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I think public education itself here is a major problem. Most children are being force fed knowledge and asked to regurgitate it on command.

Except this is the UK, where it isn't that bad. (The current government is trying to make it worse, to go back to the "good old days" of learning lists of kings and queens, but anyway... they haven't yet done so.)

The final programming exam (for a 16 year old) should look something like this (PDF). The earlier questions are simple facts, but only getting those correct won't get a decent grade. Later questions require understanding.

I can tell you why WWII happened, why Hitler had broad public support, show you pictures of him kissing babies, and not just say what happened, but why it happened.

GCSE History, Unit 1 (PDF). Topic 3:
"Which was more important as a cause of the Second World War:
- the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, 1936,
- the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939
You must refer to both causes when explaining your answer. (10 marks)"

Half the marks for the paper are for these longer questions, the other half are easier to get.

(Feel free to disagree -- we now have two primary sources on which to base the discussion!)

In the hacker community, the self-taught hacker is often better respected than his academically-shaped peer, and the reason has nothing to do with a disrespect of education, but rather an implicit understanding that you just don't learn as well unless you're interested in the material and follow your own path through it.

A hacker who goes to university, and chooses courses they're interested in (which I assume is also normal in the US?), will be better than the one who didn't.

I think public education itself here is a major problem. Most children are being force fed knowledge and asked to regurgitate it on command.

Except this is the UK, where it isn't that bad. (The current government is trying to make it worse, to go back to the "good old days" of learning lists of kings and queens, but anyway... they haven't yet done so.)

The final programming exam (for a 16 year old) should look something like this (PDF). The earlier questions are simple facts, but only getting those correct won't get a decent grade. Later questions require understanding.

I can tell you why WWII happened, why Hitler had broad public support, show you pictures of him kissing babies, and not just say what happened, but why it happened.

GCSE History, Unit 1 (PDF). Topic 3:
"Which was more important as a cause of the Second World War:
- the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, 1936,
- the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939
You must refer to both causes when explaining your answer. (10 marks)"

Half the marks for the paper are for these longer questions, the other half are easier to get.

(Feel free to disagree -- we now have two primary sources on which to base the discussion!)

In the hacker community, the self-taught hacker is often better respected than his academically-shaped peer, and the reason has nothing to do with a disrespect of education, but rather an implicit understanding that you just don't learn as well unless you're interested in the material and follow your own path through it.

A hacker who goes to university, and chooses courses they're interested in (which I assume is also normal in the US?), will be better than the one who didn't.

Good advice.

My thought: It doesn't matter where you learn or how you learn, the fundamentals are universal.

AQA offers a suggested schooling curriculum and past papers for the exams they set. Sure it's UK not US, but C is C, HTML is HTML, MS Office is MS Office and small furry creatures from alpha centauri make great soup if you put them in the blender for long enough.

Some courses have up to three hardcover books, and possibly a softcover workbook.

That's crazy. I never had hardcover books. Softcover workbooks were B5 sized to make them easier to carry (and the right size to paste in an A4 sheet folded once), and I had one for most courses. I did carry these, but probably 1/3 of the time the teacher had them for marking.

I have a bill on my kitchen table for $179 for such right now that I hope to talk with him about if I see him this week.

I lost my copy of The Odyssey, which fortunately only cost £2.50. Most school textbooks here are about £10-£15.

Again, I've read some of their books and don't find most of them educational. At all. There is some value in the math books. The rest? No. Propaganda of the worst sort, and the math books are not immune from this. You wouldn't believe what passes for high school chemistry in the US today. I have WW1 era texts that are more forthcoming. But in chemistry class they must teach them some semblance of chemistry without teaching them how to make explosives, build a distillery, or process cold pills into methamphetamine. The resulting course would be hilarious if it were not pathetic.

The design of the site is awful, but it looks pretty much like my GCSE (exam taken at 16) chemistry: here. By the end of A-level (age 18) chemistry I'd have been able to follow instructions to make meth. We did make a drug, though I don't remember the name. Obviously it wasn't one we'd be interested in stealing. I think I was graded on the purity of it. We distilled ethanol from water, it was covered as part of learning how ethanol can be produced in industry from grain rather than from oil.

