a book or Googled the error code.
Electronics, you studied the datasheet, played with the circuit on the bench.
95% of the time you did happen to know what to do, but most of that came from experience.

Overall, it is far more useful to know where to look for information than it is to know that information in the first place. Look at this forum, half of the threads result from people not able to do basic research, this is the skill that schools need to teach.

Education needs to catch up with the concept that most of the facts you will ever need to use in life are already at your fingertips, they only need to train children to be able to interpret those facts. I can't think of anything more pointless than to learn parrot fashion the Kings and Queens of England.
 
bitslice said:
Education needs to catch up with the concept that most of the facts you will ever need to use in life are already at your fingertips, they only need to train children to be able to interpret those facts. I can't think of anything more pointless than to learn parrot fashion the Kings and Queens of England.
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I think you're partly making a good point here; but equally I think you're missing something rather basic. You need to have assembled at least a basic matrix of factual information, and to have that information readily available in your head, to be able to make the sorts of conceptual connections that lie at the foundations of interpretation. Memory is an important part of our cognitive apparatus.

Rote learning is rather out of fashion these days, but there are quite a few circumstances in which its results can be very valuable. If you learn your arithmetic tables at a very young age, practical mental arithmetic (something that I have to do all the time) becomes second nature. If practical mental arithmetic is second nature, you can pretty quickly spot the egregious fallacies in the reporting of science or economics in the modern media :) Not being able to do this makes you open to having the wool firmly pulled over the eyes!

Kings & Queens; a little more specialized I'll admit but if you're doing anything that involves historical research having such simple facts to immediate mind facilitates the making of the sort of connections that you would otherwise miss if you had to look everything up.
 
gregorius said:
Isn't that a rather patronizing attitude towards this constituency? One of the ideas for including, for example, the study of whole Shakespeare plays in the syllabus (rather than excerpts) is to facilitate access to the greats of literature for children who might not otherwise have that access. From this point of view this is a tremendously progressive and liberating step.



I think you underestimate youngsters. Children are naturally knowledge hoovers; without intervention they want to learn...they will learn. A terrible indictment of any school system is if it inhibits this natural curiosity. If it facilitates access to the best of humanity for children, then it is succeeding.
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I wasn't questioning the ability of youngsters. Just that the inflexible bias towards Shakespear, romance and period novels might put some students off. Especially teenage boys, who struggle to connect with type of material, and may go some way to explaining why their grades suffer so badly in English lit. I loathed it at 14 years old. If you want to inspire pupils to learn, why not give them more options? They are people after all, and people have different tastes :)

bitslice said:
If you look at any soap opera, there are merely regurgitating the same plot lines from Shakespeare :)
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This is the phase all English Lit teachers have etched on to their retina. Why? So they can repeat it every time a pupil protests about having to read it ;)
 
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gregorius said:
I think there's been a general move towards compsci rather than "computer studies"; the exam boards have been tooling up for first delivery this year...
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Yep, one of the positive changes Gove has made (unpopular as it may be to say) is the change from ICT to Computer Science. Of course it does course problems with quite a few current ICT teachers that have little in the way of programming skills.
 
Judging a kid's knowledge on one or two mad weeks of exams seems bonkers to me. It's like judging a book based on reading one page.

The vast majority of universities use modules and coursework. It's not a perfect system but it's far better than what's being proposed.
 
Tunney said:
Judging a kid's knowledge on one or two mad weeks of exams seems bonkers to me. It's like judging a book based on reading one page.
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May I suggest a counterargument? The great advantage of putting all the assessment into a short period of time (at the end of the year) is that it allows all the rest of the year for a considered and structured approach to learning. In particular it allows time for the information going in to be fully assimilated and reflected upon. When we arrive at exam time what we are able to assess is that assimilation and maturity of understanding.

The vast majority of universities use modules and coursework. It's not a perfect system but it's far better than what's being proposed.
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And the downside of this system is that there is simply no time for that assimilation and mature reflection upon the material. Module is delivered, it's immediately examined, student moves on to the next module having absorbed little. We have to write easier exams or the students don't score anything!
 
