Wednesday, July 01, 2009

[how well educated are you] ten questions

The follow up post to this is here.

I've just read a caption to the above illustration on the net, urging: 'Let's change what happens in the classroom.' The article then went on to push for more multicultural awareness, less learning and less results oriented focus.

No, let's not. Let's instead rediscover a role for the teacher where he/she actually teaches and at the end of the process, the learner has actually learnt something.

There was a time, a few decades ago, when children up to Year 10 were actually well grounded across a range of subjects. After Year 10, of course, there was more or less specialization, depending on the Anglo-Saxon nation in question.

It is fair to assume that any end of Year 10 child, of average ability and average standard, could have answered these questions below correctly. How many can you answer without recourse to google?


1. Name one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, situated at Halicarnassus.

2. For what are the caves at Lascaux famous?

3. The Spanish used to carry gold in large ships from the Caribbean. What were these ships called?

4. Hallowe'en is the night before which holiday?

5. On which date is Michaelmas, also known as one of the quarter days?

6. What does this represent:


7. What is the formula for the volume of a sphere?

8. "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." - (Act IV, Scene I) – which Shakespearean play?

9. I didn't wake up on time because I didn't hear the alarm clock. Using the key word woken, unchanged, fill in the gap in this sentence in no more than 5 words: If I'd heard the alarm clock…………………………on time.

10. If the formula for salt is NaCl, what is the chemical term it refers to?


Answers

The Tomb of Mausolus, prehistoric cave paintings, galleons, All Hallows Day or All Souls, September 29th, formula for the quadratic equation, V = (4/3)πR3, Macbeth, I would have woken up, sodium chloride

The follow up post to this is here.

22 comments:

  1. Or "I should have woken up", depending on your dialect of English. (I'm not sure that's right but I think it might be.)

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  2. Either modal is correct, Dearieme and to tell the truth, I'm more inclined to the softer 'should' in most instances.

    Used on a blog though, it might incur charges of Highnos'edness.

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  3. WKPD he say:-
    "The "Old Scottish term days" were:
    Candlemas (2 February)
    Whitsunday (legislatively fixed for this purpose on 15 May)
    Lammas (1 August)
    Martinmas (11 November).
    These were also the dates of the Quarter Days observed in northern England until the 18th century."

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  4. Jams - not shabby at all.

    Dearieme [or should I call you The Font] - you never cease to amaze.

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  5. Missed the first one, got all the others.

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  6. Oh, ya'll didn't list your answers...


    1. er, not the smart tall guy, but somewhere in that vicinity

    2. Cave paintings, with the really funky looking horses

    3. Galleons

    4. Samhain/Celtic New year, All Saint's Day

    5. what was that?

    6. the formula for the square root of, divided by = torture

    7. Pi r (2) is not the answer

    8. ...fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake, eye of a newt toe of a frog wool of a bat, tongue of a dog....Macbeth

    9. er, 'I should have woken'

    10. Sodium Chloride. eh, do you know: NaHCO(3)?

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  7. I got 7, was 2 days out on Michelmas, and despite getting an A grade maths A level 20 years ago when an A grade still meant something, didn't get either maths question. At least all those Look and Learn magazines didn't go to waste as well!

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  8. Hmm! 6 out of 10 but I was always a bit dodgy on maths formulas.

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  9. Seven. Might have got a different seven when I was fourteen though. And I went to grammar school, which should mean the average jo(e) wouldn't have- so its not much of a guide for what to expect from the average youngster today.

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  10. Even more humbling was a copy of old 'O' level exam questions on sale at a gift shop visited recently...

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  11. There are a number of factors here.

    Age is critical - 50ish and over, the chances were that the K to Year 10 were pretty similar worldwide, days when in primary, one still recited tables and did a set number of spellings each day.

    Those 40 something, we're into the generation changeover - Gen X - when the baby was thrown out with the bathwater and cognitive was subordinated to process. These were the days of Graves and open plan etc. This is where the first serious gaps occurred and you can see that in Oxford and Longman texts today like the First Certificate material - such glaring errors riddle these texts that any older educator would pick up.

