- Joined
- Aug 19, 2008
- Messages
- 38,563
- Points
- 113
https://www.facebook.com/shiaoyin/posts/10159551476895313?pnref=story
(From Nominated MP)
The A level General Paper exams have just happened. These are the questions they asked our 18 year olds to answer two days ago.
I was struck that question 4 on the balance between rehabilitation and punishment in our justice system was central to the motion we debated in Parliament this year. Every MP who spoke was essentially delivering their “GP essay” answer to question 4 to the house.
I was at first unsure myself whether I could add anything to that particular debate since I had limited experience in the legal or rehab sector.
What did I know, right?
I only chose to speak when I realised what I did know - which was quite a few ex-offenders and people involved in organisations and ministries supporting ex-offenders.
What I myself knew may have been little but what they knew was so much more. So I found my points, my examples, my introduction, my conclusion and, indeed, my voice for the debate through listening and talking to them.
When I was 18, I’d look at the big GP exam questions and think,”How the heck do they expect me to know all that? What do I know about the world? Nobody prepared me for this!” (I’d always just pick the media and entertainment questions because I lived so much on pop culture.)
Now, I find it funny to think that even at 40, I still think those questions from time to time. Except it’s scarier because stakes are real. It’s not an exam anymore. It’s actual life. And even if I don’t know, I have to find a way to know.
And you realise what your best teachers had been trying to tell you all along was true: there isn’t a model essay, nobody really knows the perfect answers to hard issues and you just have to do your own research, find your own voice, take a stand on your own values, just craft the best answer that you currently know and prepare to concede that your answer is still but one way of looking at the issue.
Someone will put a grade on your answer and you have to figure out what to make of that grade and whether you’ll let that grade increase or decrease your conviction and courage to keep putting your own answers to hard questions out there.
How would your 18 year old self have known which questions would end up mattering most to your 28, 38, 48, 58 year old self? You wouldn’t but it’s important to realise they eventually will.
At 18, it could be difficult to see the real life stakes behind what appears to be just another question on an exam paper that you can throw away at the end of two hours.
The real life questions of course can live on for years, decades, even centuries as long as a gap yawns between how we think things should be and how we see things really are.
It would have been bizarre to imagine that behind each question lay a whole ecosystem of real people with real pains and real passions, struggling to find some real answers in an all too real world.
It’s hard to understand that each question was only born because of a breakdown in our systems.
When everything is going well, we don’t ask questions. Questions don’t exist. Or we think they don’t exist. But when everything starts going wrong or going wildly different from what we expect, our mind starts going wild with queries.
That's one of the hardest things to teach a kid in this subject. That the questions matter. That our answers to those questions actually matter. That our lived and breathed answers will impact someone's life way beyond the exam hall. And only someday much later down the road of adult life, we'll realise what all this means.
You could be in your 20s to 40s now. You've seen life a bit, seen the impact of what happens in the world when people actually live out their answers not as essays in an exam hall but policies they craft, products they buy, leaders they support, life choices they make.
If you were to challenge yourself - as our 18 year olds had to - to sit down in a limited time frame and write your own answers to the question that matters most to you, which would you pick?
Which question would you have avoided as an 18 year old thinking “Boring! Who cares!” and now see anew as an adult with a fresh perspective and a personal stake?
I think it would be fascinating and important to let the kids see GP essays written by real adults with real stakes and real examples.
Even better yet, maybe we should start teaching GP by bringing them to meet the real people involved in real issues and discover their points, their examples and their voice by listening to the ones in the trenches.
2017 Hard Questions
(aka General Paper exam 2017)
1. The past is not dead. It’s not even past. Discuss.
2. Can the use of animals for scientific reasons ever be justified?
3. In your society, to what extent is it acceptable for public money to be used in the acquisition of works of art?
4. Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the purpose of the justice system. Discuss
5. Is regulation of the press desirable?
6. Do events, rather than politicians, shape the future?
7. How far is science fiction becoming fact?
8. Examine the role of music in establishing a national identity in your society.
9. To what extent are people judged more by their physical appearances than by their abilities?
10. Practical ability is just as important as intellectual skills. How far is this true in your society?
11. Assess the view that attempts to control climate change can never be truly effective.
12. The quality of written language is being destroyed by social media. What is your view?
(From Nominated MP)
The A level General Paper exams have just happened. These are the questions they asked our 18 year olds to answer two days ago.
