Banquo's Ghost
06-12-2007, 16:10
There has long been a debate about the serious "dumbing down" of education standards that has been going on under the present British government, particularly in the sciences.
This is an interesting and disturbing article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/12/science_education_stuffed/) concerning an open letter published by a physics teacher. It is worth reading his letter in its entirety to get a sense of the politically motivated nonsense being taught and examined in the UK today.
There is much, much more to physics than precision and numbers, we would be doing young people no service to undersell it to them by focusing solely on these aspects
:shocked2:
No wonder schoolkids all want to be on Big Brother.
Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'
UK science education flushed away
By Lucy Sherriff
Physics GCSE papers are full of questions that are vague, stupid, insultingly easy, political, and non-scientific.
So says secondary school physics teacher Wellington Grey in an open letter to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the AQA exam board.
Grey writes: "I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn't cover anything I recognise as physics."
Grey lists examples to support his complaints about the latest exam papers: one is a simple comprehension question that tests only a pupil's reading ability; another asks why a dark skinned person would be at a lower risk of getting skin cancer. Acceptable answers are "more UV absorbed by dark skin (more melanin)", or "less UV penetrates deep to damage living cells / tissue".
All well and good, but what about Hooke's law? Grey argues that questions so far removed from the traditional subject of physics amount to an ambush on the students sitting the paper.
AQA, the exam board behind the questions, disagreed. It told us: "The evidence we have is that the mark distributions for these new papers are similar to those for the previous papers so candidates appear to find them equally as accessible e.g. grade boundaries are at similar percentages."
It conceded that some of the questions were not well written, but explained that "some of the questions quoted are from specimen material", and are therefore not as well edited as real exam questions.
Grey says his pupils complained the exam did not test the material they had studied. He argues that they are right.
He says the new physics course allows for plenty of debate about science, but that "pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate".
In its defence, the AQA says: "Our specifications meet the new requirements for 'science' set by our regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and are fully accredited. The revised requirements place a greater emphasis on 'how science works'. This is the entitlement curriculum for every student: the focus is on scientific literacy with the aim of engaging all students."
The letter comes as thinktank Civitas issued a report saying the school curriculum in the UK has been "corrupted" by political interference. The group says that traditional subjects have been hijacked "to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment, and anti-racism". Teachers, meanwhile, are expected to help further the government's social goals, rather than impart knowledge to their students.
Civitas singles out science for particular criticism, while noting that "no subject has escaped the blight of political interference".
Author David Perks suggests that the new scientific curriculum will put more students off studying the subject. The report cites three independent studies that found "students exposed to [the new course] are less likely to trust scientists and less likely to want to continue science at A-level".
Further, independent schools are choosing to enter their students for the International GCSE instead, which still offers the option of studying the three sciences independently. Perks says this is creating an "educational apartheid".
Meanwhile, the DfES says it is not responsible for approving exam specifications. It sent us a statement saying: "There is much, much more to physics than precision and numbers, we would be doing young people no service to undersell it to them by focusing solely on these aspects".
The teacher's letter (http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/archive/2007-06-07--open-letter-aqa.html).
I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn’t cover anything I recognize as physics. Over the past year the UK Department for Education and the AQA board changed the subject. They took the physics out of physics and replaced it with… something else, something nebulous and ill defined. I worry about this change. I worry about my pupils, I worry about the state of science education in this country, and I worry about the future physics teachers — if there will be any.
I graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in physics and pursued a lucrative career in economics which I eventually abandoned to teach. Economics and business, though vastly easier than my subject, and more financially rewarding, bored me. I went into teaching to return to the world of science and to, in what extent I could, convey to pupils why one would love a subject so difficult.
For a time I did. For a time, I was happy.
But this past academic year things changed. The Department for Education and the AQA board brought in a new syllabus for the sciences. One which greatly increased the teaching of `how science works.’ While my colleagues expressed scepticism, I was hopeful. After all, most pupils will not follow science at a higher level, so we should at least impart them with a sense of what it can tell us about our universe.
That did not happen
The result is a fiasco that will destroy physics in England.
The thing that attracts pupils to physics is its precision. Here, at last, is a discipline that gives real answers that apply to the physical world. But that precision is now gone. Calculations — the very soul of physics — are absent from the new GCSE. Physics is a subject unpolluted by a torrent of malleable words, but now everything must be described in words.
In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence. The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.
I want to teach my subject, to pass on my love of physics to those few who would appreciate it. But I can’t. There is nothing to love in the new course. I see no reason that anyone taking this new GCSE would want to pursue the subject. This is the death of physics.
Specific Complaints:
My complaints about the new syllabus fall into four categories: the vague, the stupid, the political, and the non-science.
