The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

Jackmydad

chris_m wrote: »

A bite, a bite, verily a bite. We've got the Fly Casting World Championships here this weekend, I think I've just won and I didn't even enter :p:p

:rotfl: (not enough characters)

LydiaJ

chris_m wrote: »

...an Astronomer Royal...

I have one of those too - a first cousin once removed.

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

Just looked at Unis.... why can't I do a degree in genealogy (locally)?

Not a degree, but there is this free 6-week Futurelearn course. I would think you'd already know a lot of it, though, but, as it's free, there might be the odd thing that could be useful to you.


https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy#section-topics

You can join it now, or wait until November.

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

I have one of those too - a first cousin once removed.

That gives you a total of two ticks on the PA Index.

Pyxis

If we're having Posh Alerts, shouldn't we have Peasant Alerts too?

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

....I would think you'd already know a lot of it...

Yes, it's free - and yes I already know a lot of it.

Having worked entirely with free sources/resources I've had to be inventive, cunning, super smart and tenacious to extract the tiny fragments from what I have available to build a picture.... I cast a forensic eye over every sentence of stuff...

The real issue for me is .... the cost of actually getting to an actual archives centre, perchance to sit for hours/days ... pawing through stuff that might/not exist, in order to hope that there might be half a line, or one line that's actually relevant

Time/£ cost. For a "maybe" ....

Even simple things can take a long time.... I know where a bunch are buried. There will be no stones. I could, therefore, find out where the burial locations map/plan is for that church and if it exists, then get a copy, then physically go there .... to stare at a piece of grass ... or stare at a huge overgrown bush, underneath which is a piece of grass.... and, it'd have actually been nicer if at that point there'd been a monstrously large gravestone plotting out 3 generations of the family and associates But peasants don't leave much of a trace.

So ... as you shuffle away from that spot of grass, that you might've/might not have actually been able to see ... you have to evaluate the effort -v- what did you gain? It could take, say, 2-3 weeks to find if there's a plan, then get a copy of it, then study it and compare to google maps .... then to get in the car and drive X miles, park, get out and take the plan into the graveyard ... to locate a piece of grass. Achievement: Not a lot really. Effort/time spent: Oodles. Actual £ cost: say £50 all in.

So then you think "I'm happy enough knowing that's where they were buried" .... I don't need a plan, to visit, to stand on/near the bit of grass.... after all ... we don't really know we're related at all do we; who knows who dropped their knickers in the last 200 years in the wrong bedroom!

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

If we're having Posh Alerts, shouldn't we have Peasant Alerts too?

You can call me a peasant if you wish, but that's my job ... and so watch your back

chris_m

chris_m wrote: »

an Astronomer Royal,

LydiaJ wrote: »

I have one of those too - a first cousin once removed.

That's a coincidence - same relationship as me to mine.

Which AR, if I may ask?

LydiaJ

chris_m wrote: »

That's a coincidence - same relationship as me to mine.

Which AR, if I may ask?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Graham-Smith

He's Aged P's first cousin. I met him at Aged P's sister's 90th birthday party 6 years ago.

Cakeguts

SingleSue wrote: »

Regarding exams. I am a member of a forum for students and although I post fairly rarely, I do read.

What I see are very motivated young people working very hard to reach their goals. These are not students who coast along doing the bare minimum but students who plan, who study, who revise, who read deeply into their chosen subject matter.

I also read their angst, their stress and how much pressure they put themselves under to reach their goals.

I think we do a great disservice to our young people when we talk about the exams they take. A huge amount of these young people do care about their futures and work themselves almost into the ground to get those amazing results. I've also seen the sort of things being covered and whilst there may have been things that were covered in 'O' levels from my day missing, there are also things being included in current day GCSEs that didn't appear until a higher level back in my day.


I can't compare A levels because I never did any, well I did one year of one and then they cancelled the course (a year before AS levels became a thing, how blooming annoying as I had nothing to show for it)


I've had three children go through the system and I will never forget eldest son just before his GCSE results day, he was sitting in a corner so stressed at the outcome, had put his all into his exams, that he was almost catatonic. It's a memory I will never forget, that one moment that will stay with me forever.

I can understand your point of view but what I am hearing from people in education is that because 26.7% of all grades are As and A*s young people feel extra stress and pressure to get those grades because it makes it feel to them that if they don't get an A or an A* then they are failures. If the majority of the grades were Ds and Es and only the exceptional few got an A or an A* say 1% of the total then it would be normal not to get an A* or A. This wouldn't make any difference to the universities because they would just change their entry requirments. What it would do would be to relieve a lot of the stress for young people because then an E would be a good grade that could get you a university place. This grade inflation thing is creating 74% of A level students who reckon that they are failures because they didnt get an A or an A*. The more grade inflation there is the more stress it creates for students to feel that they have to get an A or an A*.



The reason why more people are getting As and A*s is because of political interference with grade boundaries. If the universities ask for more people with As and A*s then the boundary is moved and they get them. The point is though that actually the grade means nothing. The people with the highest grades go to the universities with the highest entry requirements. The entry requirements aren't fixed they can be altered. So if most people got grade C they would still get university places. What it needs is for most people to get grade Es and Ds instead of A*s and As and you would reduce the stress for students overnight if you kept the same marking levels. They would still all get university places but there wouldn't be the level of stress for people thinking that they HAD to get an A or A* to succeed.



The other thing I realised last night that is so unfair on the students taking A levels is because the grades don't now have a standard because they move all the time someone starting an A level course could actually see the A level value reducing while they were still doing the course. Basically any A level grade means nothing because there is no calibration and next year you could get a much higher grade for the same marks and the percentage of students getting each mark could have risen again meaning that the grade is actually meaningless unless it is compared to a university entrance requirement. What this means is that anyone taking A levels who is not going to university has a completely useless qualification because there is nothing to compare it to to give it a standard.



This doesn't reflect real life. Where I do my volunteer job there is a cafe and no one is allowed into the kitchens unless they have a certain hygiene certificate. You can give people higher marks on the certificate but the content has to remain the same or become more difficult because if you reduce the content of the course to make the certificate easier for more people to pass you also raise the risk of customers getting food poisoning from poor kitchen hygiene. For grade inflation you would have to pass people and give them the certificate when they had not learned the complete hygiene rules. When I worked through this implication I realised that the job qualifications from an apprenticeship are more constant in standard than the A levels are.



So if you want to take an exam that has a constant calibrated standard you either have to do Pre U or IB or an apprenticeship and forget A levels.



I would love to know how many state schools give their students a choice of Pre U or IB instead of A levels? Why shouldn't the students have a choice of a more academic exam? They get a choice of doing a vocational course so why not a more academic one as well?