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

michaels

Cakeguts wrote: »

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?

I guess unless you knew to adjust for when the exams were taken I would not get onto my uni course if I were to apply now because I don't have any A*s.....

Cakeguts

If they have removed reversing round corners and turning round in the road from the driving test will we have a lot of new drivers going round in circles because they don't know how to turn round safely.

Jackmydad

Cakeguts wrote: »

Its the bit behind her that she doesn't understand. Anything behind the back of the driving seat she doesn't seem to think exists. I don't think reversing into spaces would do much for the car she was reversing towards. Reversing sensors would only help if she could work out where they are as they are on the bit of car that she doesn't seem to understand actually exists. From the way she parks it is clear that she doesn't know that the car has back seats a boot or a bumper behind the driving seat. The parking looks as if she only parks the bonnet and the bit where she is sitting the rest she doesn't know is there so the back always overhangs something if there is something like a drive to overhang.

TBH I find this present car difficult to judge the back. I tend to leave too much room. It's a more or less flat back though as it's a van derived car.
Well that's my excuse anyway.
I manage to park it OK though.

Some people shouldn't drive.

PasturesNew

Cakeguts wrote: »

If they have removed reversing round corners and turning round in the road from the driving test will we have a lot of new drivers going round in circles because they don't know how to turn round safely.

It won't be an issue in the future - few can afford insurance these days, so they'll just get a car and drive without any lessons... so we'll quickly learn to adapt and "spot somebody under 30" from behind and give them a very wide berth.

We'll no longer be able to rely on "must know what they're doing, there's no L plates".

chris_m

Jackmydad wrote: »

"In space, no one can hear you [STRIKE]scream[/STRIKE] kick a football"
I can see why one of your ancestors was the Astronomer Royal!

PSML

Sorry? What was that? I couldn't hear you down the drive here! :rotfl:

Twice :rotfl:

PasturesNew

Jackmydad wrote: »

TBH I find this present car difficult to judge the back. I tend to leave too much room. It's a more or less flat back though as it's a van derived car.
Well that's my excuse anyway.
I manage to park it OK though.

Some people shouldn't drive.

I parked the car, then looked from the driver's seat where the bumper ended.... I can now reverse up to an obstacle/wall to within 2" simply because I know where the bumper in my side mirror should be in relation to any kerbstone/markings in a bay. I have to drive 1' further back than it looks like the bumper is showing.... so without having double-checked from the start I'd have been parking with a huge gap at the back. It's odd to believe that it can go that far back... but it does

My car is 4.1m long, 13' 6" or so, so it's like reversing half a living room.

chris_m

Jackmydad wrote: »

Yes, as you say I can see the point where the fastener is concentric to what it's holding on, but not where the fastenings are off-centre.
I haven't googled it, but I wonder if it's got something to do with history, in as far as horse drawn wagons having a central LH wheelnut on the nearside wheels, and it becoming standard to save confusion?

I suspect that is precisely the reason.

Haven't come across the camera thing, but I can see that there would be places where LH threads would be needed.

I have several where the wind-on thumbwheel moves in a clockwise direction, so the screw securing it to the shaft is left-handed.
Unfortunately I found that out the hard way so, for a while I had one with a loose thumbwheel :mad:

PasturesNew

I've a neighbour who, instead of trying to "drive properly" often goes out of their way to try to do a 3 point turn .... or just gets it wrong reversing out of their spot. Thing is.... sometimes (quite often) they bash into my garden fence. I kind of "snigger" a bit, as only I can see the massive/deeply concreted securing concrete post I had sunk at that point 3+ years ago to prevent the fence flopping about in high winds in the winter. Every time she knocks the fence, it's right where the post is.... one day she'll misjudge it .... and that post will come off best as she's got a dinky car.

Jackmydad

PasturesNew wrote: »

I parked the car, then looked from the driver's seat where the bumper ended.... I can now reverse up to an obstacle/wall to within 2" simply because I know where the bumper in my side mirror should be in relation to any kerbstone/markings in a bay. I have to drive 1' further back than it looks like the bumper is showing.... so without having double-checked from the start I'd have been parking with a huge gap at the back. It's odd to believe that it can go that far back... but it does

My car is 4.1m long, 13' 6" or so, so it's like reversing half a living room.

Not so much a problem if I can see what's behind in the side mirrors, but as most cars are narrower, and "disappear" when you're backing up to them, I find it hard to judge "cold" from the bit of roof i can see. never had any trouble with other vehicles, so it's the tool, not the workman!

chris_m

Jackmydad wrote: »

TBH I find this present car difficult to judge the back. I tend to leave too much room. It's a more or less flat back though as it's a van derived car.
Well that's my excuse anyway.
I manage to park it OK though.

It's strange how car designs make a task easy or hard.

My last car was a Merc A-Class (oi, PN, I've had the PA for that already ) on which I specced a reversing camera because I could see that the rear visibility was awful just from the test drive. The rear screen was a letterbox and the B-pillars were so thick that looking over a shoulder was not a viable option, nor were the door mirrors particularly helpful.

When I changed to the Duster I thought "Hmm, this'll be even worse, being higher up" so I specced a camera again. Strangely, even though the mirrors are smaller than on the A-Class they do the job perfectly. It must be that they are more square (higher but less wide) than on the A-Class and I point them well down so I can see the back wheels (as well as the road behind). I only use the camera now for the final few inches of a reversing move and to ensure that a small person or animal hasn't dived into the blind spot.