British/American Students got it (way) too easy

[Abu-Salman]

I have always found the concept of A-levels simply maddening. For the continental lazy lycéen, it's the ultimate dream. Just imagine: you not only get to choose the subjects you're going to be assessed on at the end of your school years – a mere three subjects in most cases – but these are, needless to say, the subjects you're best at. Easy peasy!

 

No surprise then that voices in Britain regularly express their concern about "cheap" A-levels and ask for the introduction of the baccalaureate, a system where teenagers are assessed on a large variety of subjects, in which they necessarily rarely all fare well. With the baccalaureate, the incentive to improve in the topics you're not good at is therefore an existential motivation; your passport to higher education simply depends on it. I know many of my British friends who would never have been accepted to the prestigious universities they went to had they taken "the bac". Their overall mark would have been too mediocre.

 

This week, the Royal Society vented its frustration at seeing a drop in "difficult" subjects such as science taken as A-levels. You bet. Do you think we would have chosen to take three languages (other than our mother tongue), physics, biology, mathematics, history, geography, French, Latin, philosophy, drawing, economics and statistics? Those are the subjects my class had to take to pass their bac. The Royal Society reveals that "across the UK, just 17% of 16- to 18-year-olds took one or more science A-levels in 2009, and British universities produce fewer than 10,000 science graduates each year".

 

 

This week, the Royal Society vented its frustration at seeing a drop in "difficult" subjects such as science taken as A-levels. You bet. Do you think we would have chosen to take three languages (other than our mother tongue), physics, biology, mathematics, history, geography, French, Latin, philosophy, drawing, economics and statistics? Those are the subjects my class had to take to pass their bac. The Royal Society reveals that across the UK, just 17% of 16- to 18-year-olds took one or more science A-levels in 2009, and British universities produce fewer than 10,000 science graduates each year.

 

 

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/16/baccalaureate-a-levels-royal-society">Why the baccalaureate beats A-levels

 

 

 

PS: whether we wanted to study biology or english, we had to excel at advanced maths (proba, integrals etc and even some number theory as option), physics and many other subjects.

Now if you wanted engineering, you had to get admitted to a selective 2 years intensive prepa school (14 hours/week of pure maths, almost as much of theoritical physics, philo, arabic, english etc: 40 h/week of classroom only, almost as much of homework etc).

All that just to prepare over 2/3 years the competitive entry exams (one of the reasons why an engineer means something totally different in the French system than in some other countries).

Even the medicine admission exam at the end of 1st year univ was easy in comparison.

[Mario B]

Abu Salman, do you think Somalia should have the French system instead?

[Abu-Salman]

What really matters should be equality and how education fit and helps achieve that, just like with healthcare.

 

Scarce resources means the focus must be on litteracy, which has also the greatest returns in many areas, but the state may support some vital vocational courses such as nursing or practical skills training that are absolutely musts for national key priorities such as healthcare or jobs (farming, construction etc).

 

The middle-class will find it easy to pay fees and state support should only go to underprivileged students and key priority skills; colleges and courses in non-priority sectors must be disincentivised (non-technical or coherent with planned priorities).

 

As for the benefits of broad education, those are immense but still a luxury for it to be publicly funded before achieving other priorities;

Djibouti and other African states are cases in point where theory and snobism prime over practical skills (mini city-state Djibouti devotes 1/4 of its budget or $150 millions to education yet the sector is way behind its intentions, too onerous, and utterly disjuncted from local realities).

 

Thus, it all depends in fine on national priorities, on whether equality is the key goal.

The state must focus on fostering litteracy and curiosity (the Japanese public was fond of foreign litterature on science, health etc even before the Meiji era), public libraries, regulation and vocational priorities (support in those areas for the underprivileged), rather than to try and do it all as the countless failed examples (traditional education systems are far from optimal anyway).

 

 

PS: On a sidenote however, traditional classroom education seems too wasteful in terms of time, too inefficient and nefarious (as if orphanages have been made compulsory).

Children ideally need to learn by doing, from real life and adults, rather than being forced to spend much of their life next to other kids, with all their deficiencies (a child need only 1 or 2 children to play with, wheter it be another sibling or brother).

After the more crucial social, discipline or emotional skills (patience, empathy, ethics etc) that are learnt in many natural ways (mini chores or work, guarding or tutoring younger ones, discussing or learning with adults etc), academic skills are learnt much more efficiently according to one's goals, abilities or readiness (after all, school systems seldom succeed in teaching even litteracy in one langage, basic maths and science to most of their children even after so many years).

Those reasons and behavior concerns are the reasons why homeschooling is so popular in the USA and among many parents but there may be a role for the state in public libraries, books subsidies and regulation, standard tests or college entrance etc (there are already exams such as the GED or 1 year access courses accessible with just basic langage ability or litteracy etc).

Again, I'm not expert but just noting the latest trend and findings; everything reposes on the intentions and priorities behind the education policy.

[Garnaqsi]

Abu-Salman;842897 wrote:

wPS: hether we wanted to study biology or english, we had to excel at advanced maths (proba, integrals etc and even some number theory as option), physics and many other subjects.

Now if you wanted engineering, you had to get admitted to a selective 2 years intensive prepa school (14 hours/week of pure maths, almost as much of theoritical physics, philo, arabic, english etc: 40 h/week of classroom only, almost as much of homework etc).

All that just to prepare over 2/3 years the competitive entry exams (one of the reasons why an engineer means something totally different in the French system than in some other countries).

Even the medicine admission exam at the end of 1st year univ was easy in comparison.

Based on the above then, I would say A-levels are better. Why should someone who wishes to study English at university excel at solving integrals? English (literature) A-level is one of the most respected subjects around and an ideal for anyone who wants to study English at university -- an ideal combination with it would be English language, history and perhaps classics. I would say A-levels are much better in the sense that you do the subjects relevant to what you wish to study. Why should a student who wishes to study engineering really study Arabic? It's pointless. (I hope the theoretical physics part is a joke. No-one learns it in school).