The Vague:
The specification provided by the AQA (available at their website) is vaguely worded. Every section starts with either the phrase ‘to evaluate the possible hazards and uses of…’ or ‘to compare the advantages and disadvantages of…’ without listing exactly what hazards, uses, advantages or disadvantages the board actually requires pupils to learn. The amount of knowledge on any given topic, such as the electromagnetic spectrum, could fill an entire year at the university level. But no guidance is given to teachers and, as a result, the exam blindsides pupils with questions like:
Suggest why he [a dark skinned person] can sunbathe with less risk of getting skin cancer than a fair skinned person.
To get the mark, pupils must answer:
More UV absorbed by dark skin (more melanin)
Less UV penetrates deep to damage living cells / tissue
Nowhere does the specification mention the words sunscreen or melanin. It doesn’t say pupils need to know the difference between surface dead skin and deeper living tissue. There is no reason any physics teacher would cover such material, or why any pupil should expect to be tested on it.
The Stupid:
On topics that are covered by the specification, the exam board has answers that indicate a lack of knowledge on the writer’s part. One question asks `why would radio stations broadcast digital signals rather than analogue signals?’ An acceptable answer is:
Can be processed by computer / ipod [sic]
Aside from the stupidity of the answer, (iPods, at the time of this writing, don’t have radio tuners and computers can process analogue signals) writing the mark scheme in this way is thoughtless, as teachers can only give marks that exactly match its language. So does the pupil get the mark if they mention any other mp3 player? Technically, no. Wikipedia currently lists 63 different players. Is it safe to assume that the examiner will be familiar with all of them? Doubtful.
If the question is not poorly worded, or not covered in the specification, it will be insultingly easy. The first question on a sample paper started:
A newspaper article has the heading: ‘Are mobiles putting our children at risk?’ A recent report said that children under the age of nine should not use mobile phones…
The first question on the paper was:
Below which age is it recommended that children use a mobile phone in emergencies only?
This is the kind of reading comprehension question I would expect in a primary school English lesson, not a secondary school GCSE.
The Political:
The number of questions that relate to global warming is appalling. I do not deny that pupils should know about the topic, nor do I deny its importance. However, it should not be the main focus of every topic. The pupils (and their teachers) are growing apathetic from overexposure.
A paper question asked: `Why must we develop renewable energy sources?’ This is a political question. Worse yet, a political statement. I’m not saying I disagree with it, just that it has no place on a physics GCSE paper.
Pupils are taught to poke holes in scientific experiments, to constantly find what is wrong. However, never are the pupils given ways to determine when an experiment is reliable, to know when an experiment yields information about the world that we can trust. This encourages the belief that all quantitative data is unreliable and untrustworthy. Some of my pupils, after a year of the course, have gone from scientifically minded individuals to thinking, “It’s not possible to know anything, so why bother?” Combining distrust of scientific evidence with debates won on style and presentation alone is an unnerving trend that will lead society astray.
The Non-scientific:
Lastly, I present the final question on the January physics exam in its entirety:
Electricity can also be generated using renewable energy sources. Look at this information from a newspaper report.
The energy from burning bio-fuels, such as woodchip and straw, can be used to generate electricity.
Plants for bio-fuels use up carbon dioxide as they grow.
Farmers get grants to grow plants for bio-fuels.
Electricity generated from bio-fuels can be sold at a higher price than electricity generated from burning fossil fuels.
Growing plants for bio-fuels offers new opportunities for rural communities.
Suggest why, apart from the declining reserves of fossil fuels, power companies should use more bio-fuels and less fossil fuels to generate electricity.
The only marks that a pupil can get are for saying:
Overall add no carbon dioxide to the environment
Power companies make more profit
Opportunity to grew new type of crop (growing plants in swamps)
More Jobs
None of this material is in the specification, nor can a pupil reliably deduce the answers from the given information. Physics isn’t a pedestrian subject about power companies and increasing their profits, or jobs in a rural community, it’s is about far grander and broader ideas.
Conclusion:
My pupils complained that the exam did not test the material they were given to study, and they are largely correct. The information tested was not in the specification given to the teachers, nor in the approved resources suggested by the AQA board. When I asked AQA about the issues with their exam they told me to write a letter of complaint, and this I have done. But, rather than mail it to AQA to sit ignored on a desk, I am making it public in the hope that more attention can be brought to this problem.
There is a teacher shortage in this country, but if a physicist asked my advice on becoming a teacher, I would have to say: don’t. Don’t unless you want to watch a subject you love dismantled.
I am a young and once-enthusiastic physics teacher. I despair at what I am forced to teach. I have potentially thirty years of lessons to give, but I didn’t sign up for this — and the business world still calls. There I won’t have to endure the pain of trying to animate a crippled subject. The rigors of physics have been torn down and replaced with impotent science media studies.
