Hugh Reilly: We don't need wee drawings to put our pupils in the picture

Published on Tuesday 2 June 2009 19:29

LAST holiday weekend, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Hopes of an economic upturn in my neighbourhood were dashed when the green shoots of recovery turned out to be a top-floor tenement cannabis factory.

In a decidedly sombre mood, I flew to Paris by EasyJet, the world's favourite airline for the frugally-minded. On arrival at our accommodation, my girlfriend's body language screamed disappointment that I'd booked a two star hotel for our romantic rendezvous. I shared her frustration; all the one star hotels I'd tried to book had been full.

Normally I need my Francophile filly to translate the carte du jour but, perhaps in a sign that dumbing down is an EU-wide directive, the laminated, gaudy pictures of the meals rendered her polyglot skills redundant.

As we stared disbelievingly at the digitally enhanced chicken leg and air-brushed pommes de terre, it occurred to me that the restaurant owner must be a retired SQA question-setter; after all, what else could explain the unnecessary use of visual stimuli?

In this year's modern studies Standard Grade examination, candidates answering the "knowledge" element were given assistance by way of pictorial clues. To be fair, examinees were not compelled to use the visual hints, but only those hell-bent on a career as a checkout operator would have ignored the education lifebelts tossed in their direction.

I find this culture of dumbing down most dispiriting. Don't get me wrong; inserting pictures to help the reader's understanding has its place. I still get a frisson of excitement when I think of short-trousered John pushing a boat across the pond to a gushing, pig-tailed Janet. But surely the layout of secondary school national examinations should not mirror the red tops or the shiny magazines whose titles end with an exclamation mark.

Put it this way – if our picture-clue SQA questions have any integrity, why has this mode of assessment not been imitated by, say, the medical profession?

Call me a traditionalist but I wouldn't want to go under the knife of a saw-doctor who had passed med-school exams based on cartoon drawings.

Maybe I'm a tad sensitive, but I get the feeling other school subjects resent the student-friendly pics found in modern studies' exams. Already, there have been rumblings among home economic matrons that their exam papers should have a scratch 'n' sniff element to assist candidates struggling to recall the main ingredient of squirrel pie. With the cutting edge technology at its fingertips, the SQA must only be a few years away from developing a hologram of a walking-talking Aristotle as an aid to mathematically-challenged pupils.

The irony of the situation is that the dumbing down of Standard Grade is taking place at a time when passing Higher modern studies has never been more difficult. Higher candidates must write four essays inside 90 minutes – essays that must contain knowledge and a degree of critical analysis, without a picture in sight. No wonder the pass rate is so low.

In my opinion, the visual content in SQA exams is an appalling admission that kids possess little in the way of sound knowledge of a subject.

Knowledge has become something of a dirty word in education circles. Those who control the education narrative talk endlessly about the need for kids to know how to learn, and dismiss those of us who believe it's important children understand the basic building blocks that are the foundation of all learning.

Sadly, I have an awful, sinking feeling that, as with having an appeal system, the Scottish examination system is unique in providing pictures to facilitate exam success.

For everyone's sake, let's return to exam papers with continuous prose rather than monochrome pointers.

That would be the far, far better thing to do.