New UK Initiative - Make Science Easier 423
An anonymous reader writes "Examiners in the UK have been told to make science 'easier'. From next year 70% of the paper must consist of 'low demand' questions in the form of multiple choice or similar answers. Currently this type of question makes up some 55% of the test. When the recent A level results were announced, with even more students in the UK getting A grades than ever before, educators were congratulating themselves on improved teaching. 'Jim Sinclair, the Joint Council for Qualifications director, emphatically denied that the changes would lead to a rise in the number achieving grade C - the top grade in the foundation tier. Future results would depend on how the marks were allocated. Dr Sinclair added that the changes would help to stop children being turned off by science.' Even still, it's hard to see the benefit from future science students passing by guessing."
Euclid said it best... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dumb science down, and you get dumb scientists. What we need is a way to make it more interesting -- and show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun. Once they're interested -- and the mathematics involved have a clear purpose rather than being just rote memorization of arcane formulae -- Science suddenly becomes something they *want* to do.
There may be no "royal road" to science -- but there's nothing saying that we can't make the trip more enjoyable, and encourage more travelers at the same time.
As a side benefit, science is a great way to teach critical thinking (which IMHO is the whole point of education).
Re:The Bit About... (Score:3, Insightful)
The grades aren't important, the learning is.
You want to make math and sciences easier, train your teachers to do a better job.
Re:There's no such thing as a "UK" exam. (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the Scots - they're an insular people with a massive chip on their shoulder, they've exported their politicians to England to fuck up the English system and gain independence through irritation and annoyance. The sooner the subsidies come off, the sooner the Scots will realise where the money for their Great Social Experiment has come from. I don't think the EEC will sub them as readily as England has.
Good students losing out (Score:4, Insightful)
Test isn't just easy: it's wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
for example, you're asked what kind of radiation will damage eyes and cause skin-cancer. Now obviously they want UV as the "rigth" answer, but infact xray will *also* cause that in the rigth dosis. so both are correct.
Or how about this gem: (question 19)
What is the advantage of using digital signals in radio-broadcast ?
a) digital signals travel quicker than analogue.
b) digital signals carry more information than analogue.
c) analogue signals travel more quickly than digital.
d) analogue signals can carry more information than digital.
The "correct" answer is a), digital signals travel quicker. Which is complete bullshit. A analogue or digital signal sent down say an electrical cable will both travel at the speed of C in that material, simple as that. Boggles the mind.
If this shows the competence of the teachers, no wonder the pupils end up ignorant of science....
Re:food for thought. (Score:2, Insightful)
Or it could be they're being taught better generally. But actually there's another possibility - the rates are only an average for all GCSEs, and one possibility is that people are switching to easier subjects. So it's not that any given exam is easier, but that some subjects are easier to get an A.
In fact, The proportion of students gaining five good (A*-C) GCSEs including English, maths, science and a language, has fallen from 61 per cent in 1996 to 44 per cent last year. [timesonline.co.uk]
Obviously it's still bad if some subjects are easier than others, but it's wrong to assume that all subjects are getting easier, and in fact, science seems to be one of the hard subjects. So ironically, making science easier may help to address the problem.
(Though I do love the way that when exam grades in those subjects are falling, people assume it must be due to students getting stupider or teaching standards falling - why aren't all the moaners complaining that English, Maths and Science exams are getting harder?)
A simple rant. (Score:4, Insightful)
So what I hear a lot about is NOT teaching better but increasing grades and look where that has gotten the US. A generation of spoon fed kids who get pissed when they realize the college they are in tries to challenge them. I graduated HS back in '98 and the shift was well under way then, more benefits for the 'slow' kids, less for the gifted. If you are 'slow' (don't read handicapped here), you get special teachers and special dummed down classes for you, study hall breaks and whatnot, then you are rewarded for having a 3.5+ GPA. Then there are other people (not saying we are gifted) but worked our asses off taking advanced math and physics in high school. We get 3.5+ or higher but it doesn't matter because the curve is killed and weighted classes didn't exist. Luckily we have ACT and SAT to even things out just a little but because the classes were dummed down we are unprepared for the ACT/SAT. A good bright student can teach themselves how to take the entrance exams but then why did they go to HS in the first place?
As far as I can tell with our recent programs initiated, this has only gotten worse since I graduated and students have gotten lazier. I remember a prof of mine explaining comprehensive exams at the undergrad level. Piece of paper, write down what you learned in this class. I didn't take any test like that but you see the point. We teach kids now how to cram and get good grades, we don't teach them to have a passion for the material and explore their world. Personally my kids will go to private school, of my choosing where I can look and see what teaching methods are used and the kind of student that makes it through the system. You should learn something, not just feel good about yourself, a good teacher can help both but unfortunately even the best teacher can be beat down by bureaucracy. Perhaps if enough of us support private schools the State will figure out what a sucessful program is and start enforcing educational standards than Kansas idiocracy.
