expected to know about prostitution in a GCSE exam?

[allinahuddle]

Just wondered if I am a prude or if this is inappropriate? Dd2 sat her English literature exam yesterday and the poetry section as expected had two poems to compare and contrast. The introduction to them said they were both about nature and how it affects the man made world. One poem was about prostitution and the other about mining. She said she found it confusing as the introduction made her think her instincts were wrong. She thought it was about drugs and maybe sex but didn't dare write it as she felt sure it wouldn't be that on an exam paper. I can see how perhaps prostitution could be studied as part of a social question in another subject I suppose but to include it as an unseen poetry question for 15 and 16 year olds seems inappropriate to me. To assume that this age group would feel confident to talk about this in an exam situation seems mad. It aldo seems to put the more anxious and less confident or less streetwise kids at a disadvantage as they felt embarrassed writing about it, especially after being told both poems were about nature. Only a couple of kids in the whole school actually wrote about prostitution or drugs even those on target for an A or an A*. AIBU?

Hah, Jeanne: You and your aspie thinking ... I'm always thrown by 'non-verbal reasoning' maths tests, because to me they have to be verbally reasoned!

Good thing we're not all the same, though, innit

Doctor YY as I have told students, I once wrote a 10,000 word end of term essay on the opening 400 words of Jacob's Room. One sentence took a page and a half to dissect.
Therefore, in an exam, you cannot possibly cover everything. Much better to select the points you can make confident, in depth explanation about and stick to those. It will look like you understood everything and were enthused about those elements - rather than a hotch potch or inconsistent essay.
I am the fucking queen of intervention if I do say so myself.

I like the poem and think it is quietly powerful but to my ear it is rather disquieting and the juxtaposition of the city life with the lilacs quite dark.

Surprised to read people saying 'lovely poem'.

Jeanne I wrote down the workings because I visualised them iyswim? So they are part of the whole. So they need to be included.
My DH hates this as I do it with loads of things apparently and become enraged otherwise.

Ted Hughes wrote a lot of poetry about farming...

blindness was used as a metaphor. Actually it was Milton's On his blindness, so it wasn't metaphorical at all

That's really sweet, hack :)

Well, "sweet" is one word...

So the poet was Robert Morgan - I just looked it up (though can't find the actual poem). I remember DD mentioning it now, because she thought it was funny that he had the same name as a character in Stella. (You can see how lowbrow we are in our house.)

Not aspie, gralick, but thank you.

squiz - so, with a poem or something like that, can you not tell why you think it means something, or is it that you know, but it doesn't seem so clearly to form a 'whole'?

hack - oh, no, that's cruel (of the examiners).

grey, I think it's both disquieting and lovely.

Jeanne with a poem or case study I get it all in a flash and work backwards (fairly easily) to explain why.
With numerical data I work forwards from problem to solution.

Curiously I can't sight read music although I've been in choirs and had lessons - my mind "freezes" and I cannot translate the dots into sounds in real time at all.

I'm slightly neuro diverse but usually only sensory issues - but wonder if this is related.

Oh, yes, I work backwards with the maths - it's the same. Though I only mean for quite simple things (GCSE level). My brother does it for some complex stuff, though.

I can't sight read either, but I'm not musical at all!

I think lots of people don't think in the neat, linear way that exams expect you to.

Not sure why we would want exams to be dependant on parental input though Arsenic. That would be unfair.

What do you mean? Have you confused someone else's post with mine? Your own maybe?

As an aside, I know someone who went for a teaching job at an independent school run by a Christian group - this school didn't offer English Literature A-level because they didn't approve of the themes of the set texts (and even though they change frequently there is always a lot of sex and all the rest of human vice in English lit!)

Tinkly

What I was suggesting is that being the child of the "my little sweetie doesn't know about prostitution/swearwords/drugs. (S)he's too sheltered/shy/asian/naice!" brigade when they are in full sail must be excruciating.

How you've interpreted as me advocating parental input into exams, I'm unsure.

Any teenager who watches the news or reads newspapers, will be aware of prostitution. And if they really were that sheltered that they didn't know it existed, they would be incredibly vulnerable.

The divide is between prudish parents whose teens can't be frank with and their parents with their heads attached to their necks and facing forward

Ok Arsenic I interpreted your post as being the divide was between prudish parents and non prudish, as to how their children would be exposed to the world and therefore have the frame of reference to interpret the poem.

It's not particularly clear, but I get what you're actually saying now, that some parents are unaware of how much their kids know about and think they're more innocent than they are.

These threads are always a storm in a teacup -there was one about a sweary play a year ago that made the press.

Even quiet, retiring teens (I have one) have read books and newspapers, tv drama, film and maybe theatre.

More and more there is a porn epidemic in schools that it is hard for disinterested teens to avoid.

I just think some teens must (have to) hide a lot of themselves and the realities of their lives from their parents, for parents like this to pop up so often.

Yes but the OP has said that her kid felt too embarrassed to write about it. Not all kids are cool with the whole porn thing; many are deeply embarrassed by sex and, as I keep banging on, many could easily be only 14.

However, if as people have said, no marks were lost for glossing over/not picking up on that aspect, then I suppose there's no real issue.

Not all kids are cool with the whole porn thing

I should hope not, especially considering the nature of much of it. You don't need to be 'cool with it' ( ) to have been aware of it around you. This is a question of awareness.

many are deeply embarrassed by sex

They weren't, (in the privacy of the exam paper), asked to write about sex.

If anything, they had to consider the emotional aspects of exploitation.

We read Portnoy's Complaint in fourth year (age 14/15) I can imagine some Mumsnetty frothing over that.

Some of us were offended, but none of the parents were.

the OP has said that her kid felt too embarrassed to write about it.

Just to reiterate (because the last few posts seem to have lost sight of the subtleties here) - speculating about meanings and references in unseen poetry is not the same as writing with confidence about similar discussed content in set texts.

The OP's daughter felt less confident because this was unseen poetry, which she had been told was 'about nature and how it affects the man made world'; she was unsure that she had interpreted the references correctly. Clearly the OP's daughter was able to discuss the poem, and prostitution references, with her mother.

The issue here seems to be as much about having the confidence to venture interpretation and opinion (perceived to be at odds with the stated theme of the poem), as writing about prostitution in an exam.

I think one of the problems with English teaching - my daughter's currently doing A-Level, is that a lot of teachers seem to be teaching in a way that says, 'This text says X.' 'This novel is about Y.' In this drama, the playwright is saying Z.

In my opinion - English graduate, writer, tutor - this is not how creative writing works. For example you want to talk about feminism you write a pamphlet or a tract, as Mary Wollstonecraft did. If you are driven to make a complex, ambiguous imaginative world in which female independence and female vulnerability is explored, you write Jane Eyre.

Particularly when exploring unseen literature, it's important to be able to respond to the multiple possibilities that the language suggests. Nothing is out of bounds as long as you can relate your argument to what is in the text.

Marianne unfortunately it is cheaper to mark (ie takes examiners shorter per paper) and easier for politicians and parents who see intelligence as fact collection if it's done that way. Doing it the proper way is frowned on as woolly and hard to pin down even though it's correct and harder!

It affects most social sciences too, and vocational subjects. This culture of rote learning in disguise produces kids who are terrified of case studies or open ended projects, because since ks2 "one right answer" has been hammered. And of course in both higher education and employment initiative and intuitive thinking are vital.

I work on curriculum planning and pastoral - and before that in an exam board.
I keep my soapbox under my mortar board to bash daily mail "I went to school so I'm an expert" political types!

I know what you mean squizita..... (Weeps quietly.)