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This is something I'm preparing for a project, and so I thought I would show it to the most intelligent people I know - the teachers. They disregarded it though, so it's ended up here. Sorry for the length, but please read.
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All (alright, most) children under 16, especially those aged 14-16, are caught up in a creaky system’s rusted cogs. We are shoved into the system at an early age (possibly too early to be properly used) and then mucked around, confidence smashed, hope and faith destroyed, vengeance bred deep within.
What the heck am I taking about? The British education system, of course! We are put on the conveyer belt of ‘success’ from the age of 4 to 5, much earlier than other countries. Fortunately, my mother taught me to read and write before I went to school, but many others did not have this privilege. Therefore, I had to waste the first year of my educational life sitting down and learning how to read again. What a waste! I could have spent that time expanding my knowledge of the language, but nope, it was wasted. Now, I’m not saying that children shouldn’t be taught to read and write at school, but it demonstrates an underlying fact of our system of education; I shouldn’t have had to waste the first year re-learning how to read and write, I should have been able to do something else, as should have the kids who also were able to read and write. Educating everybody in exactly the same way is not the way to fully develop someone’s potential.
Infant school is an institutional nightmare – what do we do in infant school? I’ll tell you: sweet FA. I did nothing of real value at infant school, except for a bit of maths. If it weren’t for that, infant school could have been dismissed as a crèche. Junior school was definitely more valuable, but there were still problems. The lack of real learning up until the later half of Year 5 really did bother my parents, and in my school, science was virtually skipped over barring a couple of days of hardcore plants. It also struck me, even way back then, that examining kids as young as 11 was pointless. I found out that my view was indeed correct, when I got given the first maths exam. The first question read something like:
“If you have ten sweets, and eat three sweets, how many sweets do you have left?”
LITERALLY A CHIMP’S QUESTION. That is the sort of thing you would be expected to know after your first week of infant school. Diabolical is the word for it.
And then we come to the biggest failure most of us are likely to see in our lives (except for the government as a whole): secondary school. One could write books about even the smallest failing of secondary school. However, I will try to sum it up in less than novel size.
The main problem that I can find with secondary school is that it is an autocracy. It is directly ruled over by one person, and one person alone. They make all the decisions, even if they only benefit themselves. They willingly sacrifice the welfare of the school, in order to take as much out of it as possible for themselves. My school is single-sex, and developing a huge new sports hall. However, so are the girl’s school next door. The thing is, the halls appear to be exactly the same. Not only this, but the gap between them is so short, you could walk over it. Now, riddle me this, why didn’t the two schools combine their resources to make a really good hall, with lots of different facilities, instead of two identical halls, with two of the same facilities? Because the two schools hate each other.
Not the students, hell no, they would love to combine the two schools together. No, yet again, it’s the heads who are responsible for this pointless clash of interests. Let me put it this way:
DING! DING! DING!
Announcer: “Good evening everybody, and welcome to the Manchester Evening News Arena tonight. Our main event is a true clash of styles. In the corner to my right…weighing in at 174 pounds, hailing from the world-famous county of Suffolk, the Undisputed Head of the Girls school, The Dog-lover!”
*Huge female jeering and booing*
A: “And in the corner to my left…weighing in at the scales at 200 pounds, Mr. ‘2-double O-2”, he is…The Autocrat!”
“And here we go! The Autocrat and Dog-lover are beating each other around the head with, well, you could call them ‘punches’ but that would be glamorising them somewhat. But wait a second…”
*Mass crowd of adolescent boys rush into the ring, beating up the boys’ headmaster*
And there you have it, ladies and gents. The girls’ headmistress loves dogs, yet detests the male of our species. She apparently lets her dog run freely around the school at any time it wishes. She took one of my friends around the collar of his shirt, shoved him up against a wall and asked him what he was doing (although this was after he was inspecting a solidified length of saliva he has somehow managed to spit onto a lighting grate the day before, and said to the headmistress “Look, I spit” in a ridiculously puerile voice). The boys’ headmaster has managed to get rid of our only drama teacher, numerous other teachers, wasted money on a virtually never used theatre, and has now run out of money for the sports hall, because of this plan to spend £20,000 on engraving some things on the walls. Surely the height of stupidity.
All decisions concerning my education go through this man. A man who would rather have bits cut out of a wall than up-to-date textbooks, or even good teachers. I am sick of people who barely know me making many decisions about my life. People tell me that that’s life, but I’m not prepared to just sit back and accept that. I’ve always figured that if it weren’t for the complainers and those who tried to change the world, we as a race wouldn’t get anywhere at all. I’m not trying to look ‘cool’ by pointing out things that are wrong with the system, but I am trying to make a difference not just for me, but for others as well. But it cannot all be done it one small school; it has to be taken outside. Outside, to a militant group, only known by the ‘Edexcel’.
These callous people are employed by the Government to handle some of the most important work known to man: examinations. This group do not operate alone; they work with other terror organizations, such as ‘AQA’ and others. These groups act as complete incompetents when distributing and marking the exams, but they are not really as stupid as they appear. They make such stupid mistakes because they are trying to depress the students to the extent that they are easily manipulated to do whatever the teachers tell them, without any independent thought from the students involved.
Okay, so maybe that’s not entirely the truth. But it still conveys the feeling that Edexcel are failing at what they’re meant to do. Unfortunately for students across the country, and even the world, examinations have become the be all and end all of education. I do not believe that this is at all the best method for testing pupils’ skills. Notice that the word ‘testing’ is used instead of ‘examining’. Sure, there’s a place for exams in education – its primary function is to test how the mind works under pressure. But this is not entirely what the real world is made up of. I believe that the main idea of schooling is to prepare you for the ‘real world’, whatever that may be. The real world does not revolve around pressurised conditions. Pressure is, of course, AN element of modern work, but not THE element. This is the only part of working situations that is examined by the powers-that-be.
This year, specimen papers were sent out for the mock exams. I am aware that specimen papers were produced for French and German, although there may have been others. The scandalous thing about this is the fact that these papers were supplied with marking schemes containing WRONG ANSWERS. How the hell are students meant to have any faith in this system if they are told that the correct answers they have put down are wrong, purely because come governmental lackey struggling to get by on what Edexcel are paying them says it’s not the right answer? This state-sponsored idiocy is what makes me wonder why the hell we bother at all sometimes.
Some may criticise me for complaining, and not putting up with it like everyone else does. However, nothing will ever be put right if people continue to accept incompetence. Complaining is the main way that changes can be made, for better or worse. If we’re going to be made to go to these places, then the least the government can do is to try and make sure that what we’re being taught is correct. Which leads me on to another point…
‘Information’. ‘Data’. ‘Facts’. All words that anyone in Year 5 should be acquainted with, no? Well, what I detest about the way we are taught, especially in the sciences, we are told something about a certain topic. We, as naïve as we are gullible, take it as read that this is the truth. Wrong, young Jimmy! No, this ain’t the truth, this is just something some drunk teacher came up with when he realised his class of 9 year-olds don’t understand Boyles’ Law! We’re told that certain principles apply in certain areas, and we’re led to believe this for years on end! Then comes the day in secondary school (or even later) when your teacher quietly mutters to you, “Well, you know all that stuff you’ve been learning for the past 5 or so years? Complete Jackson Pollocks! Ignore it all, here’s the real deal!” Of course, I’ve paraphrased here, but it remains essentially the same. Which leads me to think: how do we know if this is true at all? Any of it? In some subjects, such as science, there’s very little way of guaranteeing what you’ve been told is actually the truth. Why get tested on something that isn’t true in the first place? Year 10 was the beginning of a completely new set of rules in physics, but I wasn’t aware of any major scientific breakthroughs as of late! No, no, it’s not that at all, is it? We’re taught the wrong stuff, just to take up our time. Some might point out that some of the concepts are just too complex for such young minds. Hey buddy, you’ve just single-handedly taken apart your own argument in a sole sentence. If they’re too difficult for 9 year-olds and their ilk, then why make them learn incorrect information based on the topic?! Do you have any idea what that can do later on? When you then say that these concepts are intellectual baloney, do you know how hard it can be for students to dislodge these stale lies from their brains, and replace them with what you then call the ‘real thing’? Why bother making children learn these ideas in the first place if they’re going to be revealed as being false later anyway? I don’t understand it.
This demon has reared its ugly head in examinations before, and subjecting students to it requires some gall. However, this would not be so bad if there weren’t so many exams to take. To get my GCSEs (allegedly the exam no one can fail) I will have to take:
English Language: 2 exams
English Literature: 2 exams
Mathematics: 2 exams
Chemistry: 1 exam
Physics: 1 exam
Biology: 1 exam
History: 1 exam
Business Studies: 1 exam
Information Technology: 1 exam
French: 4 exams
German: 4 exams
Religious Education: 1 exam
That totals to at least 21 exams. 21! That’s just to progress onto qualifications that ‘aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on’. That’s not to mention the countless hours lost to coursework. No wonder truancy levels are so high in some areas. What kind of people would submit themselves for this torture?
Us. That’s who. The average teenager, who hasn’t got a leg to stand on. We’re being thrown around like the rag doll belonging to the toddler that is the establishment. Now, I don’t want to appear as a non-conformist (that’s SO 1990s), but the sooner this shambles is brought down, the better. Why are teenagers put under so much pressure? What is the need for all this, exactly? Why bother going to the trouble of setting all these exams for people, and then setting them at the most inconvenient time in their lives so far – puberty! What bright spark thought that piling all this burden on pubescent teenagers would give them any benefit? Think about it for a minute, Jack – puberty; the time when every teenager is coming to terms with themselves, in every possible way. Puberty; the time when moods are most likely to go a-swingin’. Puberty; the most distressing period in every student’s life to that point. So, while they’re coping with growing up, responding to hormones, trying to fit in some form of social life, why not compound that emotional stress with some of Edexcel’s good old-fashioned professional stress as well, huh? Fantabulous idea, really! Give that man a coconut! Honestly…you ask any student, and you’d find that virtually no one thinks this current system of constant examination is a good idea. I know from personal experience, that with all this pressure on your slowly-broadening shoulders, it takes just one little thing to fly off the handle. That’s not exclusive to the female of the species, oh no – it applies to all the unfortunate buggers with their fingers trapped in the cogs of this rusty, malfunctioning and self-destructing mammoth of a disaster. When a teenager goes to a teacher, “I’m depressed,” they’ll say something like, “Oh no, you’re just handling you’re priorities all wrong. Look, you’ve got a piece of coursework to do for me, haven’t you? Why not try and do that?” But think just for a second, ‘sir/madam’, what do you think could have made that person go up to you and say that? What could have driven them to actually admit that they were suffering from depression? It’ll take quite a lot for someone to admit they’re actually depressed, and be serious. So, let’s assume that this student is depressed: did you just handle that situation in the best possible way? Tell them to get on with their coursework? That’ll sure cure that anxiety, won’t it? Those troublesome stomach-aches? Coursework’s the remedy! Clenching your teeth? There’s a simple solution to all that! It’s…have a guess…coursework! Give us a break, you hypocrites! You expect us to be able to cope with a workload comparable to a senior civil servant, and yet you feel you can treat us like little children when it comes to REAL personal matters? This student may be depressed for a number of reasons, lord knows I’ve seen enough to understand, but let’s assume the problem is that of my friend:
For all of his life, ‘Mark’ (to keep the person anonymous) lived with his family in Essex. He had attended primary school in Wickford, and had made many good friendships over those seven years. However, due to his success in the 11+ (something this government wishes to abolish), Mark had to leave his friends and contacts, and move closer to his school, nearer Southend. After a turbulent few years, he has finally established numerous secure groups of friends. He has always valued the worth of friends, as he realises they are different from family. But unfortunately for Mark, his family decided to move house in the summer holidays dissecting Years 10 and 11, the GCSE years. He was able to continue his studies at his secondary school, and live with his grandparents during the week. Regrettably, there was, for want of a better word, ‘confusion’ amongst the family as to whether he would attend Sixth Form at his secondary school, or if he would live with his family for Years 12 and 13. He wanted to stay in the area he had grown familiar to, with the people he’s got to know, and with the teachers from whom he had gained respect. His parents, naturally, wanted him to live with them in Norfolk, virtually severing all ties with the only world he’s ever known.
This is far from the whole story (there’s a tantrum about the local barber’s somewhere in there), but this is all that’s required for background information. If this has been troubling the student mentioned previously, then the last thing he or she is going to want is to be handed reams and reams of coursework to do for the next week. This is not the only possible problem facing teenage students: I’ve seen people being thrown out of their house (and not just for a couple of hours – I’m talking months, and he still hasn’t been allowed back), getting broken legs, family members passing away, and heaven help you if you want to do something outside of school! All these pressures are not something the average person should be made to handle, let alone expected to be made to. Try directing a play for the school in Year 11, and see what happens. Let me tell you for free – it ain’t pretty, buster!
And yet, it is highly unlikely that any teachers will know about your predicaments. Why? It is the student’s fault for not telling the school? Or is it the school’s fault for being a thoroughly emotionally-sterile establishment? My guess is that if someone is going through a traumatic time, are they likely to tell their school? Probably not, and that’s because they believe that the school, as they have in so many cases, will dismiss the problems as ‘minor’. They’ll treat the complaint in such an indifferent manner as to bring into question whether they were teenagers themselves, or if they are in fact, robots? Let’s consider this point – who, in their right mind, would become a school secretary? I can’t think of anyone? It’s such a terrible job, and there’s only one bit of scenery – the office! It’s like an office job, but more tedious. And what human could come up with some of the voices produced by these so-called people? None that I know of. Are we onto something? Could our suspicions be true? Are schools so desperate that they have to get robots for these mind-numbing tasks? I for one wouldn’t be surprised.
To those suffering from these unnecessary stresses, I say: “Tell’em!” And if they don’t listen, well, my friend, tell ‘em again! If they still don’t register your complaints, scream it in their ears, dammit! We don’t have to be the silent majority in these places anymore! They’ll have to listen, and try to help you: it’s their role in society! You don’t see enough of your parents to tell them, so tell the people you see most often in the day, the teachers! Stand up, and shout it out loud! “I’m depressed!” If that’s what it takes, then that’s what needs doing!
The idea of schools helping their students and pupils was probably conceived fairly long ago, but dropped as soon as someone brought it up. I can see it now:
Teacher: “Hey, I’ve got an idea: why don’t we try to help our students?”
Headmaster: “Don’t talk such nonsense! Go stand in the corner!”
(Rest of teachers cower away)
My friend broke his leg on the first day of Year 11. Do you have any idea how annoying that must be (not to mention painful)? His entire GCSE course has been thrown off the rails by this accident. Now, the least his teachers could have done, so it seems, would have been to pick him up, dust him off, give him his crutches, and help him to limp on. Apparently not, however. Instead, the general rule of thumb has been take away those crutches of assistance, throw upon him the textbooks of hindrance, and give him a short, sharp kick to the shins to slow him down.
He has been lucky with some teachers, in that they have helped him with parts of the courses that he missed, and have allowed him to give in coursework assignments later than the rest of the class. But this has not been the norm. The norm, I’m afraid, takes the rather ghoulish form of tough deadlines, no help, and the same expectations to the rest of his classes. If this is a joke, then I’m not laughing, and I’m not the one with a broken leg! He got put on a pastoral scheme (which shall remain nameless) similar to that given to a persistent offender in the school. This is not funny, and it just gives him one more thing to worry about. How does giving someone a little card upon which teachers expose the student’s faults help? It can easily be lost, and if it is, the student will get punished for it! Ridiculous!
And then, once the GCSEs have been passed, what do the 16 and 17 year-olds have left to do? Either drop out of school; get no money, live on the streets etc. etc., or enter post-16 education. But neither option looks reliable anymore. In the past, there was always a firm or company down the end of the road who were willing to pick up someone for the dirtier jobs, and were willing to pay them enough to live a life of some kind. Post-16 education always appeared to be the choice of the intellectual, but now it is almost expected of you that you get you’re a-levels. Except, they’re not called A-levels anymore. No, they’re in the past, now. There are Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced 2 levels for us. But what does this mean? I can’t quite figure out what it means, and teachers didn’t know what it means until they were told in the bluntest of terms by the examining bodies, so if the people who are taking them don’t know what they are, and the people teaching the people taking them don’t know what they are, then how the hell are we meant to pass them? Critics would have told us to ‘shut up and sit down’, because we ‘have it easier than older generations.’ Really? And how can these people make these judgments? Have they taken both the old A-levels and the new AS and A2s? My guess is that they haven’t, and so they’re in no position to make that judgment.
But here’s the million-pound question: did the examining boards fix their results like they did recently? Of course, I haven’t taken my AS-levels, and so I had to rely on the media for information on this for the most part. However, a slightly more reliable source on this issue was my cousin, who is studying a variety of subjects for his A2-levels now. In the summer of 2002, he was one of the unlucky students to get caught up in this fiasco, as well as the rest of his classmates. Much like the well-documented stories, he was predicted an A for his mathematics exam. However, along with all but one member of his class, he was adjudged to have gained a ‘U’ grade. A drop in grades from an A to a B is feasible. A to C is also understandable, although a big disappointment. But to get a grade about seven or eight times worse than the one he was predicted is obscene. Add to that the fact that everyone else (except the one that got away) also got a U, and alarm bells start to ring. He was hardly the best of a bad bunch, either, as he was in the highest set of that subject.
With the enormous prominence examinations have today, whom have the students got left to trust if they cannot put their faith in the people deciding their grades, and their futures? Do these people not understand the huge impact they have on these people’s lives? If not, then can I politely ask, WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING MARKING EXAMS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
But this tale of horror does not end here, friends. It continues to worm its way all the way to the most important learning establishments in the country – the universities! The only place where one can gain a qualification that is respected is now being tarnished by the very same brush that has smeared its corruption and ineptitude all over the secondary school system. This brush is not being wielded by the lecturers, of in fact any of the university staff, at least not directly. No, as in so many other disastrous cases, this weapon is being brandished by the usual suspect, the very source of British corruption, the government. I hereby wish to declare my new number two enemy: Mr. Charles Clarke MP (some would have you believe he’s in the Labour Party – in my backyard, Norwich South). The reason he has made it to the lofty position of number two in the list is the fact that he has performed two stunningly aggravating political moves, both of which directly affect me:
1. He replaced Estelle Morris, the only Cabinet Minister with her head screwed on, and
2. He wants students to pay up to £10,000 a year at university!
Now, number 2 may not be exactly true, but it is near enough. Basically, as many people already know, Charles Clarke is one of the worryingly massing numbers of MPs in the ‘Labour Party’ who favour the cap of tuition fees being removed, allowing the top universities to charge whatever the hell they like to allow students to pass through their hallowed halls. This will mean that for those people who are unfortunate enough to be skilled in Chemistry, fees of about £10,000 a year will be winging their way to your bank account! Happy studying!
