The A level economist in the house complaining bitterly that the free trade module he's been taught - about how the US successfully uses trade to make friends/ bestride the global economy like a colossus etc - is going to look pretty stupid when rehashed for an exam in June 2025 - ThreadSky

gabyhinsliff.bsky.social • 13 days ago

The A level economