[Melz0r]

(Original post by dumbdedumb)
Btw can outside visitors go in? Forget King's Chapel, i wanna show people the library.

Apologies if someone's already answered this, I haven't seen an answer: no idea if the rules are different for grads, but I have a feeling we're allowed to bring in 2 guests (as long as you ask at reception obviously, before you go through the turnstile thingy).

[ukebert]

(Original post by Melz0r)
Not to say that this is a bad idea in principle, but it can get out of hand. My school was a Performing Arts College (you know how lots of schools now have 'specialisms', some of them are 'Technology Colleges', etc) and it meant that i) they spent horrendous amounts of money on a new 'arts centre' (including a recording studio built in a completely acoustically inappropriate shape and a dance studio with a sprung floor) while the French department didn't have enough textbooks for my A-level class of four people, and ii) all the A-level timetabling blocks were arranged with the specific aim of making it possible to take A-levels Dance, Drama, Musical Theatre, Art, Music and Music Tech all at the same time but not possible, for example, to do both English Literature and French*. I'm not sure what my point is here, except that perhaps the best thing to aim for in a school curriculum is balance.

*In the end I would probably say not having done A-level Eng Lit has actually been better for me, but they weren't to know that.

You school sounds horrible. I went to a technology college, but had to do electronics twilight. I agree with all that you say

[alex_hk90]

(Original post by Athena)
Why do some undergrads think it's acceptable to have massive parties in communal spaces, leave them a ****-hole and expect the cleaners to put it all right for them? The lack of consideration is just disgusting. These people aren't freshers, either - they know better!

Because some people are *****: Freshers, undergrad, postgrad or whatever.

[Craghyrax]

It is very infuriating. Don't know how people live with themselves, acting so selfishly.

[alex_hk90]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
It is very infuriating. Don't know how people live with themselves, acting so selfishly.

Not everyone has the same morals - they probably don't care that they're being selfish.

[ukebert]

(Original post by Athena)
Why do some undergrads think it's acceptable to have massive parties in communal spaces, leave them a ****-hole and expect the cleaners to put it all right for them? The lack of consideration is just disgusting. These people aren't freshers, either - they know better!

Tell me about it!

[Craghyrax]

(Original post by alex_hk90)
Not everyone has the same morals - they probably don't care that they're being selfish.

While people have different views about morality, I would be quite interested to see an example of anybody who genuinely thought that causing harm and stress to other human beings was morally permissible. I've attended some interesting lectures on ethics in Philosophy, since its my fiance's area, and there do seem to be some bottom line patterns that get replicated regardless of the moral system/ideas different people have. Some smart-arse might make a show of putting together an implausible, long winded justification of it, but I wouldn't believe they really thought that. It just seems that some people are less altruistic and caring about fellow man than others. That's what the research would suggest anyway. Psychological studies suggest that it might be genetic - some people are born with an ingrained sense of duty or concern with issues of fairness, justice etc., and some seem much more able to focus on themselves and forget about the rest
If that is true its quite depressing, because it means you can't blame anyone for being one way or the other because they are not responsible. Equally you can't feel better than other people, because its no virtue of your own that you inherited the neurological mindset that you have.

[Melz0r]

(Original post by ukebert)
You school sounds horrible. I went to a technology college, but had to do electronics twilight. I agree with all that you say

To be fair to them, they did end up with a very good performing arts department after a couple of years, and put on some really cool shows, and produced some really good musicians/musical theatre performers. Which just shows what can happen when you throw money at a department. But it's so arbitrary which schools get to specialise in what and it's not like most people really have the choice to go anywhere different (not in rural areas anyway, I'm sure it's different in cities). And things like my school clashing Englit and French, that's why state school applicants still think they have a disadvantage/may actually have a disadvantage applying to Oxbridge - not too much oak-panelling in the interview waiting rooms. Arrrrrgh

(Original post by Craghyrax)
If that is true its quite depressing, because it means you can't blame anyone for being one way or the other because they are not responsible. Equally you can't feel better than other people, because its no virtue of your own that you inherited the neurological mindset that you have.

I basically feel like this. You're right, it is quite depressing, and annoying as well, as you can never actually be angry with anyone (or not without immediately feeling guilty and irrational)...

[alex_hk90]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
While people have different views about morality, I would be quite interested to see an example of anybody who genuinely thought that causing harm and stress to other human beings was morally permissible. I've attended some interesting lectures on ethics in Philosophy, since its my fiance's area, and there do seem to be some bottom line patterns that get replicated regardless of the moral system/ideas different people have. Some smart-arse might make a show of putting together an implausible, long winded justification of it, but I wouldn't believe they really thought that. It just seems that some people are less altruistic and caring about fellow man than others. That's what the research would suggest anyway. Psychological studies suggest that it might be genetic - some people are born with an ingrained sense of duty or concern with issues of fairness, justice etc., and some seem much more able to focus on themselves and forget about the rest
If that is true its quite depressing, because it means you can't blame anyone for being one way or the other because they are not responsible. Equally you can't feel better than other people, because its no virtue of your own that you inherited the neurological mindset that you have.

