h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*waves to Lil and Amy and then to Caer*

*wonders why no one ever waves at her*

Gwen, what a coincedence! Here a bunch of us are planning on going to a corn maze on Halloween. You *must* tell me what your experience was like!

Candi, I've seen the exhibit you're talking about on television. It was part of the Discovery Channel's series on mummies. A portion dealt with the late 18th - early 19th Century habit of preserving bodies, or at least the veinous and muscle systems for medical students. Back at that time no one donated their body to science, so cadavers had to be dug up--usually the body of a executed criminal, usually fresh, and usually at night--then, since there were so few bodies to go around they were used over and over again. Without refrigeration techniques they obviously got rather ripe. So an enterprising fellow, (don't ask me the name) developed that preservation process MR mentioned earlier, and one that is similar to the museum show you're talking about. I understand there is a lot of hoopla over it, it's considered disgusting, immoral, wrong, inhumane, etc. However, I thought it looked fascinating...

[still not here]

FG, that's the problem, I can't decide which crook to vote for. I may possibly cast a write in vote for Bill Bradley. It won't affect the outcome, but at least I won't hate myself.

MR, of course the school is doing it on purpose! They wouldn't want you intellectuals thinking you can have any influence on them. It would validate your superiority.

I'd like to thank the Salonistas for putting up with the education topic for so long. It's not often I can contribute much here and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself. Thanks for your indulgence.

*waves to FG*

It was a lot of fun. Doug and I got thoroughly lost and wandered around for about 2 hours, not able to see over the corn and plotting the take-over of the crane in the center of the field - it was there so that someone could keep an eye on the maze and make sure no one was cutting down any extra stalks, but we figured that it was our ticket out of there. We ended up finding the way out though without said crane - by using the map. I highly suggest grabbing one, btw. And bringing a light source of some kind. And - if your group isn't terribly good with a map - canned food and perhaps a small tent.

Always turn the same direction, unless the maze is spinning.

Torricelli is not a crook! He is merely a violator of ethical rules. There was absolutely no bribery involved, otherwise they would have put both him and the man who bribed him in jail instead of just the man who bribed him. It's kind of magical, isn't it - how the crime disappears between the giving of the money and the taking of it? The Senate is so lovely.

*waves to FG*

*waves to everyone else*

*sits back with to listen to more school discussion*

*waves to FG specifically*

Going to the IKEA store tomorrow for bookshelves. They have great stuff cheap, so I figure it's going to be a lot of fun.

Met my fellow grad students today...most of them are fresh out of big-name schools, and most of them are all of 22. And 10 of the 14 are Americanists, mostly WWII era and beyond. Of the remaining four, one does modern france, two do late imperial China, and one does colonial Latin America. I am the lone medievalist. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing...I'm going to have a better job market when I'm done! Even *I* can do *that* math!

Also found out I have to spend an entire quarter reading Foucault. YIKES. Not such a fan, really. It makes me nervous, all that big worded theory.

Ah, but Cris it is the teacher's fault: it's their job to guide you through the total impenetrability of the exam instructions/worddings. The fact that they seem to have been trying to do this with no past/sample papers to work from cos the examiners didn't get around to issuing them for ages is entirely beside the point... And the fact that even experienced teachers at a good schools (am I right?) could fail to interpret it correctly, let alone X number of students, pretty much proves the point.

It's not that English exams are better Luna (Hi, by the way ). Well no, that's not quite true. They are better exams. But it does mean that you have to teach to the exam. You have to teach _the exam_. Which works if they are closely linked to what you are supposed to be teaching, but locks out anyone who isn''t up on this. It doesn't mean that American exams are _easier_ in subject matter, and presumably the clarity of the format means you can spend a bit more time teaching the subject, and exploring a bit. Must be a different test culture. Interesting. Russian test culture is different again. They have a tendency to issue a list of questions, and so you madly bone up on all the areas, but then they stick the questions in a hat, and pull one out at random for the student to answer orally. Develops fantastic oral skills, for one. That's one method, anyway.

[]

*wishing she could have skipped w*rk today and taken a long walk in the woods instead - the view from the commuter train platform was lovely this morning: blue sky reflected in the lake, sunshine, drapes of mist swaying above the water...*

Sorry Sol, but it wasn't the teachers' fault in my case.

All previous exams have been about files, and the questions and coursework have been based around those ideas. However, this time round they decided to take the slightly more IT-like approach (note: there is a definite distinction between 'computing' and 'IT') and focussed on databases. It was totally unforeseen, and the exam board did not even /inform/ the teachers of the matter. How could the teachers prepare us for database-like questions when they were not told in any way that the coursework was going to, for the first time, deviate from the normal subject matter?

Can anyone tell that I, too, have been enjoying this debate?

Amy, I'm applying to Merton college. Worcester is my second choice, but I didn't get to write that down anywhere, so I guess I'll just have to hope for the best.

*Makes a point of also waving to FG.*

{[caer csd] *waves to all and sundry *

Almost packed, the flight leaves after lunch and No2 son is taking us to Heathrow.

No1 son's current temping job is up at the local Uni, UniS, where he is sorting exams papers for another well known examining board. He says all the papers for remarking have either had their scores reduced or unchanged. He says that the only thing that stops him hurling himself out of the window with boredom is that some of the surnames are hilarious. As his gets constantly misspelt and mispronounced (one reason why I returned to my maiden name) he does feel sympathy for the unfortunate bearers.

No2 son's grade has remained unchanged. Which I think may go to confirm Sol's point that the syllabus has been misinterpreted.}

*flies in lazily through the veranda doors and lands precisely on the coffee table*

I am really here for a change . I've come to collect our painting stuff. Lil and I are going to spend the day in the garden painting watercolors. Everyone is welcome to join in .