Currently, students at university can only be charged a maximum of £1,100 a year to study, and that applies to every university in the country. “But what about our grants?” I hear you broke students cry. Well, your friends in New Labour, yep, the guys you voted in, decided that they would distance themselves from the average man on the street, and so abolished those grants that they got when they were at university. But the plot thickens from here, because one of their election manifesto pledges in the 2001 vote was not to introduce top-up fees for university students. “But that would mean going back on their pledge, wouldn’t it?” Well, yes and no. Firstly, since when did anything happen to a party who went back on something that didn’t affect the whole country? The public don’t care as much as you do (for obvious reasons). Secondly, Charles Clarke says that this wouldn’t be a top-up fee, which is strictly true. But, by stating that top-up fees would not be introduced, it implies that more money won’t be asked of the students. There are other options, of course, such as introducing a Graduate Tax. This is the option I favour the most, because I understand that universities in this country need more money. Even so, I cannot possibly understand why the students, who are flat broke as it is, have to foot the bill, and Gordon Brown agrees with me. This Graduate Tax proposes to be applied to all those who went to university and earn above a certain amount per annum. This means that it still targets those who went to university, but at a time when they are at a more financially stable position in their lives. When did charging 19 year-olds £10,000 a year become a good idea? They’re trying to get on in life, and you, in all your infinite wisdom, slap a £10,000 price tag on them? What about all those fat lazy scroungers who are committing benefit fraud everyday? Why not charge them £10,000 a year? You can’t, can you? Yet you spend day after day trying to justify charging £10,000 a year to someone who’s trying to become a chemist, or a doctor, and they’re hardly an excessive commodity in this country.
Of course, two things must be recognised at this point. Firstly, the cap has not been removed yet. In fact, there’s no way of knowing if the cap will be removed. Also, going to university is not compulsory. Sixth Form education isn’t required in some jobs, either. But having a degree in something is quickly becoming an expectation of recruiting companies, rather than being the pride of your CV as it once was. Because of John Major’s stupendous idea of having 50% of the studying population in university or having some form of higher education, we now find ourselves in the dangerous situation of having a clear gap in the importance between certain degrees from certain universities, and other degrees from other universities. A degree from Cambridge will now carry a lot more weight into a job interview than one from a polytechnic. This is dangerous for this reason: people are being put through university, with little or in most cases no financial help from the government, only to find at the end of it all that they aren’t getting the job because they didn’t go to Oxbridge. We’ve ended up with call centre staff at customer information desks who have entire English degrees. What was the point of putting them through the system? There wasn’t one.
I am on the verge of Sixth Form education, and the path in front of me looks bleak, both emotionally and financially (but we won’t go into that). I cannot blame the teachers (at least for the most part) for this diabolical situation; the blame must lie at the doorstep of those with the power to change it: the government. They were responsible for causing these grievances, and so they have the responsibility to sort it out. It is up to the government to sort out this mess – they are the engineers of this creaky old machine, and it needs more than a new lick of paint, I can tell you.
***
All (alright, most) children under 16, especially those aged 14-16, are caught up in a creaky system’s rusted cogs. We are shoved into the system at an early age (possibly too early to be properly used) and then mucked around, confidence smashed, hope and faith destroyed, vengeance bred deep within.
What the heck am I taking about? The British education system, of course! We are put on the conveyer belt of ‘success’ from the age of 4 to 5, much earlier than other countries. Fortunately, my mother taught me to read and write before I went to school, but many others did not have this privilege. Therefore, I had to waste the first year of my educational life sitting down and learning how to read again. What a waste! I could have spent that time expanding my knowledge of the language, but nope, it was wasted. Now, I’m not saying that children shouldn’t be taught to read and write at school, but it demonstrates an underlying fact of our system of education; I shouldn’t have had to waste the first year re-learning how to read and write, I should have been able to do something else, as should have the kids who also were able to read and write. Educating everybody in exactly the same way is not the way to fully develop someone’s potential.
Infant school is an institutional nightmare – what do we do in infant school? I’ll tell you: sweet FA. I did nothing of real value at infant school, except for a bit of maths. If it weren’t for that, infant school could have been dismissed as a crèche. Junior school was definitely more valuable, but there were still problems. The lack of real learning up until the later half of Year 5 really did bother my parents, and in my school, science was virtually skipped over barring a couple of days of hardcore plants. It also struck me, even way back then, that examining kids as young as 11 was pointless. I found out that my view was indeed correct, when I got given the first maths exam. The first question read something like:
“If you have ten sweets, and eat three sweets, how many sweets do you have left?”
LITERALLY A CHIMP’S QUESTION. That is the sort of thing you would be expected to know after your first week of infant school. Diabolical is the word for it.
And then we come to the biggest failure most of us are likely to see in our lives (except for the government as a whole): secondary school. One could write books about even the smallest failing of secondary school. However, I will try to sum it up in less than novel size.
The main problem that I can find with secondary school is that it is an autocracy. It is directly ruled over by one person, and one person alone. They make all the decisions, even if they only benefit themselves. They willingly sacrifice the welfare of the school, in order to take as much out of it as possible for themselves. My school is single-sex, and developing a huge new sports hall. However, so are the girl’s school next door. The thing is, the halls appear to be exactly the same. Not only this, but the gap between them is so short, you could walk over it. Now, riddle me this, why didn’t the two schools combine their resources to make a really good hall, with lots of different facilities, instead of two identical halls, with two of the same facilities? Because the two schools hate each other.
Not the students, hell no, they would love to combine the two schools together. No, yet again, it’s the heads who are responsible for this pointless clash of interests. Let me put it this way:
DING! DING! DING!
Announcer: “Good evening everybody, and welcome to the Manchester Evening News Arena tonight. Our main event is a true clash of styles. In the corner to my right…weighing in at 174 pounds, hailing from the world-famous county of Suffolk, the Undisputed Head of the Girls school, The Dog-lover!”