    Thirty-somethings. They've really been deprived and any ability to do these questions is despite the system, not as a result of it. Or maybe they had an anachronistic private education or a good grant-maintained school. Their lack of solid grounding is seen in certain bloggers, even on my rolls, who are erudite on a subject but the overall grounding really shows itself in being missing.

    Twenty somethings - G-d help them.

    The whole woeful situation began back with what are now retired curriculum developers and higher education specialists who deliberately and fashionably abandoned the cognitive and rote, the delights in knowledge for knowledge's sake and the craze for specializatuon too early.

    They trained teachers who then trained teachers who then trained teachers and each successive intake was a further cranking down of education, dumbing down. An example was when it became unfashionable to chant tables and learn word lists, despite their known efficacy.

    Any teacher training texts supporting this were discared and new texts like 'Let Them Run a Little [Weigall] came in to vogue, promoting learning of spelling and grammar through reading, by no means established within a school setting.

    It was no more nor less than experimentation with kids. The crime they are charged with is that, having been given a sound grounding themselves and being quite educated, they failed to pass it on to the children in their care in the 70s through to the 90s, on the grounds of the fashionable new methods.

    Now it's coming full circle and they can look back on their handiwork and blame it on the parents, themselves victims of the dumbing down of everything from knowledge to the cessation of the unfashionable imposition of our historic moral code.

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  12. Just one last thing. I'm quite conscious of the dumbing down myself. I came in on the tail end of the teaching of Latin and did two years before it was dropped.

    We began to study the classics [and many of us went on, in university, to approach them anew] but in terms of the system, they were dropped in my final school years.

    Why? Why were they dropped? Why didn't my parents cry out about this? Part of the answer is that parents tended to bow to the professional knowledge of the educator who had, unbeknowns to them, now embarked on this highly unsubstantiated new educational psychology, such as Piaget's early learning, to the exclusion of established research.

    That's just an example. By virtue of my age, I'm less of a victim than someone 30ish today but the bottom line is that we have all suffered, to a greater or lesser extent, from our system.

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  13. Just so you know, there is an enthusiastic reader of your blog who scored 3.5, although I will not reveal who that is.

    There is the alternate theory that if a little learning is a dangerous thing, a lot of learning is extemely dangerous.

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  14. Firstly, Xlbri, the reason I'm writing such lengthy replies is that it's a trial run to put into a separate post.

    Secondly - result. Whether anyone got 3.5, 9 or zero, it's only partly a reflection on them. Every teacher knows of the kid who will always score low, whether by lack of interest or by a learning impairment [sometimes both] and that's one thing.

    Then there is the sheer change in society, rendering learning in a classroom setting largely superfluous and with a new type of teacher, frightened to not appear a 'good guy' in the kids' eyes, frightened to insist firmly, a victim herself/himself of the 'let it go' society, of the 'we don't need no edukashun'syndrome, where it is a badge of honour not to wish to learn.

    Then there is the person who does want to learn but one or more of the above have prevented an education in these particular subjects.

    We're not all on the same playing field here. The clerk or executive in his/her office has more than enough knowledge, tech savvy and peripheral thinking ability to do well in his job. He comes home and watches tele, takes the family on holiday - what's the point of knowing the irrelvant stuff in the ten questions?

    He could equally drop ten questions on me and I'd score zero.

    So, what is the point of this test?

    It presupposes, in the way that a radio talkback programme quiz does, that there is a general base of knowledge we can reasonably expect to have been imparted by the child's age 16 - not only imparted but cut, sliced, diced and reinforced in such a way that it is largely retained by the vast majority of students.

    A core knowledge, if you like. It would vary from nation to nation but there is an Anglo-Saxon core knowledge, for sure - such as how to do long division, to know basic trigonometry, to have a rough idea of the rivers in one's own country. That sort of thing. To know most of the key kings and queens or presidents.

    Let's say you're an employer looking for an IT project manager. You're not going to be demanding a 'rounded education' in the classics. You don't give a damn about that.