Testing cultures in different countries are very different. When I worked in Dubai I had to contend with three cultures at the same time - the Arab way of soing thing, the British exam system and American tests of various kinds including SATs.

The Arab system, like the Russian by the sound of it, is based on pre-published questions; the student mugs up on the answers before the test. The testing method is approprate for testing knowledge of the Koran because the emphasis of islamic religious teaching to children is to encourage recall. Understanding can develop later... allegedly. Unfortunately, other school subjects have adopted the same system. New students to the school in Dubai couldn't understand why they weren't allowed to see their science papers before the test. Nor could they believe how much they were expected to write for each answer.

The British exam system was originally designed to exclude people - to sort the sheep from the goats, the let the cream rise to the top. A nice mixed metaphor there . To that end there were long exams (3 or 4 hours per paper and 3 or 4 papers per subject even for 16-year olds), lots of complexity and rules that were only understood by insiders. The physics papers were full of questions that could only be answered if you had been taught the right 'trick' by your teacher. If you knew the tricks, you were allowed inside the secret society. There was a smugness about it all. The exam system is better now - physics exams ask straightforward questions for a start - but the complexity is something we've never shaken off. As a result, some people never get close to passing and can be discarded. However, those that do pass are separated by very few marks. The difference between an A grade and an E at the Advanced Level has been known to be as little as 10 percentage points.

The American testing has always been intended to provide useful statistical data. Marv made a comment earlier about being a special needs student but better than average - he appears to be a successfully indoctrinated product of the American system. The inescapable result of all systems examination systems is that they affect the curriculum that is learned (as oppose to that which is taught, which may be a different thing entirely). If questions are chosen for their ability to discriminate between students and establish grades, they may not necessarily be about important parts of the curriculum or cover the whole subject fairly and evenly. Eventually this distorts the learning culture. And as a side effect it reinforces the tendency of some people, particularly males, to base their self-esteem on comparisons rather than on absolute values. This has some psychological implications that are important to western societies.



*heads off into Lil's studio carrying a large cargo-net* emerges later flying carefully through the salon to the veranda doors with a cargo-net full of sketch pads, pre-stretched watercolour paper, pencils, paintbrushes, paints and water containers slung beneath the DFB* the DFB's engine is whining a bit*

*notices the Professor just as she is about to fly out into the garden* waves*

Merton, eh? Very nice. Merton had the best chef of all the colleges when I was there. But that was a while ago now . It was worth cultivating friends in Merton to escape the institutionalised slop of the other colleges. Keble's the best choice for lazy physicists - it's just opposite the physics buildings - but unfortunately it isn't very pretty. Its Victorian style maks it look like a fair isle sweater built of brick. I was at Brasenose myself. Mark Moxon also studied physics at Oxford. Lincoln, I think. Check his online CV.

Caer, exactly which course did No2 take? I took Computing AS, examined by AQA. The coursework was developing a hospital equipment loans management system. I have to check.

Amy, good to hear I'm applying to a place with good food - I consider that to be very important. Mark studied physics at Oxford? News to me. I shall have a look for his CV, certainly.

{[caer csd] The A level we paid to have remarked was History, his examining was OCR, he had to take the AS and A in one year.

No1 son is working for AQA.

Must dash now.

See you all in two weeks }

*waves Caer goodbye* Bon Voyage!

Home education comment:
The thing I wanted to mention about home schooling - I've remembered it at last(!) was that in a documentary about the subject I saw a few months ago on the BBC or Channel 4 showed home schooling families in a specific area getting together so that all the parents' knowledge was available to all the children...for example, one mother was particularly knowledgeable about food and cooking so any of the children who were interested went over there to learn about that. This meant that the sphere of influence on the children was widened and the parents had a strong support system too. It also meant that children of all ages were learning and socialising together for a proportion of their schooling time

If we have children, we would try to ensure we were located in an area that had such a home schooling network. Obviously this relies on the parents agreeing about the suitability of each other's teaching material/skills, and trust would be a big issue too, but it seemed to be working very well for these families.

Ah well, Chris, I was being a bit tongue in cheek there... As a point of comfort, the exams I teach for have been progressively making the reading papers harder, without admitting this, for the last few years. Can be a bit of a shock to your candidates if they and you have been trustingly pootling along on the assumption they haven't... But the first time it happened everyone must have been caught on the hop.

It's interesting that the sciences were also guilty of the same sorting trick. I wondered if that were actually possible. Though now I think about it, knowing that you get points for the working out as well as the correct answer was pretty invaluable on the Maths A level.

And then sometimes it's hard to argue with the complexity, isn't it? Remind me to get you to look at my testing theory article, Amy, when I've had a chance to knock some shape into it.

We Americans do like our statistics and rankings, don't we? I remember always being told what "percentile" I was in after taking the standardized tests. And it's getting worse. A few weeks ago my sister was talking about the "percentiles" of her infant daughter - one for weight, one for length - and she was upset because they were out of whack. Forget the fact that she has a healthy, happy baby daughter - her doctor had her worrying about something she could not control and that is sorting itself out as she grows.
<-- in the 92nd percentile for dogs ranked arbitrarily

My daughter just received her class rank as of the end of her freshman year of high school. (She's currently a sophomore.) It's like firing the starter's pistol - And they're off! As they come around the quarter turn it's Amy in the lead, followed closely by Betty and Charlie. Those Honor courses really helped Amy pull ahead. PSATs will be factored in by November. College tours commence at the half way point. The rest of the pack is keeping pace. It's anyone's race at this point.

Morning, all.

*sips as she was quite late getting up and so hasn't the time to contribute properly beyond saying that, while choice of uni is important, the more important thing is choice of studies*