*Huge female jeering and booing*
A: “And in the corner to my left…weighing in at the scales at 200 pounds, Mr. ‘2-double O-2”, he is…The Autocrat!”
“And here we go! The Autocrat and Dog-lover are beating each other around the head with, well, you could call them ‘punches’ but that would be glamorising them somewhat. But wait a second…”
*Mass crowd of adolescent boys rush into the ring, beating up the boys’ headmaster*
And there you have it, ladies and gents. The girls’ headmistress loves dogs, yet detests the male of our species. She apparently lets her dog run freely around the school at any time it wishes. She took one of my friends around the collar of his shirt, shoved him up against a wall and asked him what he was doing (although this was after he was inspecting a solidified length of saliva he has somehow managed to spit onto a lighting grate the day before, and said to the headmistress “Look, I spit” in a ridiculously puerile voice). The boys’ headmaster has managed to get rid of our only drama teacher, numerous other teachers, wasted money on a virtually never used theatre, and has now run out of money for the sports hall, because of this plan to spend £20,000 on engraving some things on the walls. Surely the height of stupidity.
All decisions concerning my education go through this man. A man who would rather have bits cut out of a wall than up-to-date textbooks, or even good teachers. I am sick of people who barely know me making many decisions about my life. People tell me that that’s life, but I’m not prepared to just sit back and accept that. I’ve always figured that if it weren’t for the complainers and those who tried to change the world, we as a race wouldn’t get anywhere at all. I’m not trying to look ‘cool’ by pointing out things that are wrong with the system, but I am trying to make a difference not just for me, but for others as well. But it cannot all be done it one small school; it has to be taken outside. Outside, to a militant group, only known by the ‘Edexcel’.
These callous people are employed by the Government to handle some of the most important work known to man: examinations. This group do not operate alone; they work with other terror organizations, such as ‘AQA’ and others. These groups act as complete incompetents when distributing and marking the exams, but they are not really as stupid as they appear. They make such stupid mistakes because they are trying to depress the students to the extent that they are easily manipulated to do whatever the teachers tell them, without any independent thought from the students involved.
Okay, so maybe that’s not entirely the truth. But it still conveys the feeling that Edexcel are failing at what they’re meant to do. Unfortunately for students across the country, and even the world, examinations have become the be all and end all of education. I do not believe that this is at all the best method for testing pupils’ skills. Notice that the word ‘testing’ is used instead of ‘examining’. Sure, there’s a place for exams in education – its primary function is to test how the mind works under pressure. But this is not entirely what the real world is made up of. I believe that the main idea of schooling is to prepare you for the ‘real world’, whatever that may be. The real world does not revolve around pressurised conditions. Pressure is, of course, AN element of modern work, but not THE element. This is the only part of working situations that is examined by the powers-that-be.
This year, specimen papers were sent out for the mock exams. I am aware that specimen papers were produced for French and German, although there may have been others. The scandalous thing about this is the fact that these papers were supplied with marking schemes containing WRONG ANSWERS. How the hell are students meant to have any faith in this system if they are told that the correct answers they have put down are wrong, purely because come governmental lackey struggling to get by on what Edexcel are paying them says it’s not the right answer? This state-sponsored idiocy is what makes me wonder why the hell we bother at all sometimes.
Some may criticise me for complaining, and not putting up with it like everyone else does. However, nothing will ever be put right if people continue to accept incompetence. Complaining is the main way that changes can be made, for better or worse. If we’re going to be made to go to these places, then the least the government can do is to try and make sure that what we’re being taught is correct. Which leads me on to another point…
‘Information’. ‘Data’. ‘Facts’. All words that anyone in Year 5 should be acquainted with, no? Well, what I detest about the way we are taught, especially in the sciences, we are told something about a certain topic. We, as naïve as we are gullible, take it as read that this is the truth. Wrong, young Jimmy! No, this ain’t the truth, this is just something some drunk teacher came up with when he realised his class of 9 year-olds don’t understand Boyles’ Law! We’re told that certain principles apply in certain areas, and we’re led to believe this for years on end! Then comes the day in secondary school (or even later) when your teacher quietly mutters to you, “Well, you know all that stuff you’ve been learning for the past 5 or so years? Complete Jackson Pollocks! Ignore it all, here’s the real deal!” Of course, I’ve paraphrased here, but it remains essentially the same. Which leads me to think: how do we know if this is true at all? Any of it? In some subjects, such as science, there’s very little way of guaranteeing what you’ve been told is actually the truth. Why get tested on something that isn’t true in the first place? Year 10 was the beginning of a completely new set of rules in physics, but I wasn’t aware of any major scientific breakthroughs as of late! No, no, it’s not that at all, is it? We’re taught the wrong stuff, just to take up our time. Some might point out that some of the concepts are just too complex for such young minds. Hey buddy, you’ve just single-handedly taken apart your own argument in a sole sentence. If they’re too difficult for 9 year-olds and their ilk, then why make them learn incorrect information based on the topic?! Do you have any idea what that can do later on? When you then say that these concepts are intellectual baloney, do you know how hard it can be for students to dislodge these stale lies from their brains, and replace them with what you then call the ‘real thing’? Why bother making children learn these ideas in the first place if they’re going to be revealed as being false later anyway? I don’t understand it.
This demon has reared its ugly head in examinations before, and subjecting students to it requires some gall. However, this would not be so bad if there weren’t so many exams to take. To get my GCSEs (allegedly the exam no one can fail) I will have to take:
English Language: 2 exams
English Literature: 2 exams
Mathematics: 2 exams
Chemistry: 1 exam
Physics: 1 exam
Biology: 1 exam
History: 1 exam
Business Studies: 1 exam
Information Technology: 1 exam
French: 4 exams
German: 4 exams
Religious Education: 1 exam
That totals to at least 21 exams. 21! That’s just to progress onto qualifications that ‘aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on’. That’s not to mention the countless hours lost to coursework. No wonder truancy levels are so high in some areas. What kind of people would submit themselves for this torture?