I beg of the government and the AQA board, please, give me back my subject and let me do my job.
Sincerely,
Wellington Grey
This is an interesting and disturbing article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/12/science_education_stuffed/) concerning an open letter published by a physics teacher. It is worth reading his letter in its entirety to get a sense of the politically motivated nonsense being taught and examined in the UK today.
There is much, much more to physics than precision and numbers, we would be doing young people no service to undersell it to them by focusing solely on these aspects
:shocked2:
No wonder schoolkids all want to be on Big Brother.
Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'
UK science education flushed away
By Lucy Sherriff
Physics GCSE papers are full of questions that are vague, stupid, insultingly easy, political, and non-scientific.
So says secondary school physics teacher Wellington Grey in an open letter to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the AQA exam board.
Grey writes: "I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn't cover anything I recognise as physics."
Grey lists examples to support his complaints about the latest exam papers: one is a simple comprehension question that tests only a pupil's reading ability; another asks why a dark skinned person would be at a lower risk of getting skin cancer. Acceptable answers are "more UV absorbed by dark skin (more melanin)", or "less UV penetrates deep to damage living cells / tissue".
All well and good, but what about Hooke's law? Grey argues that questions so far removed from the traditional subject of physics amount to an ambush on the students sitting the paper.
AQA, the exam board behind the questions, disagreed. It told us: "The evidence we have is that the mark distributions for these new papers are similar to those for the previous papers so candidates appear to find them equally as accessible e.g. grade boundaries are at similar percentages."
It conceded that some of the questions were not well written, but explained that "some of the questions quoted are from specimen material", and are therefore not as well edited as real exam questions.
Grey says his pupils complained the exam did not test the material they had studied. He argues that they are right.
He says the new physics course allows for plenty of debate about science, but that "pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate".
In its defence, the AQA says: "Our specifications meet the new requirements for 'science' set by our regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and are fully accredited. The revised requirements place a greater emphasis on 'how science works'. This is the entitlement curriculum for every student: the focus is on scientific literacy with the aim of engaging all students."
The letter comes as thinktank Civitas issued a report saying the school curriculum in the UK has been "corrupted" by political interference. The group says that traditional subjects have been hijacked "to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment, and anti-racism". Teachers, meanwhile, are expected to help further the government's social goals, rather than impart knowledge to their students.
Civitas singles out science for particular criticism, while noting that "no subject has escaped the blight of political interference".
Author David Perks suggests that the new scientific curriculum will put more students off studying the subject. The report cites three independent studies that found "students exposed to [the new course] are less likely to trust scientists and less likely to want to continue science at A-level".
Further, independent schools are choosing to enter their students for the International GCSE instead, which still offers the option of studying the three sciences independently. Perks says this is creating an "educational apartheid".
Meanwhile, the DfES says it is not responsible for approving exam specifications. It sent us a statement saying: "There is much, much more to physics than precision and numbers, we would be doing young people no service to undersell it to them by focusing solely on these aspects".
The teacher's letter (http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/archive/2007-06-07--open-letter-aqa.html).
I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn’t cover anything I recognize as physics. Over the past year the UK Department for Education and the AQA board changed the subject. They took the physics out of physics and replaced it with… something else, something nebulous and ill defined. I worry about this change. I worry about my pupils, I worry about the state of science education in this country, and I worry about the future physics teachers — if there will be any.
I graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in physics and pursued a lucrative career in economics which I eventually abandoned to teach. Economics and business, though vastly easier than my subject, and more financially rewarding, bored me. I went into teaching to return to the world of science and to, in what extent I could, convey to pupils why one would love a subject so difficult.
For a time I did. For a time, I was happy.
But this past academic year things changed. The Department for Education and the AQA board brought in a new syllabus for the sciences. One which greatly increased the teaching of `how science works.’ While my colleagues expressed scepticism, I was hopeful. After all, most pupils will not follow science at a higher level, so we should at least impart them with a sense of what it can tell us about our universe.
That did not happen
The result is a fiasco that will destroy physics in England.
The thing that attracts pupils to physics is its precision. Here, at last, is a discipline that gives real answers that apply to the physical world. But that precision is now gone. Calculations — the very soul of physics — are absent from the new GCSE. Physics is a subject unpolluted by a torrent of malleable words, but now everything must be described in words.
In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence. The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.
I want to teach my subject, to pass on my love of physics to those few who would appreciate it. But I can’t. There is nothing to love in the new course. I see no reason that anyone taking this new GCSE would want to pursue the subject. This is the death of physics.
Specific Complaints:
My complaints about the new syllabus fall into four categories: the vague, the stupid, the political, and the non-science.
