We professors often complain about "students today," and we are just as often reassured by our apparently more compassionate colleagues that we ourselves were not so "serious" as we now are when we were students, and that students have probably always been much the same, but that many of them turn out well in the end nevertheless.
Well, in the UK, the Royal Society of Chemistry has just conducted a fascinating experiment in which today's students were given standardized science tests from decades past. And what was the result? The further back you go, all the way to the 1960s, the worse today's student do on them: 35% on the toughest questions of the current version of the test, 23% of the same test from the 1980s, 18% on the test from the 1970s, and 15% on the test from the 1960s. Of course, the government is claiming that "science has evolved" over the past 40 years (and, thus, presumably science questions from the 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s are unfamiliar to students today). Perhaps, but I would be interested to see just how "alien" question from past tests are, or whether that "other" hypothesis may have some life in it yet. Here's the Guardian article about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/27/science-easier-exams Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