Us. That’s who. The average teenager, who hasn’t got a leg to stand on. We’re being thrown around like the rag doll belonging to the toddler that is the establishment. Now, I don’t want to appear as a non-conformist (that’s SO 1990s), but the sooner this shambles is brought down, the better. Why are teenagers put under so much pressure? What is the need for all this, exactly? Why bother going to the trouble of setting all these exams for people, and then setting them at the most inconvenient time in their lives so far – puberty! What bright spark thought that piling all this burden on pubescent teenagers would give them any benefit? Think about it for a minute, Jack – puberty; the time when every teenager is coming to terms with themselves, in every possible way. Puberty; the time when moods are most likely to go a-swingin’. Puberty; the most distressing period in every student’s life to that point. So, while they’re coping with growing up, responding to hormones, trying to fit in some form of social life, why not compound that emotional stress with some of Edexcel’s good old-fashioned professional stress as well, huh? Fantabulous idea, really! Give that man a coconut! Honestly…you ask any student, and you’d find that virtually no one thinks this current system of constant examination is a good idea. I know from personal experience, that with all this pressure on your slowly-broadening shoulders, it takes just one little thing to fly off the handle. That’s not exclusive to the female of the species, oh no – it applies to all the unfortunate buggers with their fingers trapped in the cogs of this rusty, malfunctioning and self-destructing mammoth of a disaster. When a teenager goes to a teacher, “I’m depressed,” they’ll say something like, “Oh no, you’re just handling you’re priorities all wrong. Look, you’ve got a piece of coursework to do for me, haven’t you? Why not try and do that?” But think just for a second, ‘sir/madam’, what do you think could have made that person go up to you and say that? What could have driven them to actually admit that they were suffering from depression? It’ll take quite a lot for someone to admit they’re actually depressed, and be serious. So, let’s assume that this student is depressed: did you just handle that situation in the best possible way? Tell them to get on with their coursework? That’ll sure cure that anxiety, won’t it? Those troublesome stomach-aches? Coursework’s the remedy! Clenching your teeth? There’s a simple solution to all that! It’s…have a guess…coursework! Give us a break, you hypocrites! You expect us to be able to cope with a workload comparable to a senior civil servant, and yet you feel you can treat us like little children when it comes to REAL personal matters? This student may be depressed for a number of reasons, lord knows I’ve seen enough to understand, but let’s assume the problem is that of my friend:
For all of his life, ‘Mark’ (to keep the person anonymous) lived with his family in Essex. He had attended primary school in Wickford, and had made many good friendships over those seven years. However, due to his success in the 11+ (something this government wishes to abolish), Mark had to leave his friends and contacts, and move closer to his school, nearer Southend. After a turbulent few years, he has finally established numerous secure groups of friends. He has always valued the worth of friends, as he realises they are different from family. But unfortunately for Mark, his family decided to move house in the summer holidays dissecting Years 10 and 11, the GCSE years. He was able to continue his studies at his secondary school, and live with his grandparents during the week. Regrettably, there was, for want of a better word, ‘confusion’ amongst the family as to whether he would attend Sixth Form at his secondary school, or if he would live with his family for Years 12 and 13. He wanted to stay in the area he had grown familiar to, with the people he’s got to know, and with the teachers from whom he had gained respect. His parents, naturally, wanted him to live with them in Norfolk, virtually severing all ties with the only world he’s ever known.
This is far from the whole story (there’s a tantrum about the local barber’s somewhere in there), but this is all that’s required for background information. If this has been troubling the student mentioned previously, then the last thing he or she is going to want is to be handed reams and reams of coursework to do for the next week. This is not the only possible problem facing teenage students: I’ve seen people being thrown out of their house (and not just for a couple of hours – I’m talking months, and he still hasn’t been allowed back), getting broken legs, family members passing away, and heaven help you if you want to do something outside of school! All these pressures are not something the average person should be made to handle, let alone expected to be made to. Try directing a play for the school in Year 11, and see what happens. Let me tell you for free – it ain’t pretty, buster!
And yet, it is highly unlikely that any teachers will know about your predicaments. Why? It is the student’s fault for not telling the school? Or is it the school’s fault for being a thoroughly emotionally-sterile establishment? My guess is that if someone is going through a traumatic time, are they likely to tell their school? Probably not, and that’s because they believe that the school, as they have in so many cases, will dismiss the problems as ‘minor’. They’ll treat the complaint in such an indifferent manner as to bring into question whether they were teenagers themselves, or if they are in fact, robots? Let’s consider this point – who, in their right mind, would become a school secretary? I can’t think of anyone? It’s such a terrible job, and there’s only one bit of scenery – the office! It’s like an office job, but more tedious. And what human could come up with some of the voices produced by these so-called people? None that I know of. Are we onto something? Could our suspicions be true? Are schools so desperate that they have to get robots for these mind-numbing tasks? I for one wouldn’t be surprised.
To those suffering from these unnecessary stresses, I say: “Tell’em!” And if they don’t listen, well, my friend, tell ‘em again! If they still don’t register your complaints, scream it in their ears, dammit! We don’t have to be the silent majority in these places anymore! They’ll have to listen, and try to help you: it’s their role in society! You don’t see enough of your parents to tell them, so tell the people you see most often in the day, the teachers! Stand up, and shout it out loud! “I’m depressed!” If that’s what it takes, then that’s what needs doing!
The idea of schools helping their students and pupils was probably conceived fairly long ago, but dropped as soon as someone brought it up. I can see it now:
Teacher: “Hey, I’ve got an idea: why don’t we try to help our students?”
Headmaster: “Don’t talk such nonsense! Go stand in the corner!”
(Rest of teachers cower away)
My friend broke his leg on the first day of Year 11. Do you have any idea how annoying that must be (not to mention painful)? His entire GCSE course has been thrown off the rails by this accident. Now, the least his teachers could have done, so it seems, would have been to pick him up, dust him off, give him his crutches, and help him to limp on. Apparently not, however. Instead, the general rule of thumb has been take away those crutches of assistance, throw upon him the textbooks of hindrance, and give him a short, sharp kick to the shins to slow him down.
He has been lucky with some teachers, in that they have helped him with parts of the courses that he missed, and have allowed him to give in coursework assignments later than the rest of the class. But this has not been the norm. The norm, I’m afraid, takes the rather ghoulish form of tough deadlines, no help, and the same expectations to the rest of his classes. If this is a joke, then I’m not laughing, and I’m not the one with a broken leg! He got put on a pastoral scheme (which shall remain nameless) similar to that given to a persistent offender in the school. This is not funny, and it just gives him one more thing to worry about. How does giving someone a little card upon which teachers expose the student’s faults help? It can easily be lost, and if it is, the student will get punished for it! Ridiculous!