I don't know about 'morally permissible' as such, but perhaps they just think that the pleasure they gain from their activities outweighs the inconvenience that it causes you. And I know close to nothing about whether morality is genetic or environmental, but my guess would be that it's both - some people will tend to be more altruistic by nature, but their environment and upbringing can still greatly affect how altruistic they end up being.

[smilepea]

(Original post by Slumpy)
Y'know, sometimes I think you might just be me...

Nah, you're definitely two different people, and actually really rather different in the flesh.

(Original post by Melz0r)
To be fair to them, they did end up with a very good performing arts department after a couple of years, and put on some really cool shows, and produced some really good musicians/musical theatre performers. Which just shows what can happen when you throw money at a department. But it's so arbitrary which schools get to specialise in what and it's not like most people really have the choice to go anywhere different (not in rural areas anyway, I'm sure it's different in cities). And things like my school clashing Englit and French, that's why state school applicants still think they have a disadvantage/may actually have a disadvantage applying to Oxbridge - not too much oak-panelling in the interview waiting rooms. Arrrrrgh

My school was a technology college and that didn't mean our technology wasn't ****. Firstly they made EVERYONE do a technology GCSE which meant that my class who were made up of people that chose to do 2 arts GCSEs were forced to do resistant materials, so most classes descended into masking tape ball fights across the classroom. Oh and we got given a teacher who told the whole class to copy someone else's (actually rather crap) coursework for ours.

Also re timetabling, in the year below me you couldn't do maths, further maths, physics and chemistry because of clashes.

[lp386]

(Original post by Melz0r)
Not to say that this is a bad idea in principle, but it can get out of hand. My school was a Performing Arts College (you know how lots of schools now have 'specialisms', some of them are 'Technology Colleges', etc) and it meant that i) they spent horrendous amounts of money on a new 'arts centre' (including a recording studio built in a completely acoustically inappropriate shape and a dance studio with a sprung floor) while the French department didn't have enough textbooks for my A-level class of four people, and ii) all the A-level timetabling blocks were arranged with the specific aim of making it possible to take A-levels Dance, Drama, Musical Theatre, Art, Music and Music Tech all at the same time but not possible, for example, to do both English Literature and French*. I'm not sure what my point is here, except that perhaps the best thing to aim for in a school curriculum is balance.

*In the end I would probably say not having done A-level Eng Lit has actually been better for me, but they weren't to know that.

In (extremely grudging) fairness, A Level language teaching is, from what I've been hearing, pretty dubious or non-existent in most state schools - at my school, they had seven students taking French, two taking German and one taking Spanish to A2 (and one student was taking French, German and Spanish!), with the department generally regarded as a bit crap compared to the rest of the school. Pretty much everyone got put off by the teaching at GCSE! Am I right in saying that MML is struggling to recruit state school students (I imagine it's the case for Classics and AMES though I am talking completely out of a part of my body that would disappoint the moderators if I mentioned it explicitly...)

Notwithstanding that, I was lucky in that I went to a sixth form with 200+ students per year, where they could offer pretty much every credible course (and didn't offer Media Studies and Law to bump up the points like some other places) and I only knew of one student who was forced to miss something because of a clash. I was also lucky that I lived in a town with multiple available sixth forms; I can't imagine what I'd have done if there was one local sixth form and it was focused on performing arts instead of academia.

(Original post by alex_hk90)
Because some people are *****: Freshers, undergrad, postgrad or whatever.

(Original post by Craghyrax)
It is very infuriating. Don't know how people live with themselves, acting so selfishly.

This year, thanks to the (sigh) unique way in which the BBC is funded my accommodation is constructed, if the obnoxious partiers upstairs decide to have a suitably obnoxious party, then half the building gets kept awake. No wonder there's a statistically significant drop in our grades for the year that we live over here...

(Original post by smilepea)

My school was a technology college and that didn't mean our technology wasn't ****. Firstly they made EVERYONE do a technology GCSE which meant that my class who were made up of people that chose to do 2 arts GCSEs were forced to do resistant materials, so most classes descended into masking tape ball fights across the classroom. Oh and we got given a teacher who told the whole class to copy someone else's (actually rather crap) coursework for ours.

Also re timetabling, in the year below me you couldn't do maths, further maths, physics and chemistry because of clashes.

Same - we also had to do a technology GCSE but they were all scheduled together so you could pick whatever (apart from electronics, I think, which you had to do as another option). I ended up doing graphics and doing well only through the benevolence of my teacher, who saw I was working hard but producing crap and did everything he could to help me (also, he gave us the hardest paper he could with a foundation level cover on it as a mock in order to scare us into revising)

Mercifully, our school churned out a lot of potential medics (not all of whom got the grades, and not all of those got in) so they had multiple classes for all the sciences and you could take pretty much any combination.

