Who needs ‘girl-friendly’ science when we could just have female scientists
I guess everyone’s come across the aphorism that ‘It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak out and remove all doubt’ even if there is considerable disagreement as to its origins.*
*A quick search on teh Interwebs shows it to have been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, George Eliot, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx and someone called Sylvan Engel although, like many a good line, its actual origins appear to lie in the Bible – “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” Proverbs 17:28 (KJV)
By and large, the quote expresses the kind of well-intentioned sound advice that is perennially lost on politicians, as the government’s new School’s Minister, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, demonstrates to perfection in her first (and hopefully last) official interview in the Independent.
In her first interview since replacing Lord Adonis in the Prime Minister’s recent reshuffle, Sarah McCarthy-Fry told The Independent that she was concerned about getting more girls to opt for science and engineering at school – and thought separating the sexes for lessons in co-educational schools might be the answer.
Uh-oh… gender segregation in state schools might be the answer as in ‘pigs might fly’?
In short, McCarthy-Fry, who appears to have collected her surnames from her ex-husbands (thank fuck she’s not Zsa Zsa Gabor or we’d have to widen the template to fit her in) hasn’t got the foggiest idea whether gender segregation will have an impact whatsoever – and the evidence base is inconsistent and largely inconclusive* – but that’s not going to prevent her holding forth on the subject and putting her all-too-obvious ignorance on public display.
She said: “Girls do much better in science in single-sex classes. They sometimes feel intimidated in mixed-sex classes with the boys hogging the limelight and putting their hands up to answer all the questions.”
Oh puh-leeze. Not that patronising old chestnut yet again.
I don’t know quite when Mc-Fry last visited a state secondary school and sat in on a science class but the majority of teenage boys are far too concerned with trying not to get a reputation as the school’s premier geek to show anything that remotely looks like enthusiasm in any kind of lesson, let alone one with the added distraction of gas taps to mess around with.
Look, there is a valid debate to be had here in regards to the generally low levels of uptake of science GCSE’s amongst girls, but if we’re to have that debate (and I’m game, as ever) then can we at least try and debate the issues without resorting to patronising low-rent anecdotal commentaries on classroom etiquette – there is really is significantly more to this issue than that.
If no one minds too much, I’ll skip over the dubious contribution to the article provided by Vicky Tuck, the principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and president of the Girls’ School Association, by noting only that that there’s lot of crap being spouted about supposed neurological differences related to gender and all manner of other characteristics by unqualified people who’ve yet to realise just how significantly the rapidly developing field of neuroplasticity has changed the ‘rules of the game’. What most people think they know about neuroscience and the neurological development of the brain is at least 15-20 years out of date, which is why so many of them are so easily conned into buying those stupid little “brain training” games for the Nintendo DS and unnecessarily force-feeding their kids with fish oil supplements.
Getting back to Mc-Fry, her next comment not only rips a hole in the bottom of the barrel but does a fair old job of gouging chunks out of the floor underneath…
Mrs McCarthy-Fry added that she believed both science and engineering could be presented to girls as an option in a more “girl-friendly” manner.
Oh Jeebus, what now? High School Musical-branded Bunsen burners…
“If you talk to girls about what they want to do, many say they want to go into caring professions – like nursing,” she said. “But you could present science and engineering in a way girls could relate better to in careers advice.
“For instance, you could argue that if you really care about the environment you can save lives and if you’re interested in health you could design an incubator which could save a child’s life.”
I’m lost for words – well, not literally. What I’m stuck for is a simple method of conveying the idea of a low-register visceral groan, delivered while clutching the forehead with both hand and then slowly dragging the palms down the face towards the chin, coupled with a deep-seated desire to beat Mrs Mc-Fry repeatedly around the head with a cricket bat to the beat of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ as per ‘Shaun of the Dead’.
Before pressing ahead, let’s put up one important caveat for what follows. Whatever concerns or opinions anyone might harbour in regards to the quantity of women studying and going on to work in the sciences, in my personal experience of those who have chosen that route, quality has never been an issue.
Women who choose the natural or applied sciences as a field of study and/or as a career are no more or less capable than men and there is no fundamental reason why more women shouldn’t choose the sciences as a career pathway…
But…
The idea of making the sciences more ‘girl-friendly’ in order to attract more women is not only a crock of shit but, if followed through as a policy objective, yet another nail in the coffin of science education in the UK, which has already been so extensively dumbed down that the Royal Society of Chemistry has found that some students who are expected to get A and A* grades at GCSE scored zero on a two-hour test paper which included questions taken from GCSE and GCE O level exam papers spanning the last 45 years.
1,300 of what are apparently the countries brightest and best GCSE students to the RSC’s paper and while the top mark by any student was an excellent 94%, the average scores recorded were only 33 per cent for students from independent schools, 23 per cent for those from state schools, 27 per cent for boys and 23 per cent for girls.
Why this has happened is painfully obvious to anyone who actually cares about science education, which sadly seems to exclude both government minister and the ‘educationalists’ responsible for drawing up the National Curriculum and setting teaching and examination standards across the state education sector. It’s the result of 25 years of political meddling in science education in which the attainment of political and sociological policy objectives has been put ahead of the single most important objective of all, teaching science.