What good is two years of assimilation and mature reflection if you stay awake all night before the exam in a state of panic and can't think straight?

That's why a combination of on-going assessment including coursework and end of unit exams should be combined with end of year exams.

You're always going to suffer if you rely purely on a single method of assessment.
 
mothermachine said:
And in one fell swoop all those kids out there who are more inclined toward the creative/hands-on things are screwed. For me, coursework was essential. I hated exams. The whole idea that all these years of hard work and pain all come down to a couple of weeks of exams is horrible. Coursework meant that you could gradually accumulate some decent grades and push towards your final goal over a longer time period, with less stress at the end. The real world is hardly ever like this as they now are pushing for. More often than not it's a gradual process of work, not some manic crunch-time at the 11th hour. I think this is terrible, generally.
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typically coursework allows girls to do better, also it allows children whose parents do their work for them to do better.

not "creatives" lol, nothing creative about most coursework, just box ticking.
 
Stretch said:
English will include Shakespeare, romantic poetry and a 19th century novel.
.
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i never understood why in English literature we study books that bare so little resemble to modern English they may as well be a foreign language.
 
gregorius said:
but equally I think you're missing something rather basic.
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Agreed, I didn't mean to make it so black and white.
gregorius said:
When we arrive at exam time what we are able to assess is that assimilation and maturity of understanding.
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At the time all they assessed was how well my hayfever pills stopped my eyes from drowning. Coursework would have doubled all my grades.
Tefal said:
i never understood why in English literature we study books that bare so little resemble to modern English they may as well be a foreign language.
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Innit? so rite brah, respect. What's wiv all dat Jools Casear getting sticked by his posse n that? Dat's well mashed, bruv.
 
gregorius said:
And the downside of this system is that there is simply no time for that assimilation and mature reflection upon the material. Module is delivered, it's immediately examined, student moves on to the next module having absorbed little. We have to write easier exams or the students don't score anything!
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Not true with a subject like maths where ideas constantly build upon one another and previous knowledge is essential to progress with a problem.
 
Tefal said:
i never understood why in English literature we study books that bare so little resemble to modern English they may as well be a foreign language.
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I did English Lit quite a few years ago (25+) and studied Animal Farm, 1984, Z for Zachariah, Day of the Triffids and Hobsons Choice. All much more interesting than Shakespeare or some god awful "Classic" from the 19th Century.
 
RDM said:
I did English Lit quite a few years ago (25+) and studied Animal Farm, 1984, Z for Zachariah, Day of the Triffids and Hobsons Choice. All much more interesting than Shakespeare or some god awful "Classic" from the 19th Century.
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lucky git love animalfarm and day of the triffids :( we did romeo and Juliet, far from the madding crowd an some other crap i dont even remember.

Far from the madding crowd was just like old timey eastenders, only slightly more melodramatic :/
 
gregorius said:
The great advantage of putting all the assessment into a short period of time (at the end of the year) is that it allows all the rest of the year for a considered and structured approach to learning. In particular it allows time for the information going in to be fully assimilated and reflected upon. When we arrive at exam time what we are able to assess is that assimilation and maturity of understanding.
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Or, how good the student is at cramming as much information as possible in two or three days before the exam, using past papers to establish the format of questions and reduce the level of understanding required to answer them.

:)
 
RE: English Literature

Shakespeare's much more interesting and educational when taught by a teacher who actually understands it themselves! One of my A-Level English teachers had a reading level noticeably lower than mine, one was a published poet. Guess which one I learned more from?

In an ideal world, English Lit syllabus should always cover current material as well as historical of course!
 
Macky said:
Not true with a subject like maths where ideas constantly build upon one another and previous knowledge is essential to progress with a problem.
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With respect, what you've said about mathematics, accurately in my opinion, illustrates the point. Ideas in mathematics build upon one another; we pile it high into tall spires of abstraction. But if students have less time to absorb and assimilate the material in a foundational module, we have to start at a lower level and proceed more slowly with the next module that builds on that material. Etc, etc.
 
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