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Went to university in the UK, met a bunch of Russian post-docs whilst I was a researcher, and they were some of the best mathematicians I'd met. Not unrelated,

Went to university in the UK, met a bunch of Russian post-docs whilst I was a researcher, and they were some of the best mathematicians I'd met. Not unrelated, but today in the UK is A-Level results (for 18 yr olds), and the UK press and exam boards, as usual are reporting it as the 'best results ever'. This happens year on year. There's a lot of argument about education standards getting lower in the UK. My "anecdata" is that I was the first year to sit GCSE maths exams at 16 yrs old, and we went through old O-level papers from the mid 1950s onwards (aimed at 16 year olds) to practice. Those O-level papers had advanced calculus that we didn't learn until our final year of A-levels. Those old papers were much harder. tl;dr in the 50s/60s 16 year old Brits were taught advanced calculus. They're not now.

whimsicalism 5y ago
This does not jive with my encounters with people who went to school in the 50s/60s. Just from interacting with people of different ages, it seems to me there was a marked improvement in quality of schooling, maybe in the 90s?
- DrBazza 5y ago
  It depends what metric you're using for education improvement. For science based subjects, the fundamentals don't change. My narrow world view is maths and physics, and my data point of one, is that my peer group in the 1980s were taught to a lower level in maths (and physics) than in the 1950s/60s/70s, based on the content of O-level exam papers that we sat as mock exams. The fact was that we couldn't answer a percentage of the exams because we just weren't taught it. The reverse wasn't true - we were not taught extra things that weren't in the exam, we were simply taught less. I can't find a link, but there was talk of "remedial maths" lessons being taught at many universities in the UK to bring students up to the standards required for degrees because they're simply not taught at the same level any more. Universities on the other hand, don't have their curriculums or qualifications manipulated by the sitting government so their standards/requirements change much more slowly.

whimsicalism 5y ago

This does not jive with my encounters with people who went to school in the 50s/60s. Just from interacting with people of different ages, it seems to me there was a marked improvement in quality of schooling, maybe in the 90s?

DrBazza 5y ago
It depends what metric you're using for education improvement. For science based subjects, the fundamentals don't change. My narrow world view is maths and physics, and my data point of one, is that my peer group in the 1980s were taught to a lower level in maths (and physics) than in the 1950s/60s/70s, based on the content of O-level exam papers that we sat as mock exams. The fact was that we couldn't answer a percentage of the exams because we just weren't taught it. The reverse wasn't true - we were not taught extra things that weren't in the exam, we were simply taught less. I can't find a link, but there was talk of "remedial maths" lessons being taught at many universities in the UK to bring students up to the standards required for degrees because they're simply not taught at the same level any more. Universities on the other hand, don't have their curriculums or qualifications manipulated by the sitting government so their standards/requirements change much more slowly.