I was struck that question 4 on the balance between rehabilitation and punishment in our justice system was central to the motion we debated in Parliament this year. Every MP who spoke was essentially delivering their “GP essay” answer to question 4 to the house.
I was at first unsure myself whether I could add anything to that particular debate since I had limited experience in the legal or rehab sector.
What did I know, right?
I only chose to speak when I realised what I did know - which was quite a few ex-offenders and people involved in organisations and ministries supporting ex-offenders.
What I myself knew may have been little but what they knew was so much more. So I found my points, my examples, my introduction, my conclusion and, indeed, my voice for the debate through listening and talking to them.
When I was 18, I’d look at the big GP exam questions and think,”How the heck do they expect me to know all that? What do I know about the world? Nobody prepared me for this!” (I’d always just pick the media and entertainment questions because I lived so much on pop culture.)
Now, I find it funny to think that even at 40, I still think those questions from time to time. Except it’s scarier because stakes are real. It’s not an exam anymore. It’s actual life. And even if I don’t know, I have to find a way to know.
And you realise what your best teachers had been trying to tell you all along was true: there isn’t a model essay, nobody really knows the perfect answers to hard issues and you just have to do your own research, find your own voice, take a stand on your own values, just craft the best answer that you currently know and prepare to concede that your answer is still but one way of looking at the issue.
Someone will put a grade on your answer and you have to figure out what to make of that grade and whether you’ll let that grade increase or decrease your conviction and courage to keep putting your own answers to hard questions out there.
How would your 18 year old self have known which questions would end up mattering most to your 28, 38, 48, 58 year old self? You wouldn’t but it’s important to realise they eventually will.
At 18, it could be difficult to see the real life stakes behind what appears to be just another question on an exam paper that you can throw away at the end of two hours.
The real life questions of course can live on for years, decades, even centuries as long as a gap yawns between how we think things should be and how we see things really are.
It would have been bizarre to imagine that behind each question lay a whole ecosystem of real people with real pains and real passions, struggling to find some real answers in an all too real world.
It’s hard to understand that each question was only born because of a breakdown in our systems.
When everything is going well, we don’t ask questions. Questions don’t exist. Or we think they don’t exist. But when everything starts going wrong or going wildly different from what we expect, our mind starts going wild with queries.
That's one of the hardest things to teach a kid in this subject. That the questions matter. That our answers to those questions actually matter. That our lived and breathed answers will impact someone's life way beyond the exam hall. And only someday much later down the road of adult life, we'll realise what all this means.
You could be in your 20s to 40s now. You've seen life a bit, seen the impact of what happens in the world when people actually live out their answers not as essays in an exam hall but policies they craft, products they buy, leaders they support, life choices they make.
If you were to challenge yourself - as our 18 year olds had to - to sit down in a limited time frame and write your own answers to the question that matters most to you, which would you pick?
Which question would you have avoided as an 18 year old thinking “Boring! Who cares!” and now see anew as an adult with a fresh perspective and a personal stake?
I think it would be fascinating and important to let the kids see GP essays written by real adults with real stakes and real examples.
Even better yet, maybe we should start teaching GP by bringing them to meet the real people involved in real issues and discover their points, their examples and their voice by listening to the ones in the trenches.
2017 Hard Questions
(aka General Paper exam 2017)
1. The past is not dead. It’s not even past. Discuss.
2. Can the use of animals for scientific reasons ever be justified?
3. In your society, to what extent is it acceptable for public money to be used in the acquisition of works of art?
4. Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the purpose of the justice system. Discuss
5. Is regulation of the press desirable?
6. Do events, rather than politicians, shape the future?
7. How far is science fiction becoming fact?
8. Examine the role of music in establishing a national identity in your society.
9. To what extent are people judged more by their physical appearances than by their abilities?
10. Practical ability is just as important as intellectual skills. How far is this true in your society?
11. Assess the view that attempts to control climate change can never be truly effective.
12. The quality of written language is being destroyed by social media. What is your view?