The Vague:
The specification provided by the AQA (available at their website) is vaguely worded. Every section starts with either the phrase ‘to evaluate the possible hazards and uses of…’ or ‘to compare the advantages and disadvantages of…’ without listing exactly what hazards, uses, advantages or disadvantages the board actually requires pupils to learn. The amount of knowledge on any given topic, such as the electromagnetic spectrum, could fill an entire year at the university level. But no guidance is given to teachers and, as a result, the exam blindsides pupils with questions like:
Suggest why he [a dark skinned person] can sunbathe with less risk of getting skin cancer than a fair skinned person.
To get the mark, pupils must answer:
More UV absorbed by dark skin (more melanin)
Less UV penetrates deep to damage living cells / tissue
Nowhere does the specification mention the words sunscreen or melanin. It doesn’t say pupils need to know the difference between surface dead skin and deeper living tissue. There is no reason any physics teacher would cover such material, or why any pupil should expect to be tested on it.
The Stupid:
On topics that are covered by the specification, the exam board has answers that indicate a lack of knowledge on the writer’s part. One question asks `why would radio stations broadcast digital signals rather than analogue signals?’ An acceptable answer is:
Can be processed by computer / ipod [sic]
Aside from the stupidity of the answer, (iPods, at the time of this writing, don’t have radio tuners and computers can process analogue signals) writing the mark scheme in this way is thoughtless, as teachers can only give marks that exactly match its language. So does the pupil get the mark if they mention any other mp3 player? Technically, no. Wikipedia currently lists 63 different players. Is it safe to assume that the examiner will be familiar with all of them? Doubtful.
If the question is not poorly worded, or not covered in the specification, it will be insultingly easy. The first question on a sample paper started:
A newspaper article has the heading: ‘Are mobiles putting our children at risk?’ A recent report said that children under the age of nine should not use mobile phones…
The first question on the paper was:
Below which age is it recommended that children use a mobile phone in emergencies only?
This is the kind of reading comprehension question I would expect in a primary school English lesson, not a secondary school GCSE.
The Political:
The number of questions that relate to global warming is appalling. I do not deny that pupils should know about the topic, nor do I deny its importance. However, it should not be the main focus of every topic. The pupils (and their teachers) are growing apathetic from overexposure.
A paper question asked: `Why must we develop renewable energy sources?’ This is a political question. Worse yet, a political statement. I’m not saying I disagree with it, just that it has no place on a physics GCSE paper.
Pupils are taught to poke holes in scientific experiments, to constantly find what is wrong. However, never are the pupils given ways to determine when an experiment is reliable, to know when an experiment yields information about the world that we can trust. This encourages the belief that all quantitative data is unreliable and untrustworthy. Some of my pupils, after a year of the course, have gone from scientifically minded individuals to thinking, “It’s not possible to know anything, so why bother?” Combining distrust of scientific evidence with debates won on style and presentation alone is an unnerving trend that will lead society astray.
The Non-scientific:
Lastly, I present the final question on the January physics exam in its entirety:
Electricity can also be generated using renewable energy sources. Look at this information from a newspaper report.
The energy from burning bio-fuels, such as woodchip and straw, can be used to generate electricity.
Plants for bio-fuels use up carbon dioxide as they grow.
Farmers get grants to grow plants for bio-fuels.
Electricity generated from bio-fuels can be sold at a higher price than electricity generated from burning fossil fuels.
Growing plants for bio-fuels offers new opportunities for rural communities.
Suggest why, apart from the declining reserves of fossil fuels, power companies should use more bio-fuels and less fossil fuels to generate electricity.
The only marks that a pupil can get are for saying:
Overall add no carbon dioxide to the environment
Power companies make more profit
Opportunity to grew new type of crop (growing plants in swamps)
More Jobs
None of this material is in the specification, nor can a pupil reliably deduce the answers from the given information. Physics isn’t a pedestrian subject about power companies and increasing their profits, or jobs in a rural community, it’s is about far grander and broader ideas.
Conclusion:
My pupils complained that the exam did not test the material they were given to study, and they are largely correct. The information tested was not in the specification given to the teachers, nor in the approved resources suggested by the AQA board. When I asked AQA about the issues with their exam they told me to write a letter of complaint, and this I have done. But, rather than mail it to AQA to sit ignored on a desk, I am making it public in the hope that more attention can be brought to this problem.
There is a teacher shortage in this country, but if a physicist asked my advice on becoming a teacher, I would have to say: don’t. Don’t unless you want to watch a subject you love dismantled.
I am a young and once-enthusiastic physics teacher. I despair at what I am forced to teach. I have potentially thirty years of lessons to give, but I didn’t sign up for this — and the business world still calls. There I won’t have to endure the pain of trying to animate a crippled subject. The rigors of physics have been torn down and replaced with impotent science media studies.
I beg of the government and the AQA board, please, give me back my subject and let me do my job.
Sincerely,
Wellington Grey