Over that period of time, three things, in particular, have done more to drive down the standard of science education than anything else.
One of these, and by far the most recent in explicit policy terms, is the decision by government to alter the fundamental ethos that underpins science education from that of seeking to produce the next generation (and beyond) of British scientist to one of educating young people become ‘consumers of science’, which might well sound good to politicians but has one very obvious flaw. In order for people to ‘consume’ science you need to have scientists generating science for everyone else to consume, so while there may well be a good argument for ensuring that every student receives at least a basic ‘consumer’ education in the sciences, even those who don’t wish to pursue science as a career, that argument quickly collapses into insensibility if such a policy is carried out at the expense of educating future scientists.
One size of science education does not fit all, nor does it meet Britain’s future needs – and if that means accepting that pursuit of excellence in the sciences and in science education necessitates a two-tier education and examination system then so be it. If the pursuit of ‘equality’ means dragging everyone down to the level of the lowest common denominator then we’re pursuing the wrong kind of equality and need to think again about ‘equality’ actually means in the context of education.
The second issue here is that of grade inflation and policy-making ‘gaming’ the education and examination system in order to meet political objectives, specifically the objectives of driving up the number of young people going to university to a set target level (50%) and demonstrating year on year increases in school ‘performance’ and examination results in order to vindicate government policy and the public monies it puts into the education system.
There is nothing wrong, in principle, with either increasing the number of people who get a university education or improving educational standards, school performance and examination results, as long as you do that by providing young people with a better education and a genuine opportunity to make the best of their talents and abilities.
If, however, you set about achieving those objectives by ‘gaming’ the education system, clogging up universities with non-academic courses of often entirely spurious merit, removing what should be core topics of study from the curriculum and, even worse, stripping subjects of most, if not all, of their mathematical rigour and relying on grade inflation to generate apparent annual improvements in exam performance then not only are you failing to deliver on those objective but you’re actually devaluing the entire education system and the qualifications it delivers as you go.
And, certainly, in the natural and applied sciences, and particular in physics and chemistry, that’s exact what has been happening – to study the physics to the same curriculum and standard that I did in order to pass an ‘O’ level in the subject 25 years ago, my 16 year old son would have had to study the same subject at AS ‘level’ (which he hasn’t, having chosen to do chemistry instead).
I need to move things on to the third item on my hit-list, but before I do I would like to clarify one thing here. In referring to universities becoming clogged up with non-academic courses I’m not, as many ‘traditionalist’ commentators are prone to do, thinking in terms of some of the usual targets like ‘Film and Media Studies’ because, quite frankly, I can see no reason why such a subject should be considered any less intellectually demanding than, say, English Literature, the study of which, at degree level, no one ever questions – unless anyone would like argue that studying the works of, say, Buñuel, Bergman, Truffaut or even Orson Welles, is somehow less of a valid academic exercise than knocking out essays on Jane Austen. What I do think unnecessary and even absurd, is the massive proliferation in ‘business administration’ type degree courses, which would both be better served by developing credible profession-specific qualifications, as per the chartering and certifying of accountants, and are indicative of a particular strand of intellectual snobbery and political cowardice in which politicians prefer to take the easy option of pretending that vocational qualifications are ‘equivalent’ to those awarded in academia rather than facing up to the challenge of delivering credible and well-regarded vocational qualifications that stand up and are valued by employers in their own right. Of all the many deeply irritating piece of nonsense spouted by politicians, few set my teeth on edge quite so much as the claim that a particular vocational qualification is ‘equivalent’ to X many ‘A’ levels or what-have-you.
And the third and final enemy of science education [puts on hard hat and flak jacket] is the ‘feminisation’ of education.
Okay, let’s clarify a few points here. First, although far too much is made of alleged neurological differences between genders – almost all of the pop psychology stuff about male and female brains and left brain/right brain differentials is a load of bollocks – there is credible evidence to show that men and women do exhibit differences in their approach to learning and in their response to particular learning styles. By and large, men are happier with and perform better if a theoretical, knowledge-based style of learning is used, leading to a formal set examination, while women generally respond better to to a modular, concrete/experiential, course work based approach. Over the last 25-30 years, it’s been the latter approach that have come to dominate the delivery of education within the state system, at least, in part, because educationalists accepted the view that this would deliver a much fairer and more equal education system for women than the traditional ‘masculine’ style of education, which was perceived as being biased against women, as is evident in the paper linked above, which references the view in Belenky et al (1986) which expressed concerns that:
“conceptions of knowledge and truth that are accepted and articulated today have been shaped throughout history by the male-dominated majority culture”
And that…
“developmental theory has established men’s experience and competence as a baseline against which both men’s and women’s development is then judged, often to the detriment or misreading of women”
The core argument expressed here is that a masculine bias in traditional pedagogies valued objectivity and reason (‘masculine’ qualities/characteristics) over intuitive personal knowledge (‘feminine’/qualities characteristics) and that this, in turn, created an unfair bias in education which operated against the interests of women – and so, it was supposed, one could rebalance the education system and create greater equality between genders by reworking the curriculum, methods of teaching and the examination system along concrete/experiential (i.e. ‘girl friendly’) lines and that this would, in turn, lead to a greater degree of gender equality in education both in terms of educational outcomes and in an increase in the numbers of women opting to study what were, traditionally, male-dominated subjects (mathematics and the natural/applied sciences).
