Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies - and a pupil was ragging danish oil onto a wooden
candle holder. Looked quite nice. Did not see any dovetail joints though.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy. There was blowing up hydrogen and colouring bunsen flames with metal
salts.

4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and making
games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies -


Bench hooks?

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

I'm very surprised about the brazing. I'd have thought that they may
be worried about kids burning themselves.. :-) Or rather claims from
parents.


snip

--
Frank Erskine

Frank Erskine wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies -


Bench hooks?

Must be - I never knew the name for them.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

I'm very surprised about the brazing. I'd have thought that they may
be worried about kids burning themselves.. :-) Or rather claims from
parents.

I think the H&S may be a media hype-up. There was a 4-5th former ragging on
danish oil - no gloves (not saying you'd need gloves, but the H&S...)

Chemistry - in the experiment where you add magnesium to HCl to make H2,
then light it, again probably a 3-4th form girl happily holding the test
tube with bare hands whilst adding dilute HCl. Not much wrong with that, but
an H&S freak would have had tongs out.

Bunsens everywhere and the only PPE were the standard issue goggles.

Seemed all very familiar, except for the lack of asbestos mats!

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...
Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies - and a pupil was ragging danish oil onto a wooden
candle holder. Looked quite nice. Did not see any dovetail joints though.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy. There was blowing up hydrogen and colouring bunsen flames with
metal
salts.

4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and
making
games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

Brian Gaff wrote:

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

On 11/10/2012 21:23, Tim Watts wrote:
Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies - and a pupil was ragging danish oil onto a wooden
candle holder. Looked quite nice. Did not see any dovetail joints though.

Wandering round our eldest prospective school last year, they proudly
introduced the "woodwork room". Took me a while to work out that was
what it was! (several powered fret saws, but no table saw, planer,
thicknesser etc). Still it is a girls school....

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

That will presumably be a baccalaureate by the time it matters?

3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy. There was blowing up hydrogen and colouring bunsen flames with metal
salts.


4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and making
games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

Lots of the schools seem to use a games maker package, which is not a
bad approximation of writing even driven GUI stuff.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

Just not in the kitchen one hopes -)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 11/10/2012 22:03, Frank Erskine wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies -


Bench hooks?

No, its true....



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 11/10/2012 22:50, Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

They did in mine - but the the blood thirsty members of the group would
never have let the teacher get away with not having something to dissect...

One of our class went and got a surgical needle and thread from the
matron and then proceeded to try and put one back together again ;-))


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 11/10/2012 21:23, Tim Watts wrote:
Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies - and a pupil was ragging danish oil onto a wooden
candle holder. Looked quite nice. Did not see any dovetail joints though.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

*The lathe!!!* Would that be the ubiquitous and tiny Emco? My secondary
school was small (just over 500 pupils) and was a grammar school and
therefore biased towards academic subjects, but we still had the following:

Woodworking room:

2 pillar drills
3 woodworking lathes - two fitted with sanding disks and tables on the
back of the head
1 circular saw
handtools

Metalworking room:

1 forge
1 anvil
1 furnace (suitable for casting aluminium)
1 oxyacetylene set
handtools

Engineering workshop:

3 drawing boards
1 power hacksaw
1 shaper
1 surface grinder
1 horizontal miller
4 lathes (three 10" swing and a 14" IIRC [more with the gap bed])
handtools

As it happened, I also had access to a pillar drill, lathe (Raglan
Little-John Mk2) and jig-borer (small vertical miller), drawing board,
Autocad 2.6 and an A3 HP plotter at home.

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

When designing our conservatory last year, I had a complicated bit with
a roof slope and an angled wall (to satisfy the council over sightlines)
and, although I can't remember why now, I actually solved a quadratic
equation for the first time in real life!

3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy.

I remember the cathode ray tube - 3500V, tube provided with connections
in the form of male banana plugs sealed into the glass - hence connected
with two rear stacking plugs, leaving two metal points sticking out with
3500V across them - 2 feet from someone conducting a water based experiment!

There was blowing up hydrogen

Oxy-acetylene was more fun. Ammonium Tri-Iodide was best!

and colouring bunsen flames with metal salts.

