https://www.icslearn.co.uk/blog/gcse-and-a-levels/gcse-resits-the-complete-guide-to-retaking-gcses/
So this may be somewhat interesting for people who have considered in the UK or foreigners who want to compare their own education practices. I've long suspected this anyway due to how universities are run, but for fuck's sake, the setup is a joke.
Imagine you're somebody who's really earnest about fixing your broken arse education and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of people like that and you see that it costs £1,000 just for tuition in that area meaning you're probably better off just learning online by yourself since the teaching is often garbage anyway.
Also looking at the prices of exam centres the average shown is £100 an exam, obviously you go for it with the intention of passing. Though I have to wonder with the exams and the way they work a bunch of other stuff as well because if you can take exams online how easy is that to exploit? Though perhaps they have enough sense that you need to take them in person at an exam centre. I still think that with modern tech your average exam now is probably rife with exploits generally because there's nothing to say the questions can't be leaked online and then you have easy access to the information beforehand.
Looking at the topics they have for GSCE maths too, yet again even in 2023 my complaints about them using abstract maths on students remain valid because you're going to be using a fucking venn diagram and the Pythagoras theorem in all walks of life you monumental dipshits. I'm also somebody who has actually studied Pythagoras theorem for the maths I was looking at with my influence rings in programming but it turns out I didn't need it.
I bet going to a tradesmen school of any kind of variety would probably give a much better maths experience than this because it's stuff you'd actually use like measurements.
If you know what you want to do for work, then the path to succeeding at that kind of work is pretty easy to figure out.
A big problem with school of any kind is that people get an education first and then try to figure out what to do with their life. That's a path to failure a lot of the time. If people figure out what they want to do first then education may or may not be part of the plan depending.
Education for the sake of education is a scam.
Yeah all my HS friends who knew what they wanted to do and went to school for it are doing it and doing fairly well. Except my Catholic friend who wanted to be a Hollywood writer (but I think a devout Catholic can be excused for not wanting to surround himself with demons).
The ones who (eg.) studied English just kinda drifted until they landed somewhere.
There's also the aspect of realistic expectations. Wanting to be a Hollywood writer isn't a realistic expectation. Wanting to be a writer is a realistic expectation but you don't need a formal education to be a writer. You don't need one to be a Hollywood writer either.
Without going into too much detail, it wasn't an unrealistic expectation for him; and during school he was doing some work in Hollywood before he decided it "wasn't what he expected".
He never expanded on what he meant by that much, but all things considered it was probably for the best he didn't continue down that path.
I think there's a problem with a lot of people with unrealistic expectations that they want only that too and are disinterested in the journey to get there. Maybe you have to start by helping out at the local TV station with production work. Then someone leaves and you get the chance to write boring scripts for local TV commercials. Oh wait, there's a job as an assistant writer on a B-movie and your friend at the TV station knows the director and might can get you an interview. You're building credits and experience up now. Are you likely to make Hollywood, still no. But you have more of a chance and in theory you are actually employed the entire time.
I'm speculating because I know nothing about that industry and how it works, obviously. The point being a think a lot go spend a bunch of money on school and when they are done it's like, "hey I finished when do I get assigned my Marvel movie?" When there is an opportunity at a small studio in Georgia, it's "ew no, didn't you see I went to Fancy University of Arts I'm a Hollywood writer I could never work in Georgia."
Yeah realistic expectations are incredibly important.
Realistic expectations when you're paying for an education. If you're paying $50k-250k for an education and you expect to accomplish something unrealistic, you're going to get scammed. If you have unrealistic expectations, that's fine if you aren't paying people to try to meet them. Like if you want to be a Hollywood writer then write and try to be a Hollywood writer without paying money to anyone. If you're told you need to pay money first before you can be a Hollywood writer, you're being scammed.
Right I agree. I think that mindset can apply to any facet in life. Great points.
Yeah, I figured you're trying to make a cross-facet comparison for my advice, which is why I added the little extra clarification.
Take relationships for example. There's realistic expectations for what a man or woman can get and there's unrealistic expectations. It's not about changing your expectations because people can't really do this and especially for relationships. If you want something, then that's what you want. Just don't go on 1000s of dates and spend tons of money/effort chasing the unrealistic expectations because you're being scammed doing so. Guys or girls that "simp" for someone thinking that this will get them their unrealistic expectations tend to just get scammed.
However, I would still say there's nothing wrong with advocating for changes to the system. For example, if you want to be a Hollywood Writer, which is an unrealistic expectation, there's nothing wrong with suggesting that perhaps Intellectual Property laws needs to change in order to remove a lot of the monopoly power Hollywood has on the industry to improve the competition such that being a Hollywood writer becomes less important because non-Hollywood media productions start to gain much higher market share. Now you've found a way to meet your unrealistic expectations by changing the nature of the game.
