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

[pond823.livejournal.com]

It is interesting. I fear the biggest problem we face in the UK is a cultural problem. Teachers are seen as 2nd class. Both my parents were teachers (yes, I'm a cliche, lol), my mother finished her career as the head of one of the top performing infant & junior schools in L.B. of Haringay, no mean feat.

Her life long desire to help people improve themselves meant it was her first and only career choice. She got OU degrees in Astrophysics, Geology, History, Sociology & Literature. My dad became a teacher after being a graphic designer for years and did so, again, because he wanted to give something back. My dad now helps out 3 times a week at an autistic and special needs school, on Broadwater farm council estate, for free and thinks it's the best work he has ever done.

I not as talented as them and yet in on my 30th birthday when I was half the age of my mother, my salary was 5k short theirs combined. Years of running the profession down and the subtle beating of greed into me has meant I too view the profession with distaste. I wish I were less shallow.

So, the think tank missed an important point in my mind and it's step one. Remind Britain that teachers are the life blood of our future and should be held up against the emergency service & doctors.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Not all teachers are seen as second class - a friend of mine is a housemaster at Harrow, and he's seen as anything but second class by his pupils and their parents; then again, I do think that people are more likely to value things they pay for.

That said, the she-David is a Red-Flag waving, internationale-singing pinko and she informs me that on her trips to Cuba she was amazed by the respect with which teachers are held. The description reminds me of an early Victorian print I have somewhere about the place of a schoolmaster (in cape and mortarboard) being bowed to in the street by children and their parents alike.

I think a large part of the problem is that somewhere along the line we've disengaged education from aspiration - as someone says in another comment, kids want to be celebrities and education is often seen as an optional extra. I think there are many reasons for this - target driven (rather than education driven) education, comprehensive education and a lack of options of schools condemning a generation or two of smart, poor kids to a rotten education, plus the unemployment figures (I did a post about this about 3 before this one if you want more details) meaning that for many there is no correlation between going to school and getting paid employment.

I'm sure there are more reasons.

[pond823.livejournal.com]

I think I have another one. I've worked at Endemol, Sky and C4 and while being shut away in the IT team doesn't expose you to everything there, I certainly saw an amazing disconnection in the upper middle class production staff.

They shaped the views, aspirations and morals of a generation and didn't know. They'd complain bitterly about teens today, about all the things we agree are wrong without stopping to consider if they should make yet another Big Brother or talent contest. These are the new teachers and they couldn't care less.

They are surprisingly a lot like the traders I worked with in the city, in utter denial that they should or could have any guiding influence on their social environments. They retreat to fortress Englishman's home is his castle in Surrey but still think the starving peasants outside should have the same value judgments as them. If ever the term Ivory Tower was applicable then it is to them. And these, these were the nice ones. The nasty ones, the ones really climbing to the top, were the wolves that would shoot all the chickens and store them in their great big freezers in Zurich.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder how much of the TV commissioning behaviour is down to the internet and the fracturing of the advertising market; I was watching some Poirot and the old granada Sherlock Holmes over the weekend and I was downright astonished by the production standards; I'd say the only time we see anything of that standard now is in joint productions like ROME.
Big brother is very cheap to make and lots of people watch it, so it's good TV as far as C4 are concerned.