Someone accidentally setting fire to the curtains while using a bunsen
on the side bench was a highlight for us. Curtains in a lab did seem a
bit ridiculous, but I suppose they were necessary for the projector.

4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and making
games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

Back when I did computer studies, the teacher marked your O-level
project, which was then sent off for "adjustment" by the exam board. I
think I gained many extra marks when the teacher couldn't understand the
elegant loops and conditionals of Sinclair SuperBasic on the QL when the
school only used BBC model Bs! I later "sold" my O-level project to QL
World magazine and used the money to but one of those new-fangled CD
players.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

We only ever got lungs and hearts from the local butcher, but maybe if
I'd continued Biology after the second year?

On 11/10/2012 22:11, Tim Watts wrote:
Frank Erskine wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies -


Bench hooks?

Must be - I never knew the name for them.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

I'm very surprised about the brazing. I'd have thought that they may
be worried about kids burning themselves.. :-) Or rather claims from
parents.

I think the H&S may be a media hype-up. There was a 4-5th former ragging on
danish oil - no gloves (not saying you'd need gloves, but the H&S...)

Chemistry - in the experiment where you add magnesium to HCl to make H2,
then light it, again probably a 3-4th form girl happily holding the test
tube with bare hands whilst adding dilute HCl. Not much wrong with that, but
an H&S freak would have had tongs out.

I wonder what they would have made of distilling tear gas? I spent a
lower 6th lesson in the Junior Chemi lab while the upper 6th were doing
this and it all drifted through the connecting prep room.

Or Lassaigne’s test. The first part of which involves fusing a small
amount of organic substance with small quantity of sodium metal in a
fusion tube. The red hot fusion tube is then plunged into distilled water.

One teacher did a demonstration that produced a solid block a foot high
and caused the evacuation of half the school as the South block filled
with Iodine gas!

Bunsens everywhere and the only PPE were the standard issue goggles.

Seemed all very familiar, except for the lack of asbestos mats!

Concentrated acids in the fume cupboards and depressions in every wooden
sink cover where pupils had borrowed a bottle to try and eat through it?

SteveW

Andy Burns wrote:

Brian Gaff wrote:

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

They did in our A-Level (which I did not personally take) - mid-80's...

Vacuum packed and pre-dedded for extra freshness - saw a pile of them on the
teacher's desk ready for the afternoon double lesson.


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:11:27 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Frank Erskine wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies -


Bench hooks?

Must be - I never knew the name for them.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

I'm very surprised about the brazing. I'd have thought that they may
be worried about kids burning themselves.. :-) Or rather claims from
parents.

I think the H&S may be a media hype-up. There was a 4-5th former ragging on
danish oil - no gloves (not saying you'd need gloves, but the H&S...)

Chemistry - in the experiment where you add magnesium to HCl to make H2,
then light it, again probably a 3-4th form girl happily holding the test
tube with bare hands whilst adding dilute HCl. Not much wrong with that, but
an H&S freak would have had tongs out.

I'm really pleasantly surprised, Back in the dark ages (60s) we did
proper soldering (hatchet-type irons, killed spirits et. al.), case
hardening, blacksmith-type forge work, moulding, brazing, lathe work,
scraping (engineer's blue and all that). AND in woodwork we had to use
glue from a double-wall kettle at the insistence of "Basher" Bates.

That was a grammar-technical school.

--
Frank Erskine

SteveW wrote:
think I gained many extra marks when the teacher couldn't understand the
elegant loops and conditionals of Sinclair SuperBasic on the QL when the
school only used BBC model Bs!

The elegant loops and conditionals of QL Basic actually exist in
BBC BASIC. Probably the teachers had never progressed beyond doing
anything other than MS-Basic-clone-compatible programming on the Beebs.

JGH

Tim Watts wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

Don't they have to call it "Resistant Materials" these days?

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.

On Oct 11, 10:50*pm, Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:
Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

It was O-level in the late 70's, at least with the exam board used by
my school.

MBQ

On Oct 11, 9:23*pm, Tim Watts wrote:
Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

1) *They still do proper woodwork and metalwork (sort of).

There was a proper room with wooden tables, vices and those little dog-
legged wooden thingies - and a pupil was ragging danish oil onto a wooden
candle holder. Looked quite nice. Did not see any dovetail joints though.