That was the theory…
In practice, what changed was not only the style of teaching and assessment but the style and content of the curriculum, in which the value of subject knowledge (which used to be ‘king of the hill’) was de-emphasised, first, in favour of the development of skills and, more recently, even further towards the development of ‘competencies’. The language here is something that I find quite revealing – we used to want the state education system to turn out kids were knowledgeable, then we decided we settle for skilled and now we’re just grateful if they’re simply competent when the system spits them out the other end.
To be scrupulously fair here, I’m not going to suggest that the pre-1980′s education and examination system that I fairly successfully managed to navigate – even as a working class kid from a council estate – didn’t place women at a unfair disadvantage in some subjects nor that a more ‘feminine-orientated’ style of education is necessarily inappropriate in all cases. There are many subjects in which a modular, experiential style of learning which values personal intuition and insight is not only a valid, and fair, approach but one which bring positive benefits and adds value to the subject as a whole, its just that none of those subjects, which include languages, the humanities and most of the social sciences, are natural sciences (and certainly not mathematics, physics and chemistry, the three subjects in which standards have suffered most as a result of treating the education system a large-scale sociological laboratory).
In the natural sciences, trying to be ‘girl friendly’ has given us the worst of both worlds. It’s destroyed the curriculum, particularly in physics AND its failed to deliver any major improvements in the numbers of young women opting for a career in the natural or applied sciences give or take the ongoing popularity (and importance) of biology as an essential entry point into medicine and nursing – and yet idiots like Sarah McCarthy-Fry seem to think that the solution to the latter problem is single sex classroom and a even bigger dose of the same poison that fucked up science education in the first place.
And this isn’t just a bad thing for men because, lets not forget, it also craps all over those intelligent and talented young women who do choose to pursue a career in one of the natural or applied sciences because they’re getting stiffed with the same sub-standard science education as the men.
Within the natural sciences, it is of no consequence whatsoever if qualities and characteristics like objectivity, reason, logic, empiricism, abstract theorising/hypothesising, mathematical rigour and retained subject knowledge are considered to be “conceptions of knowledge and truth that… have been shaped throughout history by the male-dominated majority culture” nor does it matter in the slightest that some feminists regard these qualities as benchmarking female development against a baseline determined by men because its precisely these qualities and characteristics that make science what it is (or should be)…
…science.
And if that places women at a disadvantage in the sciences (and I don’t actually believe that it does) and presents a barrier to the statistical ideal of demographic equality in the natural and applied science then that’s just tough luck because without the scientific method there simply is no science and not even the otherwise laudable goal of equality between the genders is worth compromising the integrity of the scientific method.
The application of ‘feminist’ educational theories to the teaching of the natural sciences and to the structure and content of science curricula, together with all the wrong-headed and cynical political tinkering and the abysmal notion of ‘consumer science’ (and whoever came up with that idea deserves to be taken out and shot, immediately) has had an absolutely disastrous effect on science education in Britain which serving absolutely no useful purpose whatsoever – and that’s because it has little or no real bearing on the reasons why more women don;t choose to pursue a career in science and – as I’ve already noted – what little bit of relevance it might have just isn’t worth the damage it wreaks on the integrity of the scientific method and the quality of science education.
Having ripped one particular strand of feminist educational theory a new orifice, maybe I can take the hard hat and flak off now and point out what I do think makes a hell of difference here, and has a significant impact in ‘selling’ young women the idea that the sciences maybe aren’t for them, which is the influence exerted by the prevailing cultural attitudes and values of British society. Culture is, I think, the key determinant here, because its that which shapes women’s and expectations of what can and cannot be considered to be legitimate careers aspirations… and so on and so forth. I don’t want to bore everyone by launching into an essay on what is, after, just about the most basic feminist concept you’re every likely to encounter and if you’re not sure what I’m talking about here then I’d suggest you nip over to the The F-Word and ask nicely and I’m sure that Jess and the others will explain it to you.
The reason I mention this (aside from saving my own skin) is that it gives me a platform from which to tear Mrs Mc-Fry yet another orifices – How many am I up to so far? Has anyone kept a count? – for wittering on inanely about making science ‘girl-friendly’ while failing to realise that she’s actually promoting the very stereotypes that work against women who do consider a career in science – and in a deeply patronisinf fashion as well.
I’m referring, of course, to this remark;
“For instance, you could argue that if you really care about the environment you can save lives and if you’re interested in health you could design an incubator which could save a child’s life.”
Leaving aside her apparent inability to give an example of exactly how a young women who cares about the environment might see science as a means of saving lives – and I’m guessing that thinking on her feet may not Mrs Mc-Fry’s strongest suit as a politician – the real issue here is her utterly stereotypical notion of the kind of science that might fit in with the interests and aspirations of young women in Britain, i.e. the ‘touchy-feely’ stuff like ‘caring’ for the environment and ‘caring’ for the poor wickle babies.
