GCSEs (again)

it really is grim up north, isn't it?

 

Eh? Full title was GCE 'Ordinary' Level (as opposed to GCE 'Advanced'
Level). So I guess the answer to your question would be yes as he said he
looked at 'O' Level past papers..... And he looked at the past papers at
the same time as doing the GCSE so his knowledge would have been the same.

Dave

 

Not really, the amount of algebra and trig my children are doing is less
than I remember doing at their age. I remember doing matrices and all
sorts of stuff when I was 13 which they haven't started at 15 and 14
respectively.

 

Are you some sort of a lefty or something?

Don't praise children, beat the little fuckers. It's the only way
they'll learn.

I can but it was almost 10 years ago now. I did have to learn maths
beyond that I studied for an engineering degree at one point. Can't
really remember what it was now, something to do with radio propogation.
Happy days.

 

Things have changed many times since I was at school - group theory
and stuff, which all seemed (and, TBH, seems) completely irrelevant to
what I considered 'mathematics', had not yet entered the syllabus, but
did so a year or two after me. We _did_ study calculus, from about the
third year onwards, IIRC, loads of algebra from very early on and of
course use of logs was fundamental to a lot of what we needed to do.
But I never really found any[1] practical application for solving
quadratic equations, which seemed to take a lot of our time.

It's clear that many of the things we did are no longer so important,
just as others may be more so (like the group theory, which has direct
implications in relational theory etc.) but I don't think one can
automatically assume that just because the subjects are different, or
done in a different order, the overall education level is lower.

Of course, we all know that this is the case anyway ;-)

[1] Well, OK, in my line of work this is not, in fact, the case, but I
don't think I needed to know it at that age.
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I've a feeling that in the main the world is lurching to the right and
I am staying still but maybe it's me that's changing.