Laser cutting, CNC and vac forming are the order of the day at the
local grammar. You can produce some very nice marquetry with a laser
cutter, but I suppose it's cheating.

I asked the teacher of they still did proper metalwork - brazing, lathes
etc. He said yes to brazing and he was trying to get the lathe fixed so he
could start teaching with it again.

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

The more stats the better, they should especially teach how to see
through all the phoney science stories in the press these days.

MBQ

On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 01:40:44 -0700 (PDT) Man at B&Q wrote :
Brian Gaff wrote:
Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

It was O-level in the late 70's, at least with the exam board used
by
my school.

I'm not sure if we dissected any for O-levels, but A-level students
had to dissect rabbits (this would be 1970ish)

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com

On 12/10/12 09:40, Man at B&Q wrote:
On Oct 11, 10:50 pm, Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:
Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

It was O-level in the late 70's, at least with the exam board used by
my school.

MBQ

I remember the flayed skin of a lab rat being pinned to the underside of
my desk lid when I was in the upper fourth in 1956. I didn't do Biology
but the other *******s did. I seem to remember behaving with
considerable sang-froid...

Another Dave

On 12/10/2012 09:40, Man at B&Q wrote:
On Oct 11, 10:50 pm, Andy Burns wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:
Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

It was O-level in the late 70's, at least with the exam board used by
my school.

We did it on our O level course (early 80s)... not sure if it was
actually a requirement or not though.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 12/10/2012 12:43, Another Dave wrote:
I remember the flayed skin of a lab rat being pinned to the underside of
my desk lid when I was in the upper fourth in 1956. I didn't do Biology
but the other *******s did. I seem to remember behaving with
considerable sang-froid...

You've reminded me of the parasitology course at uni.

I suppose it was kind of cruel to discuss what kind of worms you get
from cattle over a beef curry... but we desisted, when we realised that
some of our table-mates weren't on the course

Andy

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level? I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy. There was blowing up hydrogen and colouring bunsen flames with metal
salts.

There is more emphasis on 'fun' in science nowadays.

4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and making
games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

It was really awful until very recently. No programming at all. It
seemed to be based around using Microsoft Office. At last they're
starting to add some useful stuff to the curriculum, but it's not
Computer Studies.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

Yep.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

In article ,
Huge wrote:
Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

It's a very long time ago I was at school, and in Scotland. Calculus was
part of the higher, not lower, curriculum for maths. 'Lowers' were quite
similar to O level, 'Highers' slightly below A level.

--
*If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Huge wrote:
On 2012-10-15, Mark wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

Since I went on the do biochemistry at Uni, stats were about all I needed
from my Maths 'A' Levels.

I needed calculus for physiology - the element referred to as "physical
physiology" which surprisingly enough was the application of physics to
physiology. Nerves treated as transmission lines and the physical and
engineering characteristics of bone, sinew, muscle. I can recall one
lecture on skeletal structures of large animals which required treating the
spine as an arched bridge and the belly as a suspension bridge. Calculus
needed there.

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.

Used to catch the teachers out regularly. Worst of the lot was one of the
maths teachers. She had learned by rote and frequently made howlers that
one could taunt her with. I realised, as with newspapers, that if she got
90% of what I knew wrong the same ratio must apply to everything she
taught.


--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/

Mark wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level? I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

Yes, calculus was part of JMB 'O' level, can't speak for other exam boards
but it was taught and formed part of the examination that I took.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/

On 15/10/2012 11:16, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Huge wrote:
Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

It's a very long time ago I was at school, and in Scotland. Calculus was
part of the higher, not lower, curriculum for maths. 'Lowers' were quite
similar to O level, 'Highers' slightly below A level.


At our school (University of London syllabus and exam board), the A
stream took Maths O-level a year early and Additional Maths along with
all the others in the 5th year. I'm pretty certain that included
calculus. That would be 1969.

http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/...hs/pastpapers/

- includes calculus questions.
--
Reentrant

Huge wrote:
On 2012-10-15, Mark wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college (secondary)
as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...
Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

Since I went on the do biochemistry at Uni, stats were about all I needed
from my Maths 'A' Levels.

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.