What wrong with a career in particle physics or cosmology, or is there some unwritten rule that states that only those capable of growing a full beard are allowed to work on the Large Hadron Collider?
Why should young women not aspire to a career as an industrial chemist or in aerospace engineering? Why would they only be interested in designing a fucking incubator?
That’s the other side of the dumbing down of science education i’ve not mentioned as yet. When the idiots in government aren’t screwing the life out of the mathematics, physics and chemistry, they’re off promoting the some of less empirical strands of the biological and environmental sciences as being perfect for those womenfolk who do develop a bit of a nerd tendency during their teenage years.
Talk about a lack of imagination or what! You can literally see the cogs turning – reaally slowly…
Minister: We need more women in science-type jobs? How are we going to manage that?
Sir Humphrietta: Errrm… Well nursing has always been popular so maybe we could persuade a few aspiring nurses to become doctors instead?
Minister: Brilliant idea! Go and write a strategy, and make it snappy.
If there’s anything that could be said to be a true measure of equality in the sciences, it lies not in demographics but in achievements founded on excellence.
When a woman takes the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, following in the footsteps of Newton, Babbage, Dirac and Stephen Hawking, then we’re looking at genuine gender equality in the sciences – and it certainly wouldn’t hurt matters much to pay a little more attention, within the education system, to the contributions of female scientists other than Marie Curie and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.
Émilie du Châtelet didn’t just translate Newton’s Principa Mathematica into French, she also added her own commentary and derived the notion of the conservation of energy from Newton’s principle of mechanics, and if you’ve got the impression that women haven’t done much in physics since Curie then think again…
About the only thing we need less than ‘girl friendly science’ is lectures on ‘girl friendly science’ from Sarah McCarthy-Fry… no, scratch that, there is one thing we could do without even more and that’s Mrs Mc-Fry buggering about with the science curriculum in an effort to make it more ‘girl friendly’ and fucking it up even more that it already is.
What we need is simply to get back to business of treating science education as a breeding ground for future scientists, restore the curriculum in mathematics, physics and chemistry back to what it once was, and could easily be again if the politicians would only learn to keep their noses out of it, after which its just matter of giving those young women who do demonstrate an interest in and aptitude for the sciences, the education they deserve… and a good role model or two to inspire them along way would be nice too.
Is that really so much to ask?
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'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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Reader comments
On the one hand you’re saying that “What most people think they know about neuroscience and the neurological development of the brain is at least 15-20 years out of date” and so people should forget it. On the other you’re castigating GCSE kids for not knowing science that’s over 40 years out date.
It doesn’t undermine the basic points you are making, but It’s a double standard I see in far, far too many articles on the science curriculum.
I’m against single-sex schools, but not necessarily single-sex classes. Any chance of a summarised version of the evidence here?
Paul:
I think you’ll find that I’m castigating the education system for failing to make even a halfway decent job of teaching GCSE kids 300 year old science like Newtonian mechanics.
The age of a scientific idea is relevant only if that idea has been superceded by a better one that more accurately fits the observable evidence, so the mere fact that Newton’s Principia was written more than 300 years ago is of no consequence to the value of teaching kids its contents.
Surely the best education teaches BOTH knowledge AND the skills with which to apply it? I’m all for skills teaching if those skills include research, for example.
My children go to a state school, and in years 10 and 11 they do split the science classes according to gender: it’s the only subject where they do this. They brought it in about 5 or so years ago (and no, I had nothing to do with it!), but according to the school it’s been a success, and the girls’ results at GCSE have improved.
I’m desperately trying to find something online to back this up, but without revealing the name of my children’s school, which I’m not prepared to do, it’s proving impossible. My apologies, I’ll keep looking.
It’s not just the political influence on the education system that’s been a problem. A good science teacher is gold dust. Most people qualified to teach the subjects at secondary level have so many other employment options including work like environmental health jobs which can provide a lot more money and similar hours. That does make the standard of learning low because people who really excel in science aren’t necessarily going to teach whereas people who are good at languages might teach because the options for working those kind of hours aren’t as big. Moreover physics is an incredibly dry subject and it’s often explained in a really rigid way. If you’re a child who understands better when given a framework to fit facts into then the ground up explanations employed by teachers sometimes don’t sink in.
Children who don’t have a basic grounding in science aren’t necessarily picked up on. It’s assumed that they’re bad at science, not only is there evidence that there’s a number equivalent to dyslexia but anything can be explained if you find the right way to lay it out. If a child consistently doesn’t understand how light responds to a pyramid then it hasn’t been shown to them properly. Perhaps it’s the case that having experienced bad science teaching at a fundamental level girls drop sciences because they feel they won’t necessarily achieve academic success? I think that if the government wants to attract women to the sciences they need to address the failings around the subject which include teaching and a lack of learning support provided by state schools for C grade students who may not be failing but might have a better record in other subjects.
Single sex classes are nonsense, how about better classes and an actual response when a child’s homework is consistently coming back wrong.
