Chemistry

I'm not really interested in what others think here, Chemistry is the finest of all of the scientific disciplines. It is the most interesting of all of the sciences.

But all is not happy in the world of Chemistry. It's been screwed by consecutive governments over the years. For some reason, since a few years past the inception of the GCSE, in a two year course, it has become acceptable to spend around 3 months on Chemistry with the majority of the rest of the time spent on Biology.

The idea is that with 3 months of knowledge, students will be able to stand the rigors of an A level course and then progress to University to do a degree.

Utter rubbish!

What you actually got were high churn rate courses as the poor ol' student just didn't stand a hope in hell. Did those in education think "hmm, maybe we should increase the Chemistry course content"? Like hell. They dumbed down the A level. While I won't take away anything from those who sit A levels, it makes me laugh like a loon when government ministers come onto the radio to defend the annual increase in pass rates and say that things haven't been dumbed down. I bet that if you took an average A level Chemistry student now and had them sit the 1984 A level Chemistry paper, if they managed to hit a grade E pass, I'd be astounded.

Further up the food chain (the Unis) find the number of students dropping. Unfortunately, for them to dumb down would take a miracle as they have to keep their standards up. With the drop in students, you have a drop in the number of Unis able to give a Chemistry degree. Around 20 years ago (1982) there were well over 130 UK universities offering a Chemistry degree. There are now less than 45.

Consecutive governments have screwed it for us. The chemical industry has brought in a positive balance of payments into the country even during the big recession in the 1980s. The lifeblood has the industry is being drained by frankly fools and idiots. Happily, the powers that be have seen this, but is it too late?

Sure, the subject will carry on, but will there be enough interested to do it?

My stuff

The material are all works I have done. They're my own original research. Feel free to use them, ask me about them and anything like that, but whatever you do, please don't rip them off and pass them off as your own. If you do, then the little pixies will come after you, hunt you like the weasel you are and poke you with sharpened electric cattle prods.

Original text : Me
Graphics : Paul & Becki
Dr Who serial codes : Ian M. Jobes

All material on this site is by me - no ripping it off!

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