We should bring back national service to police the non-existent British Empire, and I’ll tell you what else – young people had proper respect in my day, and old twats who will never face another examination in their lives, other than the theoretical one at the Pearly Gates, know far more than people who actually have to get a job in modern reality. Thanks.

The possibility that I’m just an aged, useless arsehole whose opinion is no longer relevant to the world we live in has not yet entered my mind. Cheers.*

*Maybe I should’ve posted this in Laban’s thread, but frankly, I can’t face speaking to Laban. It ages me by about ten years every time.

I found it difficult to navigate the EDEXCEL website, but you can read the new exam spec here:
http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/GCE%20New%20GCE/spec-gce-history.pdf
[I skim read it, and didn’t see the word “despot”]

From the student’s comments on the Facebook page, there were two responses to the paper:
(a) Students who simply didn’t know what “despotic” meant; one thought it meant “chaotic”, a reading he felt was supported by the sources, and he reports the most of rest of his class did so too;
Students who thought that “despotic” and “tyrannical” were synonyms, and were confused by the apparent tautology.

I have quite a lot of sympathy for (b); my reading of the question would be to discuss in what ways Hitler’s Germany was a despotic as opposed to a non-despotic tyranny, which is highly non-trivial. [I should also note that my highest qualification in History is a “B” at GCSE, so this may very well be complete nonsense].

What none of the students has mentioned, of course, is -assuming that the question is from Unit 3, Topic D2, Section B (the sources question on Hitler’s Germany) – is that candidates are to answer “one question in section B out of a choice of two” [page 9 of the specification].
What was the other question?

More worthy of complaint was a question on a General Studies exam we did which included the idea of the “nuclear family”. Most quite reasonably, especially as you don’t specifically study for general studies, had no idea what a nuclear family is or was and so ended up writing about nuclear power instead.

On the other hand, the question itself is not easy, applying the more detailed definition of despotic (an authoritarian regime which concentrates power into the hands of one despot) would require a bit of thought.

If I’m honest, had I been sitting the exam I reckon I would have initially been a bit stumped because the two terms are often used interchangeably, despot/tyrant, and the question thus looks a bit tautological.

However, taking a step back I hope I would have thought for a second and realised that it was asking about ‘despotic’ tyranny, as opposed to some other kind of tyranny (the tyranny of the majority). Although, that’s assuming I wasn’t so thrown by the question that I panicked and started writing utter crap (which has happened). Given the choice I probably would have skipped it.

So, difficult/poorly worded question still doesn’t excuse the fact that a lot of the students didn’t have a clue what despotic meant.

By hey ho, it was all better in my day.

However, for an A-level student’s vocabulary to be so poor that they were confused as to the meaning is very depressing. “What do they teach them in schools these days?”*

*Bonus points for identifying the source for the quote.