I agree with Sunny. I like the idea of single sex classes, but not single sex schools. Single sex schools will only harm the social skills you big up in secondary school. Separate lessons avoids that problem.
Anecdotal, I know, but in my experience boys calm down and dick about less when there’s no girls around. Contrary to common belief male teenagers *can* be sensible. Remember when you were 15? What was on your mind in Science, physics or the physique of the girl/boy sat in front of you?
Incidentally do they need to segregate children by gender because of the children or the teachers? Isn’t it possible that teachers give more attention to girls studying science when boys aren’t around because boys are perceived to be better at the subject in the eyes of those teaching?
And Duncan does that mean that gay and lesbian children do worse in school when the classes are segregated because there are more children of their gender for them to look at?
Nina’s right, too, in that single sex classes cannot be seen as a catch all answer to problems in the teaching profession. There’s a big problem of unqualified science teachers – by unqualified, I mean that they do not have a degree in the subject they are teaching, which is only really a problem at A-level, but still. At my school there was a physics teacher who only had an A-level in the subject, and a degree in Chemistry, I believe. Yes, I know there is crossover, but it’s hardly an ideal situation.
And Duncan does that mean that gay and lesbian children do worse in school when the classes are segregated because there are more children of their gender for them to look at?
Going by my logic, then probably. As Sunny points out above though, there needs to be a lot more study going into the subject. Not just comparing the stats of a single sex grammar school to that of a comp.
Nina – “Isn’t it possible that teachers give more attention to girls studying science when boys aren’t around because boys are perceived to be better at the subject in the eyes of those teaching?”
I think it’s not so much that as that because science is still traditionally seen as a boy’s/man’s subject, and because gender stereotyping still persists thanks to early socialisation and so on, girls tend to hold back in science lessons and let the boys ask all the questions and dominate the discussions.
When girls are taught science in single-sex classes they don’t have to pretend not to be interested, or hold back from getting involved.
“Anecdotal, I know, but in my experience boys calm down and dick about less when there’s no girls around. Contrary to common belief male teenagers *can* be sensible. Remember when you were 15? What was on your mind in Science, physics or the physique of the girl/boy sat in front of you?”
Anecdotally, again, I disagree. I went to a single-sex boys school for five years and it was a fevered, testosterone-fuelled nightmare. The mixed one that I’m at now has a much better dynamic, and people seem to have less need to ritually assert their masculinity.
Ben
I wonder, Ben, if there would be the same atmosphere if in a mixed school with single sex classes? There really needs to be a thorough study comparing mixed and single sex classes.
Am I the only one to find it disappointing how little evidence this (overly long) article presents to justify its conclusions? The irony is certainly not lost on me, and sadly, a a few obscenities, is never going to make up for it.
I’d really love to see some data on the performance of former O-Level students on a modern Science GCSE; don’t suppose there’s a study knocking about?
How about a comparison of gender balances for studying at degree level from different countries with different teaching styles and curricula?
Actually, just as a start, how about a comparison of males and females taking different science GCSEs, A-Levels and degrees?
No, why bother to use the scientific method as advocated, to present and analyse your data, when you can just decide what you think and assume you’re right?
Mixed or segregated is a highly contested issue, far too difficult and important to leave to politicians or educationalists. So I would let schools decide, and let parents pick the school. Same goes for the chosen science curriculum too.
Andrew, see: http://www.cemcentre.org/documents/CEM%20Extra/SpecialInterests/Exams/ONS%20report%20on%20changes%20at%20GCSE%20and%20A-level.pdf
As the authors of this study note, it is very difficult to pick out exactly what is meant by “standards slipping” but the evidence shows that pupils scoring the same on a general test are doing better and better in A level and GCSE subjects, which at the very least suggests a progressive narrowing of the content being concentrated on in schools. I am afraid this isn’t just another daily mail myth.
Single Sex science lessons would have been OK for me if I could have opted to go to the boys’ class. I learn in a stereotypically male way…
The author of the study you provide (co-incidentally one of my former lecturers) questioned the continuing validity of the reference test and proposed differing levels of familiarity with the style of questioning as an explanation for the observed A Level grading trend. Far from conclusive in my opinion.
Well something as complex as educational standards will always be difficult to capture conclusively in a statistical format. Perhaps there really is no problem at all and all the university lecturers claiming a drop in very basic skills standards are all delusional/lazy/harking back to a golden age that never was. It is certainly possible. It just seems unlikely.
I’m not disputing that standards have fallen; I’m disputing that a one-size-fits-all gender discriminatory “solution” is the answer.
Are these lecturers a bit like councils who’ve banned Christmas? I trust you have quotes?
Okay, couple of immediate points.
1, The one occasion I’m aware of when two groups – 1 GCSE students and 1 who took the old ‘O’ level – were given both a GSCE and an ‘O’ level paper to complete (mathematics IIRC), there was no difference between the groups on the GCSE paper, but the GCSE group came in at around 2 grade lower on the ‘O’ level paper.
And the ‘O’ level group did both exams ‘cold’ without having the opportunity to cram before they sat the papers.
