Ed, At 09:30 06/10/02 -0400, you wrote: > >Keith Hudson: > >> Sorry if I haven't been clear. Yes, grade creep (inflation) -- exams >> becoming easier -- has been occurring for decades, pari passu with the >> number of new universities being built (or converted from teaching and >> technical colleges). Grade deflation (decreasing the number of high >grades) >> has been done to avoid embarras de richesses in particular subjects and to >> give the appearance of a general increase in achievement from year to year >> which can be plausibly attributed to hard work only. >> >> (Actually, I'm quite sure that students *have* been working harder in >> recent years, but this doesn't consist of tackling harder problems but of >> doing more practical exercises and portfolio modules at simple level. The >> problem with this, as examiners are now discovering fast, is that it is >> becoming impossible to discriminate between candidates at all and quite >> dense students are now attending universities. But, then, the quality of >> lecturers at our lesser universities is distressingly low also.) > >Keith, I recognize that you are writing from a position of authority on >these matters, but what you say doesn't seem to coincide with my own >observations. I went to a good university in the 1950s. I was considered >passingly bright at the time, but I do know that some of my fellow students >were not. And, though I had no way of judging them then, some of my >lecturers did not strike me as being of a high standard retrospectively. I >again attended university part time in the late 1960s to do a graduate >degree. At the time, I felt that there had been no slippage in standards or >the quality of lecturers. I had to work hard for the grades I got, and was >not merely doing practical exercises and portfolio modules. > >My current contacts with the academic community are limited to knowing a few >students and participating in the preparation of a summer-session seminar at >McGill University. From the students, I have reason to believe that they >are as competent, and working as hard, as I was nearly fifty years ago. >From the academics I have recently worked with, I know that a main concern >is how to make the subject matter they have inherited from past generations >relevant to present and emerging concerns. As I'm sure you recognize, this >is not an easy thing to do. > >Grade creep or deflation may indeed be occurring. But IMHO the big >challenge in a world as dynamic and chaotic as ours is how to keep education >relevant so that we stand a chance of solving at least some of our problems.
I'm far from writing "from a position of authority" -- I'm just an ordinary newspaper reader, but someone who's seen the centralised education system atrophying for at least three decades despite all the fashionable theories that have poured down. Yes, I agree -- how to keep education relevant -- flexible, adaptible. and the best way to do that is to get it as close to the market as possible. Twenty years ago we had some superb government-run Skill Centres. They were really excellent -- training fully-skilled millers in six months, for example. The trouble was that the Skill Centres were always years behind in the relevance of the skills they trained. Almost invariably, once a course was up and running successfully, the job market decided it didn't want any more of those skills. This is happening again in schools and universities. Because courses take such a long time to develop (that is, they have to be "business-planned" in detail to get funding from the Ministry of Education, etc) they're often out of date when ready for students. This year, the universities will be training tens of thousands of students in Media Studies but there are no jobs for them. Time and again, what employers are saying to the Ministry of Education in England "Can't we have some input into the curriculum?" Parents, too, are nearer the real world than school teachers and ought to have more choice of schools for their children. Anyway, the latest fiasco has caused such a furore that some imaginative experiments are probably now going to be taken. The Tory Party (if they ever return to power!) are threatening to allow parents to start private schools, with government investment, and other voucher-type schemes. Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
