David Cameron is negotiating with Angela Merkel, along the lines of, "Give us everything we want or we won't play with you any more." The threat of independence from the EU after a referendum just might be all the leverage he needs.
Scotland had a vote and decided against independence. Being on your own is quite scary and most people choose company. The Scots are still thinking about it, though. If it wasn't so cold, I might move to Scotland and be independent with them.
Last week, Twitter went mad about a question on the GCSE maths paper about Hannah's sweets. Students ranted. My favourite was from @EthanLinaker98 who wrote, "Hannah eats some sweets. Calculate the circumference of Jupiter using your tracing paper and a rusty spoon (5marks)" This seemed to sum up the question, which appeared to me, to have a lot of extra information in it that wasn't needed.
19. There are n sweets in a bag
6 of the sweets are orange
The rest of the sweets are yellow.
5
Hannah takes at random a sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet.
Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag . She eats the sweet.
The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is 1/3
(a) Show that n^2 - n - 90 = 0
(^= to the power of - there don't seem to be as many characters on Blogger as I would like)
Independently, I set about solving the question. First, I had to spend some time deciding which sweets Hannah had eaten and puzzling over the moral dilemma of whether they were hers to eat in the first place. I decided that they were probably orange and lemon fizzballs and that for the sake of my sanity they were her sweets but the whoever wrote the questions should have made that clear.
I thought, "Well this is a silly question. If they want to test whether they can solve a quadratic equation why don't they just ask them. The answer is ten." The mathematicians out there will know that I am not right and not because the solution to the equation could also be -9 because you can't have -9 sweets, once they are gone they are gone!
I showed my son the question and he explained why I had misinterpreted the question. "It says show that, not solve. They're different things. It's an independence probability question. When Hannah takes the first sweet from the bag the chance of it being orange is 6/n . She eats it so there are 5 orange sweets left. The chance of the second sweet being orange is 5/(n-1). To get the probability of these two independent things you multiply them together. 6/n x 5/n-1. The question tells you that this equals 1/3 and so you just have to re-arrange the equation.
6/n x 5/n-1 = 1/3
6x5/n(n-1) =1/3
30/n(n-1) = 1/3
90/n(n-1) = 1
n^2 - n = 90
n^2 - n-90 =0
Simple."
Oh. I assumed that it was a question where the exam board were trying to catch students out, but no I was just too stupid to understand it.
"It could be worse," said my son, "we could be in Singapore and then Hannah and her sweets would seem easy."
He showed me the question he was talking about.
We spent the evening arguing about it. "It's July the 16th," he told me.
"Who wants to be friends with Cheryl, anyway? What kind of person replies with a list of 10 possible dates when you ask them when their birthday is?" (Actually, I said, "Well Cheryl can f off!" but the sentiment is the same)
"You can eliminate the top two months straight away because Albert and Bernard don't know."
"How do you know Cheryl didn't tell them? She seems like a right pain in the butt that Cheryl."
"Huh? Anyway, the answer is July the 16th."
"It could be August the 17th if Cheryl told Albert that Bernard doesn't know and he didn't deduce it. And anyway the grammar is appalling."
Following these questions appearing on Twitter the world has decided that students are either really thick (like me, obviously) or that questions are too hard. Students on the other hand are having mental breakdowns and finding that since mental health funding has been cut due to austerity their future's are ruined anyway.
Cheltenham Ladies College responded to their students bouts of anxiety by suggesting that they would consider banning homework (or prep, as it is called if you are posh enough to go to Cheltenham Ladies College). They will let the girls meditate instead. Whilst, I am not against meditation, in fact I'm an advocate, I'm not sure this is the way to go.
Homework teaches independent learning, or it should. Several years ago, before all primary schools taught to the test and spoon fed their pupils with the answers I did a music project that took me to all the primary schools in the area. At one private school we were shocked by the sea of blank faces when we asked, "Which of these instruments do you think has the lowest sound?"
Eventually, a boy put his hand up and said, "We haven't been taught that."
"Oh, that's fine but what do you think?"
Still, blank looks.
"Well, which one is bigger?"
They knew that.
"So, do you think the big one has a higher or a lower voice?"
No. They were stumped again, "We haven't been taught about instruments," said the brave boy, rolling his eyes at these stupid adults, who dared to ask them questions that were not on the test.
As I teacher, I still get excited if a pupil goes out of my lesson still singing, or makes their own instrument at home, or starts writing their own songs in the playground. Nobody would ever be a musician without a degree of independence. The solution to children's anxiety has to be to stop expecting that they can all get As. The government needs to stop believing that any child who doesn't get an A is being taught by a bad teacher and teachers and parents need to stop doing everything for their children.
Not allowing children independence keeps the control with the adults. I can see the appeal of this. If I hadn't encouraged independence in my own children then I wouldn't have been a basket-case for the last few days, worrying that my daughter was moving to Slough and my son was rejecting Universities that are too close to home. Both my children would have lived at home forever and I would have been........
No, wait.
I'd have gone crazy. Independence is fantastic. Keep being independent kids.
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