Overeducated sports writers log

[Corpsey]

"Fittingly, it began and ended with a napkin. Lionel Messi’s first Barcelona contract was signed hastily on a restaurant serviette. Now, as he sobbed his way through his farewell press conference, his wife, Antonella, stepped forward from the front row to hand him a tissue. “If the rule you followed brought you to this,” asks Anton Chigurh in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, “of what use was the rule?”"

 

[Corpsey]

I guess something like that (although I don't understand what it means) would work better if you didn't have to point out that it's from a novel written by Cormac McCarthy, because you can't trust your readership to have seen that movie.

 

[Corpsey]

Hazlitt drops in quotations from Shakespeare without explanation, which is also really fucking annoying. So it's not just sports writers (although one of Hazlitt's famous essays is about a boxing match, albeit its mostly about his attempts to travel there, pre-motorcar).

 

[william kent]

Hazlitt drops in quotations from Shakespeare without explanation, which is also really fucking annoying. So it's not just sports writers (although one of Hazlitt's famous essays is about a boxing match, albeit its mostly about his attempts to travel there, pre-motorcar).

He's writing for a different audience. I dunno how wide an audience, but likely a better read/educated one than the majority of us are now.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Have you seen an O-Level paper from the 1950s? They're like the All Souls College entrance exam compared to now. We so dumb.

 

[Corpsey]

He's writing for a different audience. I dunno how wide an audience, but likely a better read/educated one than the majority of us are now.

It's still annoying and corny imo

Great writer though

 

[william kent]

Have you seen an O-Level paper from the 1950s? They're like the All Souls College entrance exam compared to now. We so dumb.

Apparently almost 45% of A-level results were As or A*s this year... If students are getting smarter then fair enough, but I dunno that they are.

 

[IdleRich]

This year was a bit of a weird one though to be fair.

 

[william kent]

True, but "grade inflation" was talked about prior to the pandemic. Also, bumping grades due to how much of a mess the last year or two's been seems a clunky way to make up for it.

 

[IdleRich]

Grade inflation has been talked about my whole life. I mean they invented the A* the year after I did my GCSEs. I thought I'd done pretty well but now my best grades were not the top grade any more.

 

[Corpsey]

I remember version(?) posting this and the scales falling from my eyes as to how I managed to do so well at first school then university – all the while being thick and lazy.

The great university con: how the British degree lost its value

Never before has Britain had so many qualified graduates. And never before have their qualifications amounted to so little.

www.newstatesman.com

 

[Corpsey]

It's actually a form of child abuse because I was walking around thinking I had the intellect of a young Wittgenstein when actually I was as thick as a Hegel omnibus.

 

[Leo]

people are graded based on their mastery of the subject, but what about in relative terms to other students? if lots of people get As, doesn't A then become the new "average" (equivalent to the old C)? in which case, if you do really well and everyone else does equally well, then you're just average, right?

 

[IdleRich]

Well there are two obvious ways to do it. One is to say "everyone over 70 percent gets an A" , the other is to say "The top ten percent get A". The latter system means that you won't devalue the grade in the same way, but also seems a bit unfair cos if your year is high performing it's harder to get a high grade.

 

[william kent]

I'm curious what happens if we ever exit the pandemic. Are students and parents going to complain that so many attained top marks it's unfair if they don't too? What happens when people with As and A*s realise they can't all get into their preferred universities? Is the expectation of that level of attainment going to continue into higher education, bolstered by the unis charging people through the nose for the "privilege" of being there? There's apparently already a strong sense of "I've paid thousands for this, so you must hand me my desired result." I can't see that improving if students are duped into thinking they're more capable than they are.

 

[Leo]

Well there are two obvious ways to do it. One is to say "everyone over 70 percent gets an A" , the other is to say "The top ten percent get A". The latter system means that you won't devalue the grade in the same way, but also seems a bit unfair cos if your year is high performing it's harder to get a high grade.

yeah, that's my point. there are two ways to grade: by mastery of the subject, or in relative terms to other students.

 

[Leo]

also, wonder if remote schooling from home increased the amount of cheating.

 

[IdleRich]

yeah, that's my point. there are two ways to grade: by mastery of the subject, or in relative terms to other students.

In practice they do a kind of amalgam of the two I think by doing the former and then basically buggering around with it a bit so it looks roughly similar to other years

 

[Corpsey]

How will the Guardian decide who their next football columnist is when everyone has four As and a first class degree?

By asking them if either of their parents work for the Guardian, I suppose.

 

[william kent]

I remember version(?) posting this and the scales falling from my eyes as to how I managed to do so well at first school then university – all the while being thick and lazy.

The great university con: how the British degree lost its value

Never before has Britain had so many qualified graduates. And never before have their qualifications amounted to so little.

www.newstatesman.com

You see this one the other day?

The Great Master’s-Degree Swindle

Colleges are making a killing selling dubious credentials to naïve students. It can’t last.

www.chronicle.com