[Zoedotdot]

Half of my classes for my Spanish A level we're taught in the department's store cupboard. The other half were largely cancelled because my teacher was ill and we kept having sixth form events on Thursdays (when the lessons were). This was already on a reduced timetable from six to four lessons. So yeah, language teaching not the highest priority in my school it also goes some way towards explaining why I had the worst grammar background my first year oral teacher had ever seen

[Supermerp]

I went to a technology college too! We also had to do a technology GCSE. I did electronics and made a block that didn't follow a line.

I think that's all I have to say.

[alex_hk90]

I also went to a specialist technology college, which later also become a specialist languages college, then lost the technology specialism and gained another ones (maybe maths/science I can't remember). Word was it was all about the extra funding.

[smilepea]

I quit As level French because the teaching was aimed at the students who'd had decent GCSE teachers who actually told them proper grammar and stuff (like the imperfect tense, I mean WFT is that?!) and this was within the same school... They gave up on doing Spanish (although only one class did it at GCSE which I think stopped the year I left) and German was taught AS and A2 together and they only had 4 instead of 5 lessons.

But hey the school no longer exists any more, so meh.

Why is it raining when I have to go to the doctors?! I don't want to cycle in the rain

[sjad]

Just found the best revision aid ever! We need to get some Hotties from Cambridge up there?! Whats going on?!

[lp386]

(Original post by Zoedotdot)
Half of my classes for my Spanish A level we're taught in the department's store cupboard. The other half were largely cancelled because my teacher was ill and we kept having sixth form events on Thursdays (when the lessons were). This was already on a reduced timetable from six to four lessons. So yeah, language teaching not the highest priority in my school it also goes some way towards explaining why I had the worst grammar background my first year oral teacher had ever seen

(Original post by smilepea)
I quit As level French because the teaching was aimed at the students who'd had decent GCSE teachers who actually told them proper grammar and stuff (like the imperfect tense, I mean WFT is that?!) and this was within the same school... They gave up on doing Spanish (although only one class did it at GCSE which I think stopped the year I left) and German was taught AS and A2 together and they only had 4 instead of 5 lessons.

But hey the school no longer exists any more, so meh.

Why is it raining when I have to go to the doctors?! I don't want to cycle in the rain

Yup, this all sounds pretty familiar... I think the Spanish class had four lessons a fortnight and the German students had six, or something like that I kind of had the reverse problem - there weren't enough classes for all the people who wanted to do economics, so my AS class had 33 people in it. Someone had to sit at the back without a desk. It was seen as the doss subject in my school, and how so many people managed to get through an entire year without understanding supply and demand I don't know.

[Craghyrax]

So there was a happy ending to the stove debacle The estate agent made a mistake and ordered a free standing oven+hob unit, which obviously didn't fit in our kitchen where the oven was built in. At the same time I told the oven people about the stove, and they tried the dial for the fourth ring we could never get to work, and it worked! Its just very stiff. They also explained that the oven and stove are seperate and that you could replace one without affecting the other! So I persuaded the landlady that the hobs were just fine, after all, and that it would be cheaper for them to replace the oven and leave the stove alone. Luckily this worked, and so we now have a much better electric oven and the same gas stove

[Melz0r]

(Original post by lp386)
Am I right in saying that MML is struggling to recruit state school students (I imagine it's the case for Classics and AMES though I am talking completely out of a part of my body that would disappoint the moderators if I mentioned it explicitly...)

I don't actually know, and I probably should. Classics is pretty private-school-dominated but I think MML is one of the more balanced ones... but I need to look at the tables.

I can't imagine what I'd have done if there was one local sixth form and it was focused on performing arts instead of academia.

Yeah, this is the problem with the specialisation scheme; it's great in cities, but when my nearest other sixth-form would have been an hour's bus ride away in either direction, it's really not a great idea. Presumably no-one thought this through when they brought in the scheme. It feels like everybody recognises the problems with inner-city comprehensives, but nobody's really bothered about/aware of the problems with schools in the countryside, because everyone imagines countryside equals picture-postcard affluence and comfort, when it really doesn't.

Hmm, anyway, extended rant over! (To be honest my life is basically an extended education rant...)

[Topaz_eyes]

(Original post by Melz0r)
I don't actually know, and I probably should. Classics is pretty private-school-dominated but I think MML is one of the more balanced ones... but I need to look at the tables.



Yeah, this is the problem with the specialisation scheme; it's great in cities, but when my nearest other sixth-form would have been an hour's bus ride away in either direction, it's really not a great idea. Presumably no-one thought this through when they brought in the scheme. It feels like everybody recognises the problems with inner-city comprehensives, but nobody's really bothered about/aware of the problems with schools in the countryside, because everyone imagines countryside equals picture-postcard affluence and comfort, when it really doesn't.

Hmm, anyway, extended rant over! (To be honest my life is basically an extended education rant...)

Ditto this for my school. I went to it because it was 10 minutes walk rather than an hour on the bus. It was a language school, and I do have GCSE Japanese from it, but the science block had asbestos in the ceiling and was falling down.

And because people came from small villages, almost all our funding was spent on private buses, meaning we had almost no money per pupil