I guess parents with school age children in any country have noticed that there is suddenly a point when the children stop asking for help with their homework – either because they have given up doing any homework at all, or because they know you won’t be any help even if they do ask.
I think we are reaching that point ‘chez nous’, especially in philosophy…
In France all lycée students have to study philosophy as part of their final year which is, I think, a good thing. It’s nice to see a bit of thinking going on for a change – until they start asking questions like ‘In what circumstances can conflict be resolved with dialogue?’ at the dinner table.
Other recent philosophy exam questions include ‘Does historical objectivity presuppose an impartial historian?’ and ‘Is it absurd to desire the impossible?‘ A little bit tougher than the ‘what’s on tv tonight? that we get through the school holidays…and wikipedia (every parent’s friend!) is no help at all.
Unfortunately hard as such questions are to answer, they are also equally hard to mark properly. In a recent experiment an answer paper was sent to lots of different exam markers. All were marking the exact same thing, and their results covered the complete spectrum from 6/20 – a failed exam – to 16/20 – an exceptionally high result for exams in France, so the whole philosophy exam is pretty much a lottery for candidates anyway.
(Slightly off subject but those interested in the French lycée system or with children at lycée in France might like to take a look at a recent report suggesting that long hours of study combined with very tough marking don’t necessarily lead to better results – see the report here.)
Meanwhile, I thought I could at least cope with our 14 year old daughters maths problems – but that is getting rapidly harder as well. Here was a tricky one this week, put down the sudoku and give it a try yourself.
Ignoring my poor photoshop abilities, the picture on the left is made of overlapping semi-circles drawn in a square. Each side of the square has length 2a.
All you have to do (!) is calculate the formula which gives the area coloured in black. I got there in the end but it took quite a while to get the brain cranked into gear first…
Well it must be far better than the state education here, it has gone down the pan, everybody now passes the easier exams.
This teacher spoke out and told the real truth, and has now been sacked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L2l-MA-8Dk
One problem that arises with marking differences between the UK and France is when expat children apply to UK universities they are told, for example, that they must get a 16/20 in their BAC – without taking into account that 14-15/20 are really pretty good marks. Luckily the UK university fee increases will stop any expats wanting to come back to the UK for university anyway…
Yes we are basicly privatising higher education, so the market will set the fees. It will stop the decline in standards by stopping people attending by equality requirements and not academics.
If British students fail to get a well paid job they will not pay back any loans they have had to take out. If the do, they will pay back with the more they start to earn .Of course the loans are not compulsary. They can always get a job rather than the loan.
Well you started something now…..Me: A level Pure Maths (failed) 45 years ago, Him: OU second & third level course of maths. We are going round in circles and squares with ‘a’s and ‘pi’s and more squares. There are a lot of bits to subtract from a whole and as yet we still have no neat answer! Just have to have an early lunch and a glass before really working it out…Thank goodness Calculus is not part of the problem.
‘a’s and ‘pi’s sounds good, not sure a glass of anything very strong with lunch will help though!
My eldest daughter applied to both UK and French universities to study Mathematics, and I have to say that she found the UK ones were very clued up on the French BAC.
The highest offer was 12/20 and they were desperate to persuade her to choose them.
However she was put off totally by the level of debt she would accrue, so opted for Montpellier – where she gets a ‘bourse’ (4000€ pa) as well as tuition fees of less than 300€ a year!
Trouble is I did a Maths degree many, many years ago and get phoned up (when I am in the UK) by both my daughters asking for help with their maths homework. You try explaining complex differential equations down a telephone line, translating to/from French at the same time!
Answer=2*area of circle(diameter 2a)-area of square(side of 2a)?
Answer is clear as mud and started an arguement about how you represent ‘times’. * and x discussed as options. We then went into ^2 as supposed to be squared, ^3 cubed etc. Glad I’m out of it now.