Back on topic. (Score:5, Insightful)
But teaching Science in that way would make kids learn that there are effects and causes to everything, and maybe even that they can all be discovered and modelled. That is very near critical thinking, thus dangerous. Not going to happen at this point in this world. Maybe later, but I'm not counting on that...
The news is about "The UK is going to lower its requirements regarding what science facts kids have to know before they can get unemployed." Big deal.
Science paper or papers-please paper? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Identification using eyes. Anne looks in the mirror at her eye. Which part is used to identify her?"
What has this got to do with science? Identification of people by their eyes? Big brother says "train 'em up early".
We did this in the USA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i was hoping (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes - as much as you may care for youe sister, it's not your decision to make.
Re:Good students losing out (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it a symptom of the failure of education that you don't see the logical inconsistency between the two statements? If you want really good students to shine more, then handing out a simple pass/fail grade is precisely the way not to do it.
Re:Euclid said it best... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Multiple choice tests are the worst (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the few studies that have looked at standardized tests in the US have found that they absolutely, 100% do NOT do these things, and I'm sure the UK isn't much better, especially if they make them easier. Heck, in the US it's rare to find standardized tests that actually test for the same things that are listed in the state standards. The standards themselves these days are full of pretty language about understanding and reasoning and process skills, but the tests are almost entirely fact-regurgitation.
Re:No calculus? (Score:3, Insightful)
On another similar occasion we did solving simple cubic equations. We'd done quadratics and they were still interested so we went on. Oh for a syllabus where that sort of thing was possible more of the time.
The authors of the national curriculum could have learned a valuable lesson by reading "Three men in a boat" by Jerome K Jerome. In it the three men are planning a boat trip up the Thames and sit down to make a list of all the things they could do with on the trip. When the list is complete they realise that a boat able to carry all the stuff won't be able to navigate the Thames, so they throw that list away and instead compose another list of all the things which they can't do without.
This is the mistake of the national curriculum. It was well intentioned and had a good objective, but unfortunately a whole lot of people then listed all the things that could do to be in it, resulting in something which needs significantly more time to be taught than there is in the school year. What was missing from the development process was the second step. They should then have started again and made a list of the things which we can't do without, with an absolute maximum ceiling on teaching time of 1/3 of the school year. That would then have met the objective of core skills, whilst still leaving time for teachers to do their jobs and actually educate children.
End rant.
Re:Everest or a word-search, take your pick! (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with you on this particular point. Yes it is true that you don't want to water things down. But if you are serious about advocating these particular examples, I believe that you are wrong. I know this because, A. I have solved the hydrogen atom starting from the Schrodinger equation, and B. because I have taught high school science in the US, specifically physics, to 15 and 16 year old children of all kinds of ability levels.
The fact of the matter is that while that may have been OK for you to have studied at the age, it most certainly is NOT for the overwhelming majority of students, by which I mean 99.9%. That is a literal number, not figurative. I myself would have been unable to understand the quantum mechanical derivation of the Bohr model of the atom at the age of 16, even if someone had carefully explained it to me. There is just no way to do that and impart deep understanding of both the process and the end result. You are better off just presenting the solution, because that at least is something that students can understand. 16 year olds (again, 99.9% of them) are not going to understand calculus (did I mention it is multivariable vector calculus in 3 dimensions?), let alone partial differential equations (e.g. Schrodinger) and spherical harmonics, all of which are needed to understand the "walkthrough".
Basically what I am saying is that it is unrealistic to expect even a minority of students to understand such high level concepts that they are not taught in the United States until the sophomore and junior years of university, and even then only to a select number of students (in physics, electrical engineering, and maybe a few others). That is a good way to turn students off to science- making the barrier unnecessarily high. Sometimes, it is OK to gloss over the math, because there is nothing to be gained there. Most students, even the bright ones, are not going to be come physicists, so why subject them to something that is so specific?
Doing a derivation on something like circular motion is much more appropriate. Why? Because it is something that students can relate to (they have all experienced circular motion, centripetal force etc.), unlike quantum mechanics which is inherently non-intuitive, and the math is orders of magnitude simpler (algebra vs spherical harmonics). On that point I am in agreement. But you must be careful about how you phrase your argument and present your viewpoint because the minute you start spouting off about showing students how to derive the Bohr model of the atom from the Schrodinger equation, you are going to turn people because they don't even know what the Schrodinger equation is. We don't want to dumb down science, but at the same time it needs to be accessible to students beyond the future Stephen Hawkings of the world.