In relationships this might be suggesting banning women from the workforce. Such a structural change would have dramatic impacts to relationships and may improve someone's chance of meeting their unrealistic expectations. Since such advocacy doesn't cost someone $50k-$250k, that's a much better approach than paying an onlyfans girl $50k in hopes she marries the guy.
I think you haven’t really thought things through
I really like your analogy about the paywall, however I'm not sure what I'm looking at on this link.
Valid point though. It might actually be even more beneficial to attend colleges in other countries these days, especially if you can find a favorable exchange rate and English language.
Sorry, it's something of a breakdown of how the GSCE resits and so on work because I'm somebody who had a shit education this is what I'd need to do to even get into a university. It's yet another example of my prejudices about education being confirmed. I've made up my mind on what I'm going to do for the most part and really focusing on building up a business is my main goal, how I go about it though will be largely dependent on the American 2024 election results and the various political moves that are being made. Just something I was thinking about recently quite a bit in a what if scenario.
I think you're right though, for anyone who would consider the path of university, definitely consider your options carefully. The best options for guys like us would probably be either a really 'right wing' university in America or maybe a country like Hungary and Poland where you know people aren't going to be insufferably woke. I would massively up my grades after re-taking them to impress people and then hopefully that would get me an in to the subject I want. For me though, there's very little I've seen from universities that would even make me want to study under them.
Singapore seems to have top notch schools.
"Tradesman school" is a huge scam.
Anything you can learn at school, you can learn on the job. The reason for post secondary schooling is subjects where there is little or zero practical application and for which nobody needs or wants an assistant.
Just find somebody that will let you clean up after them and do the tedious work. If you do a good job, they might offer to teach you more, or you just watch them to see how they work.
One of the biggest problems with the education system is the proliferation of unnecessary programs, which bloats the entire system to the point where high level subjects can't be taught for the crowds of dummies trying to take them.
In a rare defence on education I think that depends entirely on the school, surprisingly in the UK the trade schools look pretty good and very practical. You even have stuff like proper electricians courses that you can get qualified for among other things. Contrast that with universities though and the university education looks like shit, even the trade school accommodation looks far more affordable.
I have to disagree with you here. Like Lethn said, it depends on the school.
Most companies and employers don't trust you enough to do some bullshit labor, and sure as shit won't make you an official employee without some mechanism to sort through you. This is why internships are more important than anything else.
This is why so many companies do psychological testing now for employment, even skilled employees with bad perspectives, psychology, or behaviors cand do more damage than they are worth. There needs to be a filter mechanism, and we don't allow for $1 /hr jobs for employers to take the risk.
A good tradeschool will get you up to par for where an employers expects you to be, that way you can walk in with something rather than "pls job gibs".
Upper level education has always been just a paper indicating you are qualified for work. It's been bastardized by tons of unnecessary requirements, sure. Teachers also suck in a lot of cases. There were many times I had to take it upon myself to learn on my own. I'd say that should be fixed, but I'm not sure I have a solution either. Maybe they could quit worrying about their rainbow alphabet but even before that teachers sucked.
The Pythagorean theorem is an awful example though. If you asked me to present someone with a piece of paper indicating they are qualified for a ton of technical jobs, including programming, a basic understanding of trigonometry is a must. Yeah, sure, it might not get used in everything, but anything 3D is going to use it, and I'm not being asked to present someone with a certificate that they are good to work on a single specific programming project.
Not being familiar with UK testing, I looked up what's on the Maths test. It's pretty basic. Are we really suggesting degrading education to require less than this to pass? If it's not needed in the job then maybe the job shouldn't require passing of it.
I'm definitely not advocating a degradation of standards because then you'd create a new generation of retards even worse than what we have now. I just think everything should be far more relevant. As an example on practical topics, everybody needs to know how to use a computer and thanks to smartphones even the younger generations have no idea how to use anything. If they ever had Linux put in front of them they'd be completely fucked and all of us in tech know how much back end infrastructure relies on Linux. Part of that problem is that the teachers are even more retarded and tech illiterate than the students so they wouldn't even know how to start teaching them.
The thing is though you do kind of proved my point with Pythagoras Theorem by admitting. Yes I get it, if there's perhaps one example somewhere somehow it might be 'useful' to know, but even for lots of maths I've never found it relevant in my life and I'm somebody who knows two different programming languages. I also do 3D art and a proper understanding of topology patterns and co-ordinates systems in a 3D axis is far more important which you use every day when modelling in Blender.
