The Joy of A levels
A levels are really a fascinating collection of exams. They range in difficulty, content and style about as much as the UK parliament (in other words, a lot of them are remarkably similar for what’s supposed to be such a diverse selection), but until now I didn’t realise that some of them were actually easy. Until this morning, that is. Thinking they weren’t taxing us enough with all the hydrogen-drawing, we spent almost ten minutes in chemistry this morning colouring in some boxes. The A level chemistry department even owns a box full of coloured pens and pencils. And I thought my colouring-in days were over with my dropping of geography at GCSE…
Matthew @ 18:17, May 10, 2005 to Diary | Comments (12)
Comments:
D. Selby
Geography lessons at my school consist of colouring in, too. If not, they are drawing pointless venn diagrams or answering questions that the teacher has already solved for us.
Comment added at 19:48, May 11, 2005
Mr E
According to yesterday’s newspaper all the subjects I do are hard ones: maths, physics and a foreign language, German. Apparently pupils are being told to take easier ones — it mentions Media Studies and psychology.
The article went on to say how independent schools do disproportionately better at these ‘hard’ subjects, by getting, say, 40% of the As for only 20% of the candidates, but surely that’s what you’d expect? Music and English were both in this category. Music Technology wasn’t mentioned.
Comment added at 22:22, May 11, 2005
Matthew
It is what you’d expect, yes – but ideologically is it what we should have? ;-)
Music Tech is a strange one because intellectually it’s not hard, but practically it’s very hard. Good to hear music’s in the hard category though. I’ve heard chemistry’s also considered one of the hardest. Not that it matters.
Comment added at 13:10, May 12, 2005
Mr E
Yes, chemistry was also mentioned. I must have forgotten to list it.
As long as private schools are selective they are always going to have higher percentages of more academically able pupils. It would be nice if the As were shared evenly around state schools, but the only fair way to give the grades out is by giving the better candidates better grades, and if independent schools have more of these – which on average they do – then it’s only fair that their candidates should get more of the top grades. Of course, some state schools, such as ours, are very good and also have large numbers of good candidates, but across the whole country this isn’t necessarily the norm.
Comment added at 15:18, May 12, 2005
Matthew
I wasn’t saying anything about that, I was commenting on whether people ideologically agree with the private education system :)
Comment added at 16:08, May 12, 2005
Sheepie
Well, I find maths and languages easy. Yay.
Comment added at 18:28, May 12, 2005
Mr E
German is easy, I agree. But although I am good at maths, and GCSE and most of A-level isn’t a huge challenge, I would never say that maths is easy. As a subject it is very difficult. Even at school level, some of the later Further Maths modules are pretty tough.
Comment added at 19:42, May 12, 2005
Verity
Any subject at school that is essay based is easy, because it really is just about jumping through hoops, unfortunately. This makes it a bit harder for those of us with a little integrity. Also, most subjects in their abstract sense are not going to be ‘easy’, maths is hardly unique; it’s as difficult as you want to make it.
Comment added at 20:20, May 12, 2005
Matthew
If by easy you mean “not academically stretching” you could pick any number of subjects. Then again, you could pick any number of (intensely difficult) jobs. It’s people picking on the academic subjects and calling them the difficult ones.
Surely jumping through hoops well is difficult though? It certainly is in music. Essays are actually a challenge – you have to know so much to write them well.
Comment added at 22:07, May 12, 2005
Mr E
Of course maths isn’t unique as a ‘hard’ subject. It’s just the one that interests me particularly.
The difference is between the abstract subjects and A-levels and saying only academic subjects are hard, as you say.
I misread you as saying “Surely jumping through hoops is well difficult though?”.
Comment added at 23:13, May 12, 2005
Cat
I suppose history courld be construed as ‘hard’. Psychology is just learning though. We make posters in Psychology :)
Comment added at 16:43, May 15, 2005
Matthew
I’d say history is hard. After all, I was only 14 when I became too stupid to be able to manage it :)
Comment added at 17:04, May 15, 2005
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