In My Day...
A-Levels are getting easier. Apparently. This week 8 year old Zohaib Ahmed became the youngest person to pass maths at A-level with an A grade. Of course it wont be long before the older generations (of which I am becoming at an alarmingly rapid pace) decree that this would 'never have happened in my day' before muttering something about falling standards, exams getting easier and sloping off to find a comfy chair in which to day dream about the 'good old days'.
What crap.
It's hard enough studying for exams with the constant nagging in the back of your mind that if the worst was to happen and you completely bombed, sat at your desk in your neat little rows trying your hardest not to look at the paper of the person next to you who happens to be writing ferociously whilst you don't have a clue how to start, your chosen ambitions of university/career as a doctor/life would be over. As a nervous 18 (or 8) year old that's exactly how you feel; if I f**k up, I'm finished.
So you've worked your socks off and lost a stone in weight from worry, you've waited patiently in line to collect your results, you've passed with flying colours, you're dreams can now come true and you're told that it's not down to your hard work but because the exams are easier.
10 years ago I went through the same thing. I worked hard and got a B in chemistry, 2 Cs in biology and 'pure maths with statistics' as it was and a C in 'general studies' which really isn't a subject! I was ecstatic! I'd got the university place I wanted and was going to study genetics, become a scientist and save the world! Only, it seams my results are merely a measure of my age and not my ability as i would, clearly, have failed had I been born a decade earlier or got straight As my parents waited 10 years to start a family.
It does take the shine off two years of work when you listen to the media!
Of course, what the cronies fail to take into consideration is that the syllabus is different these days. I would almost certainly have failed some of the older A-level exam papers because I hadn't been taught half the stuff that was deemed essential at that time. Similarly, and this is particularly relevant for ever-changing subjects like sciences, the detractors, at 18, would have had no clue when it came to more recent innovations.
It seams to me that we revel to much in failure, so much so that, even in success, we have to pick fault.
Well done Zohaib and good luck to those sitting exams this year. Ignore the old gits. Except me!
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