And then, once the GCSEs have been passed, what do the 16 and 17 year-olds have left to do? Either drop out of school; get no money, live on the streets etc. etc., or enter post-16 education. But neither option looks reliable anymore. In the past, there was always a firm or company down the end of the road who were willing to pick up someone for the dirtier jobs, and were willing to pay them enough to live a life of some kind. Post-16 education always appeared to be the choice of the intellectual, but now it is almost expected of you that you get you’re a-levels. Except, they’re not called A-levels anymore. No, they’re in the past, now. There are Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced 2 levels for us. But what does this mean? I can’t quite figure out what it means, and teachers didn’t know what it means until they were told in the bluntest of terms by the examining bodies, so if the people who are taking them don’t know what they are, and the people teaching the people taking them don’t know what they are, then how the hell are we meant to pass them? Critics would have told us to ‘shut up and sit down’, because we ‘have it easier than older generations.’ Really? And how can these people make these judgments? Have they taken both the old A-levels and the new AS and A2s? My guess is that they haven’t, and so they’re in no position to make that judgment.
But here’s the million-pound question: did the examining boards fix their results like they did recently? Of course, I haven’t taken my AS-levels, and so I had to rely on the media for information on this for the most part. However, a slightly more reliable source on this issue was my cousin, who is studying a variety of subjects for his A2-levels now. In the summer of 2002, he was one of the unlucky students to get caught up in this fiasco, as well as the rest of his classmates. Much like the well-documented stories, he was predicted an A for his mathematics exam. However, along with all but one member of his class, he was adjudged to have gained a ‘U’ grade. A drop in grades from an A to a B is feasible. A to C is also understandable, although a big disappointment. But to get a grade about seven or eight times worse than the one he was predicted is obscene. Add to that the fact that everyone else (except the one that got away) also got a U, and alarm bells start to ring. He was hardly the best of a bad bunch, either, as he was in the highest set of that subject.
With the enormous prominence examinations have today, whom have the students got left to trust if they cannot put their faith in the people deciding their grades, and their futures? Do these people not understand the huge impact they have on these people’s lives? If not, then can I politely ask, WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING MARKING EXAMS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
But this tale of horror does not end here, friends. It continues to worm its way all the way to the most important learning establishments in the country – the universities! The only place where one can gain a qualification that is respected is now being tarnished by the very same brush that has smeared its corruption and ineptitude all over the secondary school system. This brush is not being wielded by the lecturers, of in fact any of the university staff, at least not directly. No, as in so many other disastrous cases, this weapon is being brandished by the usual suspect, the very source of British corruption, the government. I hereby wish to declare my new number two enemy: Mr. Charles Clarke MP (some would have you believe he’s in the Labour Party – in my backyard, Norwich South). The reason he has made it to the lofty position of number two in the list is the fact that he has performed two stunningly aggravating political moves, both of which directly affect me:
1. He replaced Estelle Morris, the only Cabinet Minister with her head screwed on, and
2. He wants students to pay up to £10,000 a year at university!
Now, number 2 may not be exactly true, but it is near enough. Basically, as many people already know, Charles Clarke is one of the worryingly massing numbers of MPs in the ‘Labour Party’ who favour the cap of tuition fees being removed, allowing the top universities to charge whatever the hell they like to allow students to pass through their hallowed halls. This will mean that for those people who are unfortunate enough to be skilled in Chemistry, fees of about £10,000 a year will be winging their way to your bank account! Happy studying!
Currently, students at university can only be charged a maximum of £1,100 a year to study, and that applies to every university in the country. “But what about our grants?” I hear you broke students cry. Well, your friends in New Labour, yep, the guys you voted in, decided that they would distance themselves from the average man on the street, and so abolished those grants that they got when they were at university. But the plot thickens from here, because one of their election manifesto pledges in the 2001 vote was not to introduce top-up fees for university students. “But that would mean going back on their pledge, wouldn’t it?” Well, yes and no. Firstly, since when did anything happen to a party who went back on something that didn’t affect the whole country? The public don’t care as much as you do (for obvious reasons). Secondly, Charles Clarke says that this wouldn’t be a top-up fee, which is strictly true. But, by stating that top-up fees would not be introduced, it implies that more money won’t be asked of the students. There are other options, of course, such as introducing a Graduate Tax. This is the option I favour the most, because I understand that universities in this country need more money. Even so, I cannot possibly understand why the students, who are flat broke as it is, have to foot the bill, and Gordon Brown agrees with me. This Graduate Tax proposes to be applied to all those who went to university and earn above a certain amount per annum. This means that it still targets those who went to university, but at a time when they are at a more financially stable position in their lives. When did charging 19 year-olds £10,000 a year become a good idea? They’re trying to get on in life, and you, in all your infinite wisdom, slap a £10,000 price tag on them? What about all those fat lazy scroungers who are committing benefit fraud everyday? Why not charge them £10,000 a year? You can’t, can you? Yet you spend day after day trying to justify charging £10,000 a year to someone who’s trying to become a chemist, or a doctor, and they’re hardly an excessive commodity in this country.
Of course, two things must be recognised at this point. Firstly, the cap has not been removed yet. In fact, there’s no way of knowing if the cap will be removed. Also, going to university is not compulsory. Sixth Form education isn’t required in some jobs, either. But having a degree in something is quickly becoming an expectation of recruiting companies, rather than being the pride of your CV as it once was. Because of John Major’s stupendous idea of having 50% of the studying population in university or having some form of higher education, we now find ourselves in the dangerous situation of having a clear gap in the importance between certain degrees from certain universities, and other degrees from other universities. A degree from Cambridge will now carry a lot more weight into a job interview than one from a polytechnic. This is dangerous for this reason: people are being put through university, with little or in most cases no financial help from the government, only to find at the end of it all that they aren’t getting the job because they didn’t go to Oxbridge. We’ve ended up with call centre staff at customer information desks who have entire English degrees. What was the point of putting them through the system? There wasn’t one.
