after the Mickey Mouse degree thread

[tallyhoho]

to think that some parents just don't get it?

Lots of the parents send their children to private schools/top state schools because they have excellent SATS/GCSE/A level results. This does not make the children (in general) any brighter but, they are taught to pass exams and when the results are published the schools promote them.

When my best friend studied at Magdalen College, she was one of the first people from our school in 1986 to study at Oxbridge. She studied Medicine.

She found that those students who had been pushed in the private/top state schools struggled far more than her (some to the point of getting kicked out) and she also questioned the validity of straight academic courses, unless an individual was actually going into teaching/lecturing, as even if someone was studying maths with a view to going into accountancy, they would still have to study professional qualifications post university.

There are plenty of Oxbridge and RG university graduates who haven't got transferable skills required in industry and those who have been pushed within an inch of their life at school and constantly spoonfed.

I believe most children fall within a spectrum of ability and there are the odd few who have special needs at either end of that continuom. I think some people are deluding themselves.

I am under no illusion regarding SATS/GCSE/A level results. The range of children in each school is broadly similar academically. What follows on is those who are in the top 5% in a challenging school are like my friend just as well if not better equipped to actually study a difficult subject and succeed in their chosen field.

I mean you only need to look at Royalty to see individuals who should never have set foot over the threshold of a uni

I work with all privately educated colleagues who all grew up with tutors and private schools. I however, went to a bog standard comprehensive. None one of them can really hold an intellectual conversation with me because as someone has already said they learnt how to pass exams whereas I feel I actually learnt and retained that information as I saw and still see education as a privelege (even if I cant spell ). Not one of them reads anything but the occasional newspaper and mostly they have no idea what I am on about.

I live in an area of London with some very poor schools. I have managed to get DS1 into a school that I believe will do him justice but I am more than willing to put in some hard graft from my side to make sure he understands the value of education and my experience (albeit limited to my colleagues) suggests to me that they take their education for granted.

You do have to have original thought. Getting it firstly depends upon having read up on work in the field. Thinking something up that has already been done but you hadn't read up on isn't original thought. So when a student has read a lot (hard work) they can then think up something that is truly original. What constitutes truly original work is usually along the lines of taking theory X (thought up by someone else) and applying it to data, text or problem y (possibly also created by someone else) because previously X had only been applied to Z, but not y. Alternatively you may point out why theory X is inappropriate and should not have applied to Y (an original critique).

You do not have to be some kind of intellectual heavyweight to achieve such original thought. Really good students might be well read outside of the field, which gives much more opportunities for original combinations of ideas.

Real original thought is often not possible for undergraduates in many fields because it requires access to huge grants for research projects that allow people the time and resources to pull together everything they need to really answer the question.

MOST undergraduate level studies do not require much in the way of original thought anyway, it is true that the capacity for original thought has to be demonstrated to do WELL, but,as an undergraduate you will never be expected to fully test / research your original hypothesis.

It's simply beyond the scope of undergraduate study.

Even PhD students (such as myself) are really only "baby researchers", sometimes with only one good original idea, and a LOT of hard work.

But, there has to be aptitude (rather than pURE hard work) or it is difficult to maintain interest and skill within a field.

One of the biggest gripes that people have against education in gereral and state education in paticular in recent years is that children are overtested. Are people really saying that state school pupils are not taught to pass tests? There are a lot of people on the education boards saying the opposite.

pmsl at the generalisations on here.

education has changed a hell of a lot since most of us were at school, and even back then (which is not so long ago for me, but long enough), having been through both state and private - the state system was the one that taught to the exam, not the private.

I think state pupils are more appreciative of education as a whole rather than pupils who have private education, tutors etc and therefore are likely to achieve in terms of grades whereas as a state pupil my experience is that all of my friends from school appreciated the whole experience and it was much broader in terms of sense of achievement.

Again - I reiterate that I base this only on people that I know.

MillyR - explain to me then why I saw people work day and night at Cambridge and only come out with a 2.1? This is from state schools and private schools.

I always got better grades in the subject's I'd read less about - I was able to apply myself without being clouded by everyone else opinion.

I agree real original thought generally doesn't happen at undergraduate level (unless you're working on very specialised subjects) and it's more about original combinations of ideas. Unless you're pretty bright you're not going to be able to come up with the original combinations of ideas.

I think a lot of it is the desire to do well. That has to be a combination of enjoying the work and wanting the extrinsic reward of a good result.

I don't think the job of a university is to turn out lots of people who get firsts. Many people go to university to get a general education and put their energy into other things.

Many private school students don't need a good degree result. They have the connections and social skills to fit in with a certain group of people and get good jobs out of it. If we banned private school students from the top 15 universities they would go elsewhere and still end up running the country. We are not the US - there isn't as good a correlation here between educational success and achievement in careers. What needs to be sorted out is the unfair situations that occur once similarly qualified people from state and private schools attempt to get jobs.

Getting a first really doesn't matter that much unless you are intending to enter an academic career, and most undergraduates are not at university for that purpose.

