(A reader emailed me the website and asked me to Blog on it.)
According to this, Math Exams in England have gotten much easier since 1951. The article also points to the exams the exams themselves so you can judge for yourself.
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The later exams look easier to me but not that much easier
as to be a concern.
The earlier ones had proofs, but the later ones had some
concepts not on the earlier ones.
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Every generation tends to think that life has gotten
easier since they were a kid.
- When I was a kid I we had to go to the library and copy articles! We didn't have your fancy websites and printers. And to get to the library we had to walk 5 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways. And we wore cardboard boxes on our feet for shoes.
- You had cardboard boxes!
- You had feet!
- Also, each generation thinks that the way they did things is the way things should be done Young people today don't learn how to use a Slide Rule. Wimps!
- But never mind what I think. What do you think?
Eric Idle: Who would have thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Chaselet, eh?
ReplyDeleteAll: Aye, aye.
Michael Palin: Them days we were glad to have the price of a cup of tea.
Graham Chapman: Right! A cup of cold tea!
Michael Palin: Right!
Eric Idle: Without milk or sugar!
Terry Jones: Or tea!
Michael Palin: In a cracked cup and all.
Eric Idle: Oh, we never used to have a cup! We used to have to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper!
Graham Chapman: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
Terry Jones: But you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor.
Michael Palin: Because we were poor!
Terry Jones: Right!
Michael Palin: My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't bring you happiness, son!"
Eric Idle: He was right!
Michael Palin: Right!
Eric Idle: I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny old tumbled-down house with great big holes in the roof.
Graham Chapman: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twentysix of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
Terry Jones: You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!
Michael Palin: Oh, we used to dream of living in a corridor! Would have been a palace to us! We used to live in an old watertank on a rubbish tip. We'd all woke up every morning by having a load of rotten fish dumped all over us! House, huh!
Eric Idle: Well, when I say a house, it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!
Graham Chapman: We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!
Terry Jones: You were lucky to have a lake! There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!
Michael Palin: A cardboard box?
Terry Jones: Aye!
Michael Palin: You were lucky! We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank! We used to have to go up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for six pence a week, and when we got home, our dad would slash us to sleep with his belt!
Graham Chapman: Luxury! We used to have to get up out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot grubble, work twenty hours a day at mill, for two pence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
Terry Jones: Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold grubble, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for four pence every six years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a breadknife!
Eric Idle: Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay millowner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
Michael Palin: Aah. Are you trying to tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!
All: No, no they won't!
I forget who said it originally... but the following is a a paraphrased version of an interesting related observation:
ReplyDelete- Anything that existed until you were a young boy/girl is just the way the world is, as normal as trees
- Anything invented between your teens and about 30 is cool, best thing since sliced bread
- Anything invented or developed after you are 30 is incomprehensible or strange, and probably an unnecessary luxury