Despotic tyranny ruined my life

[davywavy]

I don't know if you caught this one; A-level Modern History students complaining that their final exam was 'too hard' because it contained the question “How far do you agree that Hitler’s role 1933-45 was one of despotic tyranny?”.
Their complaint isn't about it being a badly worded question despite 'despot' and 'tyrant' being somewhat tautologous, but because they actually didn't know what despot or tyrant actually meant. A facebook group to protest about the question ("Despotic tyranny ruined my life") has over 1,600 members which, when you consider that 6,000 people took the exam, suggests that a quarter or more of 18 year old history students - people with a self-declared interest in the subject, who might want to study history at university and then get a job presenting Time Team - have a vocabulary which didn't include what I would consider fairly basic governmental terms for pretty much the entirety of recorded human history.

I can see them now; the massed ranks of students in the exam hall, pens a-quiver and eager of neuron to display their hard-gained knowledge. Then, the words "Turn your papers over now". A rustling fills the room followed by...silence. There, spitefully inserted into an A-Level history question about Hitler, the word 'Despot'. Their formerly gleaming eyes dull into glazed incomprehension. As one, their mouths fall open like so many fish and thin trickles of drool begin to collect in their laps. Once-pristine knuckles sprout thick hair and slip to rest upon the ground.

I'm hardly the sharpest tool in the box (my academic record speaks for itself in its unremitting mediocrity) but if I hadn't known what a Despot was when I was 18, I wouldn't have joined groups to complain about it; I'd've kept it damn quiet. I'd've been embarrassed. Perhaps I'd've thought that this gap in my knowledge was at least in part my own responsibility. I didn't even study History to that level, and I think there was little chance of my being asked about the despotic tyranny of Hydrogen over the periodic table in my Chemistry final.

I know some of you lot out there are teachers - what the devil? Can you shed any light on this for me?

Updated from cavalorn: Nice to see groups appearing expressing a contrary position.

Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

i was trying to find it a few weeks ago whilst bickering about education with someone, but simply couldn't.

I do remember that the study resulted in one of the school boards in the US (Tennessee or some such place) instituting a programme to send a book a month to every household with children under 12, in the hope that it would improve standards.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

Have you read 'Quirkology'? There's an interesting section in it which looks at children from low-income/education backgrounds who are adopted into high-income/education/high book count families, but still fail. Nurture/nature argument. Makes for interesting reading.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I haven't, but this doesn't surprise me. In return, I'll recommend Stuart Sutherland's "Irrationality", part of which looks into why children of high-acheiving parents tend not to have the same level of acheivement. It's all due to things reverting to the mean, apparently.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

Does it then, conversely, posit that children of low-achieving parents can achieve highly themselves?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That would certainly be a sensible conclusion to reach, although it doesn't say so directly. I'm sure there are plenty of real-world examples of that sort of thing happening.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking specifically about the hang-wringing you see about the place over 'intelligent' people not breeding...

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I think that has always happened - look at Isaac Newton, died a virgin but no slouch intellectually. Smart people tend to have fewer kids as a rule, but that's what sexual reproduction is for - to throw up mutations which produce the next generation of geniusses, wherever they come from.