The 2012 GCSE specification contains phrases like "to consider and evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of the uses of fuels" and "to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of making ethanol from renewable and non-renewable sources", which wasn't in my 2002 GCSE. It also has "Chemical analysis can be used to identify additives in foods. Artificial colours can be detected and identified by chromatography." which is presumably what they mean by making it 'more relevant'. I'm disappointed that the exam is now multiple choice! (Previous exams are on that page under "Question Papers").

I've looked through the latest "Statistics and Number" Maths sample paper (under assessment). There's a question about waiting times in a hospital, but it makes no political point. It requires the student to verify the claim made by the hospital by referring to the data, an approach I can't possibly fault. One of my teachers used to be on the committee that set these questions -- we'd occasionally be chatting about something in the news when he'd say "that'd make a good question!".

Can your daughter spot the propaganda, or is it more subtle?

Nothing stands out in the History (Germany 1919-1945) or Religion (Islam) sample exam papers, but I don't know how this is taught.

Some courses have up to three hardcover books, and possibly a softcover workbook.

That's crazy. I never had hardcover books. Softcover workbooks were B5 sized to make them easier to carry (and the right size to paste in an A4 sheet folded once), and I had one for most courses. I did carry these, but probably 1/3 of the time the teacher had them for marking.

I have a bill on my kitchen table for $179 for such right now that I hope to talk with him about if I see him this week.

I lost my copy of The Odyssey, which fortunately only cost £2.50. Most school textbooks here are about £10-£15.

Again, I've read some of their books and don't find most of them educational. At all. There is some value in the math books. The rest? No. Propaganda of the worst sort, and the math books are not immune from this. You wouldn't believe what passes for high school chemistry in the US today. I have WW1 era texts that are more forthcoming. But in chemistry class they must teach them some semblance of chemistry without teaching them how to make explosives, build a distillery, or process cold pills into methamphetamine. The resulting course would be hilarious if it were not pathetic.

The design of the site is awful, but it looks pretty much like my GCSE (exam taken at 16) chemistry: here. By the end of A-level (age 18) chemistry I'd have been able to follow instructions to make meth. We did make a drug, though I don't remember the name. Obviously it wasn't one we'd be interested in stealing. I think I was graded on the purity of it. We distilled ethanol from water, it was covered as part of learning how ethanol can be produced in industry from grain rather than from oil.

The 2012 GCSE specification contains phrases like "to consider and evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of the uses of fuels" and "to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of making ethanol from renewable and non-renewable sources", which wasn't in my 2002 GCSE. It also has "Chemical analysis can be used to identify additives in foods. Artificial colours can be detected and identified by chromatography." which is presumably what they mean by making it 'more relevant'. I'm disappointed that the exam is now multiple choice! (Previous exams are on that page under "Question Papers").

I've looked through the latest "Statistics and Number" Maths sample paper (under assessment). There's a question about waiting times in a hospital, but it makes no political point. It requires the student to verify the claim made by the hospital by referring to the data, an approach I can't possibly fault. One of my teachers used to be on the committee that set these questions -- we'd occasionally be chatting about something in the news when he'd say "that'd make a good question!".

Can your daughter spot the propaganda, or is it more subtle?

Nothing stands out in the History (Germany 1919-1945) or Religion (Islam) sample exam papers, but I don't know how this is taught.

Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming.

A-level Computer Science is supposed to be a grounding in computing theory and programming - there is no such thing as a Computer Programming A-level.

That was the point I was making, yes. People are treating this story as if it relates to a (non-existent) A-level in Computer Programming, not one in computer science itself, albeit one with the more generic title of 'A-level Computing'.

If you really want to know exactly what these courses teach (or rather, examine), you can find out on the website (click specification (PDF), or the sample exams).

I think they do do most of the things you say. They simply don't want to mark work written in C or PHP any more, since not many people are using these languages at school.