2. While the question of grade inflation may be arguable in other subjects, in mathematics, physics and chemistry the problem is self-evident on examination of the content of the curriculum and by simple comparison of the type and style of questions included in examinations, an example of which you can see here, in a post of mine which compares two questions on the same topic (thermal conductivity)…
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2007/12/11/the-key-to-future-global-wellbeing/
Well for a start and hoping not to set off the spam filter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/23/dumbing-down
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6942989.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/alevels.schools
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-lecturers-have-seen-standards-plummet-508360.html
Jennie:
Yes, knowledge and skills are important but in the sciences, the knowledge content provides the foundations from which students develop the skills.
In, say history, you can quite happily teach students how to carry out archival research using The Tudors as an example and then set them off to apply the skills they’ve developed on something like the French Revolution without having teach them about late 18th century France first.
In physics you can’t teach kids how to conduct experiments to test Newton’s law of motion and then tell them to apply the skills they’ve learned to the study of optics, you’ve got the teach the theory first before you can develop the skills to go with the knowledge content.
But, even in physics, you can teach them to look up stuff in books and on the interweb on accepted methods of conducting experiments, surely?
Yes, but the kind of research skills you’re talking about aren’t science, per se, they’re basic academic research skills, which are valuable in their own right, but only part of the overall package that children need to be taught.
Maybe I’m just a little old fashioned but I still cling that the idea that its job of a physics teacher to teach me kid to understand and apply Newtonian mechanics, not just Google it.
How science is taught is important and it needs to be presented for what it is, a coherent body of knowledge not a pick’n'mix counter of unrelated concepts and ideas that you can dip in and out of as and when you feel like it.
Well, yes, but like you say above, if that basic foundation isn’t there, then any amount of spoonfeeding of knowledge isn’t going to work. I think the problem is by no means just with science teaching.
I just wanted to comment to ask what rules of which game “neuroplasticity” is changing?
I think it’s not so much that as that because science is still traditionally seen as a boy’s/man’s subject, and because gender stereotyping still persists thanks to early socialisation and so on, girls tend to hold back in science lessons and let the boys ask all the questions and dominate the discussions.
When girls are taught science in single-sex classes they don’t have to pretend not to be interested, or hold back from getting involved.
I don’t buy the whole classroom etiquette thing, as mentioned in the main article, because I see that as an excuse and not an explanation.
Early socialisation may well prompt some girls to hold back in science lessons but as I see it, its the job of a good science teacher to recognise that and make an effort to ensure that lessons are delivered in an inclusive manner.
Early socialisation and prevailing cultural attitudes are, I think, the key issue here and the problem starts long before it reaches the classroom and is also reinforced by attitudes in the home and in the social environment outside the school gates, the lack of positive roles models and everything else that a basic Feminism 101 will tell you is a problem.
Gender segregation is a viable short-term workaround but it doesn’t address the real issues – although, if it produces a few more female scientists and engineers and provides a few more positive role models for young women who have an aptitude for science then its at least helping to move things in the right direction.
The risk, however, is that what should be seen as a short-term measure to help women overcome a surmountable barrier ends up becoming not only an easy cop out for policy makers which allows them to avoid tackling the actual causes but a means of legitimising and institutionalising gender segregation in schools in a manner which operates to the detriment of young women.
Morrissey very nearly wrote a song called “we hate it when our friends recite Daily Mail myths”. Seeing the likes of Unity join in the chorus of moronic ‘standards have fallen’ toss is seriously depressing…
Maybe its not a myth, John? None of my links come from the daily mail and surely even a stopped clock is right twice a day?
Okay, a quick neuroplasticity 101.
Up until about 20 years it was thought that but for those areas of the brain that deal with memory, once the brain’s structure had finished developing at around 2 years of age that was your lot – the organisation of the brain became fixed and largely unchangeable and impermeable to environmental influences.
Now, what is being found it that the capacity of the brain to reorganise and restructure its neural connections is far more extensive than anyone had previously thought, which has massive implications for everything the treatment of brain injury to our understanding of the processes of learning, memory. It’s a massive paradigm shift in neuroscience and something we’re only just beginning to get to grips with.
So, to give an illustration of how the game could change, I’ve noted that there is pretty solid evidence to support the idea of gender differences in learning styles and that this has influenced educationalists and policy makers who have reworked the manner in which children are taught in ways which are thought to better suit the learning style that ‘favours’ women.
The fact that we’ve adapted the delivery of education to what is thought to be a gender-linked trait is an implicit acceptance of the view that there are neurological differences between the genders that biologically determined and fixed – we change the system to better suit a ‘feminine’ style of learning because we can’t change the way women learn, because that’s somehow an innate function of their gender.
(And I do know than many feminists have a major aversion to anything that smacks of gendered biological determinism).
What neuroplasticity suggests is the different learning styles that are seemingly favoured by men and women may not be quite the fixed commodities that its been supposed – the apparent female preference for concrete/experiential learning may be predicated not on biology but on environmental influences derived from their culture into which they’re born, not because biology isn’t a factor, as some feminists prefer to believe, but because the interaction of environment and biology effectively rewires the brain, allowing to adapt to environmental and cultural influences.
