From CHRISTOPHER ROPER
The sixth-formers are behaving much more rationally than our political
masters. They can see that science A levels are not a gateway to a successful
career – nor even a preparation for a job.
The central problem today is that science is changing much faster than
the scientists – and that those scientists engaged in teaching and training
the next generation of scientists are part of the problem.
A-level and undergraduate science are still dedicated to the proposition
that successful students need to know all the answers, whereas they really
need to know how to ask appropriate questions. The old divisions between
biology, chemistry and physics may have been appropriate 60 or 70 years
ago, but over the past 50 years, science has exploded into a bewildering
array of different specialisations, with some of the most exciting advances
coming from a cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines.
The coming of the desktop computer has utterly changed the way scientists
‘do science’ yet it hasn’t revolutionised (or even touched) the way A-level
science candidates prepare for their exams. Knowledge and understanding
are not the same thing at all, and exams are notoriously better at measuring
knowledge than measuring understanding.
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Combined science is the science of the future, and the sooner A-level
and university entrance requirements are brought up to date the better.
Christopher Roper Cambridge