    So this 'rounded education' then becomes a measure of personal self-worth in yourself, of being able to hold one's head up.

    Is that a valid reason to have that knowledge or conversely, is one justified in feeling sheepish and inadequate if we don't have it?

    In the context of one's day to day life - there's no justification for feeling bad because the type of knowledge you possess does not accord with a 'central data bank' of core knowledge.

    On the other hand, if most ejukated peepul seem to have such knowledge and it appears to be a benchmark, then it also appears desirable to aspire for.

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  15. I can heartily concur with the assessment of 20 year olds. I attend a weekly quiz at a local Wetherspoons pub (£50 prize, worth having in these straitened times). The staff who read out the quiz are always young, just out of school and college. The current one actually works in a school (as a teaching assistant, rather than teacher) and has trouble reading the most simple words out loud. She also has obviously never heard of many of the subjects of the questions - this week she pronouced Socrates as 'so crates' (as in crates of milk.) Other similar errors occur regularly.

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  16. It has to stop, Sobers. There has to be a massive re-education take place but first the entrenched political education has to be prised out of the curriculum. No small task.

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  17. The questions were a bit of fun; and, I was surprised at how much I had forgotten. Well, perhaps not the evil quadratic equation. That was blocked out of my memory. ;)

    Schools here have been dumbed down as well. You're right, James, about the change in teaching style. I took a year of Latin, and many of my tests were still in essay form rather than multiple (guess) questions.
    That, and the current culture, including drugs and gangs, is why I've chosen to home school my wee ones. We use an online charter school that is classics based.

    Greater than 50% of the 15yrs in the US do not graduate high school (your secondary school, I believe). They've taken away all of the 'shops' type curricula that would allow for the non-book type kids to still gain knowledge for a trade. And, from my experience, they've taken good classic literature out and replaced it with modern, social based agenda, readings. Depending on the teacher, critical thinking skills may not be encouraged; and, the classrooms can be so unruly, the quiet child who wants to learn goes unheard.

    You mentioned, changing things. My question would be the Why, as why were things changed to begin with? For what purpose? Perhaps it's as simple as each generation seems to think it knows more than the last, or can do it better. However, radical changes were made, as you mentioned in the 60's and 70's. So, my question is, what was their agenda?
    (mind you, my father was a schoolboy in fascist Argentina when Peron's people were infiltrating the schools, so I tend to be a bit cynical with these things)

    If you were able to change things in the schools as to how things are taught, you still haven't addressed the social impact of this generation's view on education. I honestly think education is not valued as it once was.

    Who cares about Socrates, when I can play the latest game on X-Box or go to the latest Rave party. This generation is about entertainment.
    The children might need to be re-taught, perhaps as in the use of rote, because they seem so programmed for the instantaneous.
    Parents are also greatly responsible for the statistics of the failing children. The parents are products of the Dr. Spock generation, where you don't dare discipline a child for fear of hurting their self esteem. I also question whether this generation has been taught regarding the traits of having Integrity, and the other basic ideas of hard and honest work. These moral concepts,or the lack of, are at play here, I think.

    As you mentioned with an IT employer. They want people who can perform tasks and take orders, usually. The well-read, well-rounded, creative, critical thinker is not valued; or worse, they can actually think to question things.

    I could go on a bit more, but my duties call. I look forward to your post. :)

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  18. HGF - I've seen the pic of you and your kids. A photo's only a photo but I can see the look in your kids' eyes and they're happy - they've been given the right things. The 'His' in HGF also needs praise that he recognizes when something is going the right way.

    My reaction is instantly protective and I would do all I could to help something along which is working well. I wonder how many such parents are out there, perhaps feeling a bit disempowered by it all and not really knowing which way to turn.

    Somehow we need to take education back and set it on the right path again. I think middle America and middle Britain are making that clear.

    The types of things Lord T [a parent] says are also right. I think if I was going to get off my butt and get evangelical, this would be the issue.

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  19. On the grounds that there is a follow up post to this, drawing conclusions, I'm going to close this comments thread and continue at the link above.

    Thanks so far in this discussion.

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