Monday, June 30, 2008

He'd Have Scored Higher on the SAT...

Partial credit is alive and well in England, it seems.
A pupil who wrote f**k off on his GCSE English paper was given two marks out of 27.

Even though the task was to "describe the room you are sitting in", simple correct spelling and conveying a thought counted for something...
If it had had an exclamation mark it would got a little bit more because it would have been showing a little of skill.

Imagine if he had added "you bloody plonker" at the end...

Apparently, the largest exam board that controls the testing in England doesn't acknowledge correct spelling and syntax when it comes to obscenity. Let's face it - someone who writes "Fuck off" as an answer to an essay question is going nowhere fast, and probably deserves zero points; but to sanction or disregard obscenity in a graded writing as a matter of policy - well, aren't you limiting thought/expression?

Full story here.

3 comments:

JP Burke said...

Perhaps some of those points were for directness?

Witness the Irish version of a scarecrow.

Maybe they just have a flair for that sort of thing in the UK.

JP Burke said...

Sadly, I just realized that image I posted was altered. Here is the unaltered version.

As we know, spelling does make a difference in the message. These are Irish crows we're talking about, after all.

JP Burke said...

The more I think about it, the more that bit of photoshopping peeves me.