What most commentators are seemingly missing from this debate is the reason why students are getting better grades in the first place. Two things become apparent with the passage of time. A teacher will refine their own skills and knowledge of examination procedure, therefore making their lessons more informative. Or as I often remarked when at a-level myself, 'We are learning to pass an exam, not the subject'.
The other much more important reasoning behind this increase in student pass grades is a shift in culture. Students are exposed to a whole different set of complexities that were not even dreamed of when I was in school. Lets think on this a moment, I am not that far out of A-level myself – some five years. Courses offering tuition is media studies were just taking off then, I think in fact that I remember one of my friends remarking that they were the first to go through the subject at the sixth form I attended. When we were in our formative years, discovering the world and all that was interesting in it, well there was not all that much to discover. Television was still bound to four channels, going to the cinema was considered a treat rather than something to do to fill time. Even reading was considered only acceptable to age appropriate books. Basically parents pushed their children to do three things.
1. Go out side and play
2. Stop watching TV
3. Eat your vegetables
That was about the level of the pressures forced on a child of that age some ten years ago. Yet cut to today and you only have to talk to a child for a moment to realise that this has changed drastically¹. The media saturates our lives in a million different ways from such an early age is it any wonder that we have become conditioned to analyse and gained a predilection to study it? This does not only apply to 'Media Studies'. My pocket money when growing up was 50p a week, which would be promptly spent on that weeks beano and a packet of sweets. I would of liked more, and I am sure could of found a use for it, but it was sufficient for the time. Now we have mobile phones as standard in a young persons arsenal, computer games, on demand movies, bank accounts. Children have become responsible adults ten years early.
This is not to mention how free data and intercommunication is to a young adult these days ³. I remember begging my mam for my first programming book when I was twelve, yes I was that kid, and it was only after much pleading and saving I was able to afford to start learning. Today we have online tutorials, youtube videos explaining essentially any subject you can think of, a whole multitude of content and providers ready to turn their knowledge into a medium that anyone can read.
Now can you really say that you had this kind of inbred training from the moment you were born? Children are getting better marks because they are not the same as you or me. Just as in ten years time one of those very young adults will be writing a blog post, or equivalent, about how unrelatable the lives of a kid of that generations life is to their own. The cause for this increase in grades is not because exams are getting easier, but because your children are getting much smarter to very specific forms of stimulus.
¹ Television and child development (2004). Judith Van Evra. New Jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates Inc.
² Tamar Lewin. (2010). If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/education/20wired.html. Last accessed 20 August 2010.
³ Amanda Lenhart, Rich Ling, Scott Campbell, Kristen Purcell. (2010). Teens and Mobile Phones. Available: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Teens-and-Mobile-Phones.aspx?r=1. Last accessed 20 August 2010.
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