大象传媒

Forum Editor, can you tell us exactly how much that Porshe Cake cost, please? I would like to know.
Wouldn't you say that the 大象传媒 is now over flamboyantly rich..? Will Steven Smith take a flight to Australia for his physics A-level to see which way the water goes down the plug-hole.
Can he stop pretending he is funny... as I'm as uninterested in his report as he is in his exam. Can you stop this childish c**p please and continue talking about the real world.
When you comment upon the poor taxpayer make sure you cross your damn fingers! The fat-cat of the 大象传媒 is so obvious to all who watches the Television at the moment and it, I'm afraid, angers me more than all you try to acuse on your program.
I thought the Television Licence meant that we weren't supposed to have adverts! but if I see one more repeat of how cheap a 拢50 (拢50!) Digital Radio is!!!! WHAT IS GOING ON!

I also think that the Physics A-Level section of the show is a waste of time. I cannot understand what it is trying to acomplish? It seems to say that Steve Smith can pass an A-Level with minimum work, whilst messing around? I am currently in my final year of a Physics degree. I am sick of hearing the news tell me how much I am 'in demand,' then when I come to find a job, I find that the only sector that is hiring Physicists is the financial sector (with a couple of exceptions). There are lots of people sitting around with rose-tinted spectacles, wishing for the good old days when Britain had all the good ideas and technology; and think that by training a lot of Physics students we will solve this. I think it is more pressing that almost (around 45% I think?) of children do not get a grade C at GCSE Maths. I can think of VERY few jobs that anyone can do without a C in Maths.

On a seperate note:
I am totally sick of people of this forum going on and on and on about the dumbing down of the subjects. They seem to imply that because they grew up in the 60s or 70s they are somehow smarter than students now. They must have come across some scientific research that I am not aware of that says that humans are getting more stupid, and that IQ levels are dropping, that, or they are pompous.
It shouldn't be surpising that most people can answer basic speed-time physics questions.
It shouldn't be suprising that what is covered in an A-level will change from time-to-time, but obviously people pick holes in what is missing, rather than what has been added to the syllabus.
Possibly the worst thing that I have seen on this forum was general scoffing at the usefulness of coursework. This is totally stupid. Personally I think coursewok prepares us much more for the real world, or as an academic. It requires that you produce a report that contains research and your own work to logically and coherently lay out your ideas (much like many people do in their careers, or academics would when producing a scientific paper). Is learning knowledge off-by-heart and cramming for an exam really in the skill-set that employers are looking for? I think not.

Posts 1 and 2 are more intelligent and interesting than the report, by yet another member of the overpaid intellectual class, was.

The demonised practice of working class kids socialising outside shopping centres is more productive for the economy than intellectual claptrap like this is - after all hanging out at the shops is the foundation for a solid and locally based community - what can socially mobile professionals tell us about community or 'local', having destroyed both of theirs in any geographical sense...

.. and yet it won't be long before yet another overpaid 'profession' springs up telling the working class how to be a 'local community'.

Britain has gone seriously down the pan - David Selbourne's book is scarily rational and the list of names given to babies that I heard about on Sky press review last night is very worrying - this phenomenon being the result of ungrounded intellectualism gone mad, sad and bad.

2007 should be the year in which we analyse ourselves - our class cultures and prejudices and white as well as coloured ethnicity instead of continuing to pander to intellectual misconceptions of what is reality. Prejudice against the white working class is in fact a form of racism.

Why not report on the skills required for manual occupations, the value of environmental as opposed to intellectual intelligence (ANS vs. CNS), and the level of dedication that is found equally amongst manual as well as intellectual 'professionals'.

I am currently in my final year of a Physics degree. I am sick of hearing the news tell me how much I am 'in demand,' then when I come to find a job, I find that the only sector that is hiring Physicists is the financial sector (with a couple of exceptions).

It makes you wonder where the government's estimate for Britain needing nearly 3m scientists within 10 years comes from. I'm guessing some department has re-defined "science" jobs to include such technical areas as "Urinal maintenance attendant for public lavatories."

I agree with the other bloggers comments in that I don't really understand the point or aim of this Newsnight feature. Is it supposed to teach us that science is harder to pass than arts subjects? Or that exams have got easier?
As a student in the second year sixth, I agree partially with the line that the splitting up of AS and A2 has made it easier because students are now able to revise in digestable "blocks".
However, the actual content of the exams has actually got harder in recent years. For A Level English Literature, for example, I am expected to learn Hamlet and write about it fluently in an exam, without the play to hand, and including contextual historical and political knowledge. In the past, pupils were actually able to take the text into the exam with them, and hence not required to learn reams of quotations.
As a humanities student, I can't speak for the scientists, but I am sure that they are in the similar situation - bitter journalists damning us students' hard-earned results by criticing the exams as 'watered down.'

Given that Stephen has been effectively thrown into the A Level from the word 'go', I don't think he should be too worried about the mock exam grade. Like most subjects, physics is something you either 'get' or 'don't get' - not really something that people could book-learn easily.
In your situation, Stephen, may I suggest that it's not unfair to have a one on one tuition from someone with an intuition for the subject. It might just give you the 'click' that may unblock your thinking and make everything clear. If not a private tutor, at least get some time alone with the teacher of the class.