I’m grossly oversimplify some brutal complex bleeding edge science here but that’s the general drift of things and it does have massive implications right across the board, not least for feminism and feminists because it does appear to hold out the possibility of integrating feminism’s primarily sociological view of gender and gender identity with a neurobiological theory of gender/identity without the two different approaches coming into conflict.
Gender identity may easily be both biological and cultural/sociological at the same time in addition to being a much more malleable quality that anyone on the biological side previously suspected.
I wish it was a Daily Mail myth, John, and the sick joke here is that kids are being made to work harder than they every have before in order to gain half the knowledge content that was incorporated into the pre-GCSE curriculum.
That’s what so fucking annoying about the whole situation – what is taught in schools is now so closely regimented in order to fit the government’s managerialist obsession with measuring output that kids are left with no time to scope to develop a foundational understanding of the subjects they’re studying.
I’ve seen this crap first hand – my son’s school devoted six weeks of science lessons to the teaching of basic Newtonian mechanics and at the end of it I had to explain to him who Isaac Newton was because he was never mentioned once in the classroom. The whole system is geared towards churning through the material needed to pass the tests without ever putting any of what’s taught into any kind of context.
Meh. I don’t have a school-aged kid, I’ve just been interviewing graduates for jobs for the last 8 years (and the current lot are better than the ones 8 years ago. Hell, maybe that’s just cos I’ve got better jobs to offer). So maybe you’re right.
It’s just such a conveniently ‘hell in handbasket; my personal experience trumps government stats; evil NuLab and their targets’ piece that my “nearly all stories with these characteristics are lies” detector is tripped, and I’d need strong(er than I’ve seen anywhere despite looking) evidence to go against that.
Also confused as to why it should matter, when teaching kids mechanics, to tell them which very-long-ago chap happened to discover the rule they’re learning. I’m fairly sure that whenever I was taught maths nobody mentioned the name of the Greek who came up with angle coefficients, nor the Arab who came up with zero. Historically interesting, but completely irrelevant to understanding physics.
I can’t speak for modern times, but when I was at school they were quite open about how the syllabus had been restricted in pretty much every subject, and when they used past papers for exams said things like “if you get 70% on this that’ll be equivalent to 100% on your actual GCSE”. Of course, it’s merely an assumption that things have continued down the same path, but…
One thing I fully agree with unity on is that kids these days are working way harder than I ever did and coming out with worse qualifications. It’s so cruel.
But when the government stats are so obviously cooked as they are in the case of education, surely your bullshit meter should be going down a bit when someone claims that the outcomes for children don’t add up either? I mean, just compare our national results with international comparisons done by the OECD (PIRLS and PISA) that show there just isn’t an equivalent improvement.
Also confused as to why it should matter, when teaching kids mechanics, to tell them which very-long-ago chap happened to discover the rule they’re learning.
Because its part of the language and standard nomenclature of science in the same wau that mathematics has Pythagoras; Theorem and Euclidian and Non-Euclidian Geometry. Its not just an affectation, or bigging up a dead guy, it actually has a very particular meaning in Physics, not least because there are a number of other strands of mechanics.
Off the top of my head, I recall there being two kinds of analytical/ vectorial mechanics (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian), Celestial mechanics, Einsteinian mechanics, Solid mechanics, Fluid mechanics, Soil mechanics, Statistical mechanics, Biomechanics and, of course, Quantum mechanics plus a few other topics that fall under the general heading of mechanics but don’t include the term itself, like Astrodynamics, Hydraulics and Acoustics.
Not to mention that Newton is also your starting point for the study of gravitation, optics, calculus (with Liebnitz) and binomial theorem, so he’s just a tad important in the grand scheme of things…
“I wish it was a Daily Mail myth, John, and the sick joke here is that kids are being made to work harder than they every have before in order to gain half the knowledge content that was incorporated into the pre-GCSE curriculum.”
The last part of that sentence is very true. Now that every single mark can be seen on your UCAS form, kids have to wring every mark out of it. An A isn’t good enough for some universities. It has to be an A as close to full marks as possible.
An 18 year old therefore has to spend extra time not broadening his knowledge, but perfecting his exam technique – from which they gain next to nothing. When I finished my A-levels the year before last, I knew the marking scheme for each subject like the back of my hand. I learnt only what needed to be learnt for the exam – nothing more as, what with all the practice papers, there wasn’t time. There also wasn’t the ethos that a broad curriculum mattered (apart from one teacher, Mr Jaques – I mention his name because, as he’s a soft old leftie he might just read this blog).
This going to a school that wasn’t desperately trying to maintain its league position (it wasn’t too strong on the old league tables front). I dread to think what it’s like in the ‘good schools’ where a slight drop in exam results means they drop out of the top 50…
Quite a lot of ‘modern’ children seem to find Pythagoras hard. Yet, what he said has stood the test of time. It is not his fault, nor Newtons, that fact based education still has a problem with explaining fairly rudimentary ideas to children. What chance do we have of explaining ‘The Origin of the Species’ when we are handing schools over to rich. religious, fundamentlist morons?