I would be far more impressed if I had a student give me a working understanding of that than any of the shit I've seen schools throw at students. Again, it falls back to my point of abstract math vs practical maths and schools almost always make students do abstract maths which is why they never get any real use out of it. Even stuff like PI calculation is way more useful to you in every day life because especially for DIY depending on what you're doing you may inevitably have to know how to cut something to accurately fit it around a circular shape.
I meant to mention vectors and 3D coordinates but forgot. That's something I struggled to grasp for a while until it just clicked. I would also put a basic understanding of computing into education. Do I really expect them to be able to configure an http server in a Linux command line? No. Might I teach that as a school exercise? Yes. I wouldn't test for it but I might test for basic command line things or some simple configuration type things.
I would budge on trig though, which I lump Pythagoras in to because in the end it's still just triangle math. It's very useful in 2D games where in a ton of cases you wouldn't bother with much more complicated math because a couple square roots is a ton fewer cycles. For example if you're wanting to get a the player velocity from a 2D movement vector. It's also how 3D works. There's a reason everything is triangles. Raycasting is in a lot of ways applied trigonometry. Outside of computers, engineers use it, surveyors are basically just trig calculators. I'm sure I could come up with more.
Blender artist of course is not going to use it. An engine programmer is not going to survive without it. I'm not trying to shit on things and a there's a ton of success that can be had without it. I've not touched trig working on my game in an existing engine yet. Someone has to create that engine though, and in this case I'm being asked to provide a paper that says someone is qualified to be a programmer.
This is a prime example though of why such generalised education is actually garbage for a good number of people. The teachers and bean counters don't give a fuck though, they're just looking to fulfil quotas and have as many warm bodies in the seats as possible so they can get their funding at minimal expense and piss it away on their own salaries and pensions which is what the education system is about at the end of the day.
I agree with that and that's why if I were to restructure education it would be pushed down quite a bit, where pre-teens all learn the basic requirements to exist, i.e. read/write, arithmetic, history, government and such. I'd take most of this out of schools entirely. Teenagers on it gets more and more specialized such that an accountant is not learning geometry and an engineer is not learning creative writing. Stringent barriers for entry though in a lot of things. We can't have everyone in a coddle-fest.
Programming would never lose math though, because I'd never want to hire one for a game that couldn't tell me how to get the speed of an object beyond "playerspeed = object.speed;". Be able to break it down at least a few layers even if you don't have to do it in practice, because that way I know you'd understand. I'd probably never be in a position to hire programmers anyway though, because I'd want to throw stuff at Javascript framework monkeys.
Kids should also learn stuff like basic personal finance and taxation, in school, in some mandatory class…
Because they don’t, here. The expectation is that parents teach that stuff, and mine, for example, flatly refused to do so…
Which I think is not good enough, personally, because there are/were definitely others like me…
Yes, absolutely. I never did that in school. I think maybe one year we talked about taxes, but it was a how to file your taxes thing. Over a day or two.
No idea how I learned because my parents were shit at it. Maybe from my grandfather. He was old enough to remember the great depression as a kid, and I think it stuck with him.
That’s good!
We never got taught how to even do that much, sadly…
Awesome about your grandfather!
Mine were sort of good with practical stuff (boats, cars, and woodcraft/model-making, respectively), but never taught me that sort of “key life skill” stuff, I guess!
Although those other skills could still come in handy, of course.
But yeah, literally no one ever taught me about taxes, ever, lol. Which has really sucked, tbh!
When Coursera was actually free I took classes I would have never paid for. Geography of the Bible being #1 on that list.
You are completely and entirely wrong.
Paywalls are 100% reliable. I pay for them, I get the benefit.
College Education is far more likely to have an uncertain outcome.
LOL that's a fair point, I grew up during the MMORPG era so I'm very biased towards paywalls and often considered them scams or at the very least shady as hell especially when I researched the maths.
Well, there is no excuse for ignorance in the age of Z Library and torrents.
See, I’m not ignorant (at all), but I agree with Lethn, because I just fucking hate higher ed…
I’m not sure what it is, but something about the University environment just does not work, for me…
Beyond all the wokeness, and the terrible excuse for “teaching”, I just do not seem to be able to get it, yet no one, in conversation, unless they asked what work I do, or bring it up, would know I don’t have a degree, because I know a whole bunch of random (mostly self-learned) shit, and I “act educated”, I guess…
Hard to describe, but it makes for a weird situation, when the norm for people around me is post-grad, and I haven’t even finished Undergrad, lol…
Yeah it never worked for me, either. Part of it was that at my school, almost to a man, grad students were literal Chicom plants. A one-way exchange program. It's hard to have a lot in common with those. The undergrads were American, and some of em did really well. I never really heard about those grad students again. Whatever they did, they took it back to China with them. And this was just taken for granted because the right people were getting paid.