The other problem being that the useful 10% is not the same for all
students.

I was told that the main purpose of school (And, later in life, college
or university) was to teach the student basic skills in reading,
communicating and how to learn, and that all else was window dressing.
Exams were to prove that the students had learnt and memorised what was
necessary to pass the examination.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Mark wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level? I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

It *might* have been AO which I took - but the main point is, I asked about
Additional Maths GCSE (or equiv of AO) and the guy said they did not have
such an offering.



3) Science was fun. They still do the van de Graaf hair-on-end trick - in
fact my son (6) got done and rather enjoyed being Electro-Man and zapping
daddy. There was blowing up hydrogen and colouring bunsen flames with
metal salts.

There is more emphasis on 'fun' in science nowadays.

4) ICT is slightly better than the worst case I imagined. No hard-assed
programming, but they do teach Scratch (sort of GUI programming) and
making games with it. Some web skills, Dreamweaver.

It was really awful until very recently. No programming at all. It
seemed to be based around using Microsoft Office. At last they're
starting to add some useful stuff to the curriculum, but it's not
Computer Studies.

5) They still chop rats up :-o

Yep.
--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent
moral busybodies."

Huge wrote:

On 2012-10-15, Mark wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

Since I went on the do biochemistry at Uni, stats were about all I needed
from my Maths 'A' Levels.

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



Exactly - and calculus still occasionally comes in handy. But not as handy
as 3D trig which I was calculating bits of my roof the other day... I do
hope they still do that!


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing CompSci
at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer any computer
studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing very well at
Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

So it is important that schools offer a good grounding in a wide range of
subjects as you do not know what you're good at until you've tried a little
of each


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

On 15/10/12 11:07, Huge wrote:
On 2012-10-15, Mark wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level?

I'm pretty sure not. And I did 'O' Level Maths in, err, 1970. And IIRC, I
never did matrices at all, despite doing 'A' Level Maths. Either that,
or they didn't sink in. I don't recall ever needing to know about them
until last week, when I was reading about SHA3.

I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.


I did O'level maths in 1971 and I remember doing calculus then. Not that
I really understood it. As I was doing 'arty' A levels
(English,History,Geography) I also did O'level statistics in 1972. The
schools concession to the notion of a rounded education; not that they
would let me combine chemistry A'level with geography and english, that
would be "pulling in two directions" apparently. Well I've been doing
that ever since, and that O'level stats is about the only maths I've
ever made use of. Matrices, I'd never heard of until I did a computing
MSc 25 years later.


--
djc

On 15/10/12 12:20, John Williamson wrote:
Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.

The other problem being that the useful 10% is not the same for all
students.

And what was useful when your teachers were at school, is probably not
so useful when they teach it to you.

I once worked with a Biology graduate, who became a teacher, and then
moved into computing when he realised that he was teaching the same
stuff that his teachers had taught and much of it was obsolete even then.


--
djc

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:17:26 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing CompSci
at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer any computer
studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing very well at
Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

I left school at 16 for this reason (no computer studies, well no
computers at all) and did Maths, Physics + Electronics and Further
Maths A level, alongside CS O level at a technical college. I'm sure
some of the teaching wasn't quite as good there (although some was
excellent) but I preferred the college atmosphere over that at school.

So it is important that schools offer a good grounding in a wide range of
subjects as you do not know what you're good at until you've tried a little
of each

Agreed.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:13:32 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Mark wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:23:40 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Well - just been up the road to see the local community college
(secondary) as they had an open day and it's 2 roads away.

The good news and the bad news:

2) GCSE Maths is gay. No calculus and no matrices. 1/4 stats for some
reason...

Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level? I first did
calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.

It *might* have been AO which I took - but the main point is, I asked about
Additional Maths GCSE (or equiv of AO) and the guy said they did not have
such an offering.

That's a shame for those students. I know it is available at my local
secondary school.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

Huge wrote:

On 2012-10-15, Tim Watts wrote:
Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



Exactly - and calculus still occasionally comes in handy. But not as
handy as 3D trig which I was calculating bits of my roof the other day...
I do hope they still do that!