Remember most people doing this course will be age 16-18. Also, there are other exam boards who may (or may not) offer equivalent courses using other languages.

If you really want to know exactly what these courses teach (or rather, examine), you can find out on the website (click specification (PDF), or the sample exams).

I think they do do most of the things you say. They simply don't want to mark work written in C or PHP any more, since not many people are using these languages at school.

Remember most people doing this course will be age 16-18. Also, there are other exam boards who may (or may not) offer equivalent courses using other languages.

Does this happen in other languages too? It could be a result of the way English is taught in school -- in the UK there's not much emphasis on grammar or structure. But, when I learnt French, German and Latin at school we studied the grammar in detail. Are French, German and, erm, Roman children taught their own language more rigorously?

I found a sample GCSE (age 16) English exam paper, and mark schemes etc. There are plenty of marks for using good English, but I expect you could still pass without getting many of them as there are also plenty of marks for conveying ideas and showing an understanding of the material.

A couple of years ago the AQA took out adverts in broadsheet papers whose basic thrust was ``Celebrate our children's success: look how hard the exams are''. My wife and I did our A levels in the early eighties: science for me, arts for her. Which meant we had between us 1981 O Level grade As and 1983 A or B grade A Levels in every subject that had sample questions shown, plus a smattering oa OA, AO, S, degrees, etc. Yes, we agreed after looking at the questions, GCSEs are about the same standard as O Levels used to be. Then we realised that was being shown were A level questions. Go and look at the current A Level maths syllabus http://www.aqa.org.uk/qual/pdf/AQA-5361-6371-W-SP-08.PDF and, if you're over forty, try to spot anything in the core syllabus you didn't do at O Level. Now look at all the stuff you did at O Level that's only in the further extension modules : matrix manipulation, composition of matrices of transformation leap out at me, but there's other stuff. The calculus I did at O Level extended out to volume of rotation and area of volume of rotation, for example, and I'm pretty certain that either O Level Physics or the applied side of O Level maths covered quite a lot of the mechanics, too. OK, there's a small amount of stuff that I didn't do at either O or A Level, mostly because it barely existed. There a couple of modules called `Decision' which appear to be about complexity theory, for example. My father, who lectured in chemistry in higher education from the early sixties through to the late eighties reports the same decline, and I recently took my daughter around the physics department at UCL with an emeritus reader, and he was railing about how third year work is what used to be first year work, because of the poor standards in A Levels.

Argh...

In Britain the GCSE (exam taken when you're about 16) for English isa complete son of a bitch. You can't take a poem on its relative merits, nonono, you can't ENJOY THE FRIGGIN POEM and write about what you think of it, you have to deconstruct it, turning every single friggin line into a stream of mumbo jumbo with words like "pentameter" and "rhythm", rather than beautiful poetry. In the same lessons we had to deconstruct, in the same manner, an article on CNN.com. Yes, you heard me right, our job was to deconstruct a CNN article and look for "literary devices" that were apparently deliberately strewn throughout the text. Maybe they were accidental? Dammit, you shouldn't make people deconstruct things and study them in detail! It just pisses them off and stops them from reading, because they remember all that work they did on a 20 line paragraph and thing "fuck that".

Even worse, we had to do war poetry. I don't mind war poetry, but you have a big book full of war poetry and you're only allowed to use about 10 poems from it. This selection is ALL, bar one or two poems, about World War One. There was, IIRC, one poem from WW2 and two from the Cold War. People these days probably wouldn't identify with the WW1 poetry and more with the Cold War poetry, but we were told to focus on the WW1 stuff.

THIS.

SUCKS.

One of the best poems in that book wasn't in that selection, and you were discouraged from doing anything to do with it. Now that is fucked up, and it drives me friggin' mental.

Another brilliant example of why the UK desperately needs exam reform, and why I want to nuke these bastards.

Note that this is no disrespect to my English teacher, who was a brilliant teacher (despite pronouncing "nuclear" as "nukewlar" which drove me utterly nuts), just the exam system which she was teaching.