I am on the verge of Sixth Form education, and the path in front of me looks bleak, both emotionally and financially (but we won’t go into that). I cannot blame the teachers (at least for the most part) for this diabolical situation; the blame must lie at the doorstep of those with the power to change it: the government. They were responsible for causing these grievances, and so they have the responsibility to sort it out. It is up to the government to sort out this mess – they are the engineers of this creaky old machine, and it needs more than a new lick of paint, I can tell you.
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It was one of the reasons I gave. My Director of Studies was quite a nice bloke, he seemed to understand. I told him that what I liked about physics was that it was simple and beautiful, and I still think like that about most of the stuff I learned. But angular momentum just isn't beautiful. The right hand corkscrew rule - what is that all about? I want to be able to describe the world on a bit of paper, with sums I can do in my head; I don't want to pretend I'm opening a bottle of wine.
I still like relativity and the little bits of quantum theory I learnt, but angular momentum upsets me.
I still like relativity and the little bits of quantum theory I learnt, but angular momentum upsets me.
unknown kernel wrote:
> I had
> to change to history because I don't believe in angular momentum.
Is that the actual reason you gave when changing courses?
> I had
> to change to history because I don't believe in angular momentum.
Is that the actual reason you gave when changing courses?
whats a staff regular
Actually I think the only reason that I have fond(er) memories of maths and physics is that I had decent teachers in both subjects, especially in later years. In fact I liked physics so much that I went on and did theoretical physics at university. For a year. I had to change to history because I don't believe in angular momentum.
unknown kernel wrote:
> The only thing I learnt at school that I couldn't have learnt
> elsewhere was maths and physics. The rest of it was a waste of time.
I think all the maths I knew up until the start of this school year I taught myself. I don't think I've ever been taught physics properly by school.
The School environment is bad for me. I don't work well with other people, and I don't like crowds.
> The only thing I learnt at school that I couldn't have learnt
> elsewhere was maths and physics. The rest of it was a waste of time.
I think all the maths I knew up until the start of this school year I taught myself. I don't think I've ever been taught physics properly by school.
The School environment is bad for me. I don't work well with other people, and I don't like crowds.
LL Cool TT wrote:
> Starting languages at such a late age can definitely hinder certain
> people's development in them. If they were began simply at an earlier
> age (Year 5 for example, when I started on my own) then they are a lot
> easier.
The way people are taught foreign languages in this country is absolutely shocking. I did French and German at school, and got Highers in both. I was taught in classes of at least thirty people, which is a hopeless way to learn. Unless you are constantly talking and listening in a foreign language then none of it is going to stick. In a class of thirty all you do is repeat words en masse, which gets you absolutely nowhere. I studied French for 5 years, German for 3; and I'm barely competent in both languages. Then I did an intensive Spanish course - three weeks, class of five. By the end of it my grasp of Spanish was about twenty times better than my grasp of French or German. In other words I wasted a good portion of my schooling not learning foreign languages.
The only thing I learnt at school that I couldn't have learnt elsewhere was maths and physics. The rest of it was a waste of time.
> Starting languages at such a late age can definitely hinder certain
> people's development in them. If they were began simply at an earlier
> age (Year 5 for example, when I started on my own) then they are a lot
> easier.
The way people are taught foreign languages in this country is absolutely shocking. I did French and German at school, and got Highers in both. I was taught in classes of at least thirty people, which is a hopeless way to learn. Unless you are constantly talking and listening in a foreign language then none of it is going to stick. In a class of thirty all you do is repeat words en masse, which gets you absolutely nowhere. I studied French for 5 years, German for 3; and I'm barely competent in both languages. Then I did an intensive Spanish course - three weeks, class of five. By the end of it my grasp of Spanish was about twenty times better than my grasp of French or German. In other words I wasted a good portion of my schooling not learning foreign languages.
The only thing I learnt at school that I couldn't have learnt elsewhere was maths and physics. The rest of it was a waste of time.
I fear if you submit this as part of a project for school then you're going to get a pretty bad mark - too generalised, lacks examples, one sided argument, wrong tone e.t.c...
~~Belldandy~~
~~Belldandy~~
LL Cool TT wrote:
> Fair enough. But that's why we need to start earlier. That way, we
> can get to the same level as right now, but then not have to risk
> people's qualifications with it, if they can't do them well enough.
> Some people's brains are much more suited to mathematics and sciences
> etc, whereas others (mine included) are more suited towards languages.
> That's hardly a general rule of thumb, but it is the general trend,
> so teachers say.
True, I'm much more of a science and maths person than an arts, humanities and languages type. Even though I am currently taking AS level Ethics & Philosophy.
> Fair enough. But that's why we need to start earlier. That way, we
> can get to the same level as right now, but then not have to risk
> people's qualifications with it, if they can't do them well enough.
> Some people's brains are much more suited to mathematics and sciences
> etc, whereas others (mine included) are more suited towards languages.
> That's hardly a general rule of thumb, but it is the general trend,
> so teachers say.
True, I'm much more of a science and maths person than an arts, humanities and languages type. Even though I am currently taking AS level Ethics & Philosophy.
Fair enough. But that's why we need to start earlier. That way, we can get to the same level as right now, but then not have to risk people's qualifications with it, if they can't do them well enough. Some people's brains are much more suited to mathematics and sciences etc, whereas others (mine included) are more suited towards languages. That's hardly a general rule of thumb, but it is the general trend, so teachers say.
LL Cool TT wrote:
> Starting languages at such a late age can definitely hinder certain
> people's development in them. If they were began simply at an earlier
> age (Year 5 for example, when I started on my own) then they are a lot
> easier.
I can't do languages. I find it hard enough to remember what the word I'm trying to say is in English without having to try and work it out in anything else. I just find writing and speaking in any other language nearly impossible, which is why I never even completed a language to GCSE level.
Disturbingly though, I found reading other languages relatively simple.
> Starting languages at such a late age can definitely hinder certain
> people's development in them. If they were began simply at an earlier
> age (Year 5 for example, when I started on my own) then they are a lot
> easier.
I can't do languages. I find it hard enough to remember what the word I'm trying to say is in English without having to try and work it out in anything else. I just find writing and speaking in any other language nearly impossible, which is why I never even completed a language to GCSE level.
Disturbingly though, I found reading other languages relatively simple.
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