[HPFGU-Movie] UK Schooling/Comic Relief

Sat Mar 15 16:17:26 UTC 2003

At 15:13 15/03/03 , Susan Atherton wrote:

<snip Comic Relief comments>

>Btw, I'd put five galleons on that Richard has taped the CR HP thing and 
>is about to stick it on his website ;) that's not a hint if you haven't, 
>but it sounds so you!

You owe me five Galleons. :-) I suggest you (and any other interested 
parties who haven't already done so) take a look at the OT-Chatter list, 
where I and a few others talked about the spoof last night.

I started my comments by saying that I *won't* be posting a clip, because 
my video capture equipment isn't working. :-) Incidentally, I'm not 
particularly bothered about making it work - the bandwidth requirements for 
the tens of thousands of non-Brits who will want to see that thing would 
probably kill my server. When I posted a clip of Dan Radcliffe's acceptance 
speech at the Variety Club awards last year (and that was 3 minutes as 
opposed to 20 minutes for this), the server just gave up and died during 
the second day. It's simply not designed for that kind of traffic. If I 
could be guaranteed that people would stagger their interest and keep it at 
reasonable levels over a period of say, a month, then I'd do it, but I know 
for a fact that if I post it today, then by midnight the server will have 
crashed from the pressure.

On the subject of holiday homework, Susan disagreed with my comment that 
kids aren't generally given homework over the holidays:

>I must beg to differ, Richard. Since I just got out of the school system, 
>I regret to inform you that sadly, today's teachers are manic on homework :(
>
>Actually, this could be due to me attending a grammar school when I was in 
>high school, but we certainly had a fair whack of homework during the half 
>terms and end of terms (terms=semesters; half term=one week break about 
>half way through; end of term=two or three week break at Christmas and 
>Easter), usually revising for tests or coursework and the like.

Ahh... But you appear to have misunderstood the question. :-) At issue was 
homework over the *summer* holidays, which you appear to accept doesn't 
happen on the whole for the (real world) general pupil population. The 
thing is that during the short (Christmas/Easter) breaks at Hogwarts, they 
do *not* get homework (viz. comments between Ron and Hermione during 
Christmas break in CoS), whereas real-world kids do. I did too, as a matter 
of fact. When replying to the original post, I started going on about the 
short breaks but cut the lot out because it wasn't directly relevant.

 From what you say, other than GCSE and A Level preparations, you didn't 
have homework set during summer holidays, whilst Hogwarts pupils are. 
Which, again, is the comparison I was making to my own experiences.

You also had mocks prior to your GCSEs (as we all did) but it seems that 
Hogwarts doesn't. At least there's not been any reference to them thus far, 
and the Trio would have started to become aware of them by this stage, if 
the exams are only a few months into the new school year.

<snip Susan's personal experiences of GCSEs and A Levels>

>JKR is more or less following the British school system (which, as an 
>ex-teacher I imagine she knows a fair bit about) and they should really be 
>doing coursework. I'd love to see Harry writing a detailed essay about 
>Divination ;) In GCSE, you have to do coursework in each of your nine 
>subjects. Ditto A Level with each of the four/three.

Small point of precision here. JKR's teaching experience was in teaching 
English abroad, and then as a second language after her return to the UK. 
She was in the middle of preparing for UK teaching qualifications when the 
HP bandwagon started so she never actually got around to teaching in 
British schools. The advent of coursework counting towards GCSEs is a very 
recent innovation, introduced by the Labour government (or did the Tories 
*just* get it in before they were kicked out in 1997?).

The point of all of that is that JKR wouldn't have *personal* experience of 
the importance of coursework, and she'd never got around to it as a teacher 
before giving up on teaching and becoming a full-time writer. In any case, 
some of the details around the OWLs (if only their name) hark back to O 
Levels rather than GCSEs, which were 100% exam-based.

Incidentally, I'm getting a sense of deja-vu here, because this subject is 
also currently going on over on the main list... Some of the non-Brits who 
read both lists are probably getting all of this in stereo. ;-)

>Obviously, there are certain exceptions - Law, Medicine, and the like are 
>obviously specialised degrees that will require post-grad degrees in law 
>school or medical school, with the obvious eventual goal to become a 
>lawyer or doctor.

Just as a point of precision, as it happens, the vast majority of lawyers 
do NOT have a law degree. I've worked for three legal practices in my time, 
so take it from me. :-) Possessing *a* degree is a required entry 
qualification for law schools, and the only difference is that those with 
degrees in Law get to skip the first year of law school. Law schools issue 
professional rather than academic qualifications.

I count among my personal friends probably 30 lawyers; of those, only two 
have law degrees; the rest have degrees in a variety of subjects including 
various languages, history, archeology, history, politics, etc. Not 
surprisingly, the ones with the Law degrees are the better legal analysts, 
while those with other degrees are better negotiators and face-to-face 
communicators.

<snip Susan's recollections of years 9-10 curriculum>

There's a simpler way of putting that. :-) The fact of the matter is that 
it is a legal requirement to follow the full school curriculum until Year 
11 regardless of the choices of GCSEs. As I said on the main list, this has 
the effect that even if one realises that one made the wrong pre-selections 
during the previous year, as long as one has the coursework credits, one 
can decide to sit the GCSE exam in any other subject. Back in the O Level 
days, things were even simpler, because there was no coursework, so to all 
practical intents and purposes, the final selection wasn't truly made until 
about 3 months before the exams (by which time the final selections had to 
be made for exam scheduling purposes).

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who has just realised that if he's done his 
calculations correctly, he'd already left *university* by the time Susan 
was even born... (erk! old!)