{"id":475,"date":"2007-08-29T21:58:32","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T02:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=475"},"modified":"2007-08-29T21:58:32","modified_gmt":"2007-08-30T02:58:32","slug":"disgraceful-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2007\/08\/29\/disgraceful-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Disgraceful ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/?ncl=1120058737&#038;hl=en&#038;region=uk&#038;topic=t\"Via Google News<\/a> I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/uk\/education\/article2344054.ece\">a Times article about GCSE science exams<\/a>, specifically about some committee&rsquo;s demands that the exam should be made easier.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Times kindly provides <a href=\"http:\/\/extras.timesonline.co.uk\/pdfs\/exampaper.pdf\">a sample science exam (pdf)<\/a>. Now I do have rather low expectations of the UK educational system, but even so, I was not expecting the exam questions to be that basic. Half of them would be suitable for 10-year-olds.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAll the questions are multiple choice questions, so you don&rsquo;t need to do more than guess at what sounds most plausible.<br \/>\nEvery formula you might need to know is provided for you, including (I&rsquo;m not joking) &ldquo;speed = distance \/ time&rdquo; so you don&rsquo;t even need to know any of the basic relationships.<br \/>\nOnly 5 out of the 40 questions required some sort of calculation. The most complicated calculation required is a single step of multiplication.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSample question:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<b>2.<\/b> We can take photographs of the moon because<br \/>\n<b>A<\/b> it is a small star<br \/>\n<b>B<\/b> it reflects light<br \/>\n<b>C<\/b> it is electromagnetic<br \/>\n<b>D<\/b> it produces its own light\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nA disgrace, I say. What is the world coming to, when 14-year-olds who have actually studied science &ndash; not disadvantaged unschooled 14-year-olds &ndash; have trouble answering questions of this kind?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything_else"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}