I guess we're saying the same thing then, Milly. I just know that to a lot of students, it doesn't feel as if they're not using their intellect. I think lots of second/third-year undergrads really feel as if they are stretching themselves intellectually and grappling with very new, exciting ideas. You can see from the way they talk, whether they're just regurgitating what they've read, or whether they're starting to reason things out for themselves. It doesn't ultimately matter that the end product isn't a stunning new contribution to the subject - it will feel as if it is to a good student, and that's what comes across and gets the high grades.

It's hard to judge exactly how much is hard work and how much is aptitude when you're looking at students in a very similar population - Oxbridge undergrads, say, or A-Level students getting a grade C - but much easier to see when you compare across groups.

Btw, I know what you mean about not needing to be an 'intellectual heavyweight' - sure, it seems that way to us having finished degrees, but I think at the time it feels very different. And lots of those people who felt their undergraduate degrees were really intellectually demanding for them, do go on and become intellectual heavyweights afterwards.

Btw, when I was in my last year of undergrad, I knew loads of people who were thrilled about the prospect of writing dissertations to showcase their ideas. We really did believe we were making original contributions and so we worked as if we were - learning to support what we said, taking issue with what other people said, and so on. It didn't matter that we were wrong. Our ideas weren't original at all, and we found that out soon enough - but we were still doing original thinking, because to us it was new and difficult.

(Wandering off the point maybe, sorry if so.)

B, Germaine Greer has spoken about this when talking about women not getting firsts despite their hard work. I agree with her and think that reading too much can leave people with the space to think about how they are going to put ideas together. Both reading and then applying those ideas to new areas are work.

There are many reasons why people don't get a first. To get a first you are meant to have (generally by university guidelines) produced work that contains a lot of original thought, that shows a command of the subject area, that presents clear arguments throughout, that is properly constructed in terms of spelling, grammar and punctuation, is properly referenced (if an assignment not an exam) and follows a writing style or standard that could be published. To get a 2.1 only excerpts from your work need to meet these standards.

There are lots of other reasons why people don't get firsts. Some get more guidance and good teaching than others. If there is a research project going on, lecturers may pick out certain students who are keen or diligent and suggest to them that as the research project is on theory X, and nobody has time to apply it to data Z, that the student should do so as their undergraduate dissertation. That is then useful for the lecturer and may even be published, maybe as part of someone else's paper. It is very difficult not to give a first if the work is going to be published.

Another student may go away and have to think of another topic, which isn't being supported by their department and so they don't get to talk about it/ connect it to what other people are doing or get the same level of support. The likelihood of them making mistakes is then higher.

LRD, I think a lot of the use of a degree is in learning how to live. I have ideas all the time that have no doubt been thought up by someone else a thousand times, but that does not mean that the process of me thinking them or applying them to my own life and mind isn't incredibly worthwhile.

I hope that a lot of the satisfaction of doing a degree is not in achieving some academic qualification, or even getting a job, but in having the time to think about things and finding meaning in that experience. It is worthwhile to resolve a question for your own satisfaction and not simply because you are going to show the answer to some academic body.

(To add to that, Milly, some people don't perform well in exams - some get very stressed.)

Yes, I think that a degree should give people the opportunity to be assessed in a number of ways. So people have longer pieces of work, shorter pieces, exams, oral presentations and field work where appropriate. Making people simply sit exams is not really allowing people to show what they are capable of.

I must go now, but will try and read more later if it is still going. I am interested in your points LRD.

Oh, I cross-posted with your second-to-last post and didn't see it, sorry. I am always interested in what you say Milly - especially about how valuable it is to resolve a question for your own satisfaction. That is a really good skill to learn.

I ought to go too, and do some (unoriginal!) thinking for a while.

I would agree with the opinion of3Trees.

Sorry, I meant I would agree with the opinion of 3Trees (computer keyboard is playing up).

I have been against my dd1 going to university and finally she gets it - it isn't that she is a lovely birhgt girl as she is, the problem is she is juts not academic and uni is the last place she should be

Dd1 went to a school with excellent gCSE results and good A level results - what the school did was tell dd1 repeatidly that if she didn't stay and do A'levels and go to uni she would be a failure in life - they told the pupil over and over again the same so eventually thy all beleived this.

The school has a large drop out rate for A'level - but do they care?

My dd1 has a work ethic and is working full time and having fun.

She is not struggling with study and running up debt or doing a worthless degree course

WRT to the thing in the OP about privately ed'd kids being coached then struggling, that backs up my Academic friend completely, from what she sees in the two universities she works at (one old and proud, one newer)

otherwise it depends

Some people develop later: I am bright and have a decvent degree and am thriving on my MA now. I should have been able to go when I was 16 but parents said no I wasn't special enough and I dread a tightening meaning that becomes reality for soem kids now.

And my ds1 / ds2 are bright but not academic and whilst I won;t stand for no post school study, I am happy for it to be trade and field related- animal science for ds2, jewellery design for ds1 atm.

And if ds4 seems to suit a more academic field I would support Uni too.

Good parenting is about working out whats right for your kids, but also letting them fail I guess if they insist and helping them get back on track again if that happens.

Always reminds me of super bright Ex who got a 2:2 and only that just as he was bright but at his private had absolutely no self managem,ent skills so stayed in bed the last year. Fabbo (maths, so not mickey mouse)

Lots of interesting points and food for thought. The Guardian article is very good.

FWIW I think children are tested too much. I find this amusing

OOOOps