What exactly are you trying to prove? That A Level Physics is hard nowadays? Funny how the universities are so concerned with the numbers of Grade A's that they're considering entry exams to try and eliminate the poor performers. Also, by demonstrating that it's a tough subject your not exactly encoraging people to study it. Perhaps if you took a Grade A student from this summer's A Level Physics exam and gave he/she a 1980 paper, it might be an interesting result. You should devote your efforts to showing up the government and the dreadfull state that science and engineering is in in this country. Perhaps if you lobbied the UK government and industry to reward these professions properly you might get more people studying the subject. When I look at the sylabus my son studied at school I fear for young peoples futures and how they're going to compete in an ever tougher world.

so, the bbc has discovered that science exists - good; pity that the newsnight coverage has been boring & trivial !!

with his new found knowledge perhaps he would like to do some real science; so here's a topical qu that he might like to report on.........

"the bbc repeatedly tells us theat the earth will get hotter due tjo global warming & the greenhouse effect. Does that mean it will get hotter and hotter for ever or is there a maximum temp? if so what physical phenomena will be relevant and hhow will they interact?what is the theoretical maximum if there is one? what might happen if you built a greenhouse on the moon?"

i await you arguments with intersest
now, can we have some real, critical scientific comment please

Newsnight is about analysis, and sometimes peering behind the headlines of the movable tabloid feast. I know little about physics, but now have a greater appreciation of what A level students are facing. Arguments about the relevance of what is on the syllabus for future employability or study prospects are different from arguments about whether the exam is harder or easier today as before, or how more or less challenging it is to pass physics than, say economics.

The relevance of natural sciences has stood the test of time. Transitional academic interests, often labelled under humanities, behavoural sciences or business studies have not. It cannot be a bad thing for more students to train to create products and services through invention, engineering or innovation. The country produces enough persons who can measure, control, inspect or otherwise assess the efficiency, effectiveness or economy with which products and services are delivered.

This series is relevant. Parents of kids taking A level physics will appreciate more the intellectual and schoolwork efforts required for success, and thus better support and motivate their offspring, which cannot be a bad thing.

So Newsnight decides to run reports about the lack of science students... and how do they go about doing this, they get someone who hates the subject, who enjoys demostrating his ignorance ("I think they call this a pertractor!") and who basically symbolizes the basic low value that the average man-on-the-street has about the sciences.

If Mr Smith decided to spend his reports demostrating why kids avoid the sciences (because people like him think that science is "uncool"; that being ignorant is better than knowledgeable about science), he has done his job very well.

Maybe they should get Susan Watts to talk furiously about nothing, as a guest, on Newsnight Review?

I couldn't agree more with C Hartman (and others). I remember doing some 1990 maths papers in preparation for my exams in (taken in 2004) and believe me they were a lot more difficult than the more recent papers.

People need to wake up to the dropping standards in British academia.

I love the way the gap between the dates for subsequent comments grow in an exponential way.
That asides, however, I feel that arguments concerning difficulties of past and present exams to be secondary issues. Physics A Levels are simply no longer fit for preparing for further studies. The modern syllabus serves as a good introduction to all the established science, but with the mathematical comoponents taken out of the syllabus, students are not being armed with the necessary prerequisits for real science. Comparing the absolute difficulty of the new portions of the syllabus with the ones left out is irrelevant to the students who want to do more physics, i.e. research, and understand the world.
Another words, current physics A Level is just hard in a wrong way, full stop.

Dumbing down seems to have reached laughable standards of political correctness.When I was at school I was never allowed to play a tambourine but only a pathetic little triangle that made a sort of tinny sound-was that dumbing down?Those who talk about dumbing down never seem to shut up.

I completely agree with T. Jolliffe. If, next summer, there are more headlines about dumming down within our A-Level system, I think the government should round up every journalist in London and make them sit a modern, closed-book A-Level English Literature exam, or perhaps some industrial economic theory; and then see if they are still complaining about exams becoming easier.
Of course we should be concerned about rising or lowering standards within our eduaction system, but this debate must be had in a mature, reponsible context; not as part of a headline grabbing, tabloid diatribe.

To people like post 4, your desire for ignorance is incredibly frustrating. These days you can check that your child is safe by giving him/her a mobile, you can communicate with people all over the world for next to nothing over the internet, you can image for cancer, you can image babies in the womb to check their health, you can lasers correct for terrible eyesight problems, you have more food than you can eat. All of this is due to scientific progress, and it is extremely extremely important to make sure that enough people are trained in ite methods. Ok I agree it has brought problems with nuclear warfare and global warming - but this is also down to our misuse of the powerful tools that science supplies. Overall the working class in the UK is far far better off than it used to be, and all of this is down to scientific progress. So the fact that the number of UK physics students and deparments are falling should worry us all. Do you want to return to the widespread working class poverty, disease, and death of victorian times? And for pete's sake, this discussion has nothing to do with race or religion, so please don't drag your hidden political agendas into a completely different debate.

To people like post 4, your desire for ignorance is incredibly frustrating. These days you can check that your child is safe by giving him/her a mobile, you can communicate with people all over the world for next to nothing over the internet, you can image for cancer, you can image babies in the womb to check their health, you can use lasers to correct for terrible eyesight problems, you have more food than you can eat. All of this is due to scientific progress, and it is extremely extremely important to make sure that enough people are trained in ite methods. Ok I agree it has brought problems with nuclear warfare and global warming - but this is also down to our misuse of the powerful tools that science supplies. Overall the working class in the UK is far far better off than it used to be, and all of this is down to scientific progress. So the fact that the number of UK physics students and deparments are falling should worry us all. Do you want to return to the widespread working class poverty, disease, and death of victorian times? And for pete's sake, this discussion has nothing to do with race or religion, so please don't drag your hidden political agendas into a completely different debate.

Also, the discussion about decaying standards is not a personal insult to the students of today, it is a problem with the way that the system is being run. Current students should not take it as personal slander against them.