We got to watch a rabbit being dissected, but not given a rabbit each.
It didn't come in a vac-pack either, the farm boys who went shooting were expected to bring them in.
IIRC O-Level biol was dissecting bullocks' eyes and watching Sharon's hamster gasping under a bell jar.
Owain
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
Has calculus ever been taught at O or GCSE level? I first did calculous at AO. And stats are very useful.
There is more emphasis on 'fun' in science nowadays.
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.
Yep.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually I now realise I'm wrong - there was maths involved in fermenter population dynamics (and likely in lots of other places - mathematicians keep trying to tell us that everything's maths underneath...) Indeed, I wrote a simulator for a continuous fermenter where one bacterium grew on the nutrient medium and produced a waste product that a second bacterium grew on. I could never get it to work properly, which I thought was because I was a crap FORTRAN programmer (although I *am* a crap FORTRAN programmer!), but I realised years later that it's a chaotic system.
That's a different point. What I meant was that 90% of what they teach you is correct, but has no relevance. It's not until years later that you suddenly realise "*that's* what they were on about." I heard a guy on the radio talking about this - he thought Pythagoras's theorem was pointless - until he got a job as a scaffolder.
It's all so long ago ... :o(
Hmm. I did Additional Maths after the first year of 6th Form. Ghod knows why. I effing hated Maths at school.
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.
Err, that's what I just said. Or, at least, that's what I meant.
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.
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!
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
Agreed.
That's a shame for those students. I know it is available at my local secondary school.
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