One of my friends once asked me if I could calculate the length of a weld
required to fasten together two pipes of different different diameters,
welded together at a given angle. (He wanted to quote for NDT on North
Sea oil rigs.)

Sadly, my answer was "no". I wouldn't even know how to go about such a
thing.



Intersection of two cylinders - no, we did not do that specifically either.

Projecting an ellipse onto the side of the other cylinder seems like a
start.


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://www.dionic.net/tim/

"It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent
moral busybodies."

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:17:26 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing
CompSci at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer any
computer studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing very
well at Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

Same for me, in my case electronics. But then it was the nearest thing to
CS in my day!

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:38:21 +0100, Mark wrote:

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:17:26 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Huge wrote:

90% of what they teach you at school is useless crap. The problem is
that you have no way of knowing which 90% it is.



I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing
CompSci at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer any
computer studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing very
well at Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

I left school at 16 for this reason (no computer studies, well no
computers at all) and did Maths, Physics + Electronics and Further Maths
A level, alongside CS O level at a technical college. I'm sure some of
the teaching wasn't quite as good there (although some was excellent)
but I preferred the college atmosphere over that at school.

These day, leave school and do the BTEC Extended Diploma. Excellent
content (if you do the maths unit you even get matrices!) and a good
chance of getting an AAA equivalent.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 15/10/2012 13:17, Tim Watts wrote:
I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing CompSci
at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer any computer
studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing very well at
Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

So it is important that schools offer a good grounding in a wide range of
subjects as you do not know what you're good at until you've tried a little
of each

s/physics/biology/

+1

Mind, my son did CompSci, and is now working in the business. I'm
pleased though that I advised him to do maths for A level... he said it
was a good move, Bob can tell you if it was.

Andy

On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:03:31 +0100, Andy Champ wrote:

On 15/10/2012 13:17, Tim Watts wrote:
I will add that one of the biggest cockups in my life was not doing
CompSci at Uni - but doing physics instead. Our school did not offer
any computer studies course at O-Level, or A-Level, so as I was doing
very well at Physics A Level, I did that instead. Which was a disaster.

So it is important that schools offer a good grounding in a wide range
of subjects as you do not know what you're good at until you've tried a
little of each

s/physics/biology/

+1

Mind, my son did CompSci, and is now working in the business. I'm
pleased though that I advised him to do maths for A level... he said it
was a good move, Bob can tell you if it was.

It makes life easier, but A level maths is so variable these days that we
just ask for GCSE maths at a reasonable level (= C). We do the rest
ourselves.


--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

In article ,
Andy Burns writes:
Brian Gaff wrote:

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

Maybe a case of whatever comes to hand...

We did earth worms, mice, frogs, and bulls-eyes for O-level,
and watched the teacher do a pig's head, having first cut through
it vertically with a bandsaw in the woodwork building. About half
way through, some bit slid out and landed with a plop on the bench
as he held it up for people at the back to see. This was followed
by a loud crash from the back. We all turned around to see the
class bully had fainted and was out for the count on the stone
floor of the biology lab. I'll bet everyone in the class still
remembers that to this day.

I don't recall any practical in the O-level biology exam though;
it was only in the classwork (which didn't count towards your
exam grade in my day).

I recall seeing larger things being chopped up for A-level, but I
didn't do A-level biology (you could only do 3 A-levels in my day).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Andy Burns writes:
Brian Gaff wrote:

Well they never chopped up rats in my day.

Nor mine, that was A-level bio.

Maybe a case of whatever comes to hand...

We did earth worms, mice, frogs, and bulls-eyes for O-level,
and watched the teacher do a pig's head, having first cut through
it vertically with a bandsaw in the woodwork building. About half
way through, some bit slid out and landed with a plop on the bench
as he held it up for people at the back to see. This was followed
by a loud crash from the back. We all turned around to see the
class bully had fainted and was out for the count on the stone
floor of the biology lab. I'll bet everyone in the class still
remembers that to this day.

I don't recall any practical in the O-level biology exam though;
it was only in the classwork (which didn't count towards your
exam grade in my day).

I recall seeing larger things being chopped up for A-level, but I
didn't do A-level biology (you could only do 3 A-levels in my day).

We could do 4 A-levels but one of them had to be General Studies.


--
Adam