The whole system is geared towards churning through the material needed to pass the tests without ever putting any of what’s taught into any kind of context.
Rings true.
Also confused as to why it should matter, when teaching kids mechanics, to tell them which very-long-ago chap happened to discover the rule they’re learning. I’m fairly sure that whenever I was taught maths nobody mentioned the name of the Greek who came up with angle coefficients, nor the Arab who came up with zero. Historically interesting, but completely irrelevant to understanding physics.
I think the names are important because they make for a less dry subject – also it seems important to understanding science to learn how such people were inspired, how they created their hypotheses and theories. Newton’s apple, for example; or Archimedes’ bath.
Andrew
A couple of studies have been cited here suggesting standards have fallen – albeit none has done so with complete authority. Are you aware of studies that have found the reverse?
Is it simply that university lecturers who rhapsodise about their knowledgeable and motivated student don’t get their comments reported?
And, at least on the circumstantial evidence here, people seem to think that papers are becoming easier or, at the very least, less rigorous.
My own experience of my A-level in physics in 1995 was that we used ten year old science text books (Nuffield I think) and that a good third of the chapters had been removed from the syllabus between publication and us sitting the exams. My teacher, incensed at the removals, refused us access to any test papers at all until the final term precisely in order to prevent us learning to the test. Pretty brave stuff for a teacher I think.
cath: My children go to a state school, and in years 10 and 11 they do split the science classes according to gender: it’s the only subject where they do this. They brought it in about 5 or so years ago (and no, I had nothing to do with it!), but according to the school it’s been a success, and the girls’ results at GCSE have improved.
And the boys’ results? Or are we assuming (a) they don’t matter or (b) they were all doing perfectly well anyway? (c) that because underachieving boys can’t be framed as a gender discrimination issue, it doesn’t exist?
I’m pleased that the girls’ results improved (I’ve sisters who were science graduates in any case), but the trend for the last decade or so has been that even where female students are in the minority of exam entrants, they’re outperforming the boys. And in terms of numbers of entrants, this only applies to Physics and Maths. Undergraduate courses are another matter, and more work will need to be done…preferably not with policies developed by the likes of McCarthy-Fry.
As for the single-sex school argument, here’s an article from Education Guardian on the subject (and here are the replies). My summary would be:
– parents use single-sex education for girls as a covert form of selection
– there’s little research to support the argument or explain why single-sex education works for girls
– by contrast, there’s a great big steaming pile of gender assumptions masquerading as facts; the ones about boys (especially re. single-sex education) are usually negative
– there aren’t enough girls to make any strategy work (unless the bright boys form a minority with the girls, and the not-so-bright girls are lumped in with the rest of the boys)
“What chance do we have of explaining ‘The Origin of the Species’ when we are handing schools over to rich. religious, fundamentlist morons?”
I honestly don’t see a substantial difference between religious morons and progressive morons. One rejects the science cos it goes against their beliefs (though they are certainly in a strict minority amongst religious types), the other rejects it cos its too difficult (or too masculine, or not post-modern enough). In fact, I think I almost prefer the religious excuse – it is ever so slightly less demeaning to students.
Let’s add one to the list of great women scientists. Emmy Noether, in the early 20th century, practically invented the field now known as modern algebra, and I think that if she had never lived mathematics would be maybe a decade or two behind where it is today.
By the way, I agree heartily with every assertion in the piece. Going at McCarthy-Fry with a baseball bat to Don’t Stop Me Now would seem a bit crass, though – maybe Bohemian Rhapsody?
Unity I’m confused – the only research available shows that girls do better in general in every subject in a girls only class. The reason is not rocket science – girls and boys in puberty distract each other.
What is this rant all about?
Lilliput:
Because the available evidence is actually far from being that clear or straightforward.
Only around a third of the methodologically valid studies show that girls do better in single sex environments and most of those fail to control for or eliminate significant confounding factors.
For example, in the review paper I posted in the article its very noticeable that the most of the studies which appear to show single sex education to be advantageous shoe now evidence of controlling for differences in class size or in things which are extremely difficult to quantify, such as the difference in ethos that may exist between different schools, or the use of different pedagogies in different schools when teaching the same curriculum.
So, for the one major UK study cited in that paper, the comparison being made is not just a matter of single sex vs co-educational but also, because of where single sex schools operate within the state system, one in a number of independent and grammar schools – plus a few girls-only Comps that used to be Grammar schools and which have retained their strong academic focus – being compared against bog standard co-educational comprehensives.
Against that, the studies which look to be based on the closest possible like for like comparison, which come from the US and compare single sex and co-educational Catholic schools (these having much greater degree of similarity in culture and ethos than a comparison of a single sex grammar and a co-educational comp) we find no evidence that girls benefit from single sex education.
What we have to be careful of here is that, as with many other things, single-sex education has it own lobby whose activities can tend to provide a distorted picture of reality – from the comparative paper it looks as if around half of all the published ‘research’ on this issue is more or less worthless because of serious methodological flaws and failings, and much of that research tends to originate from organisations who are conduct research to try to validate their preconceived beliefs in the merits of gender segregation rather than to gain an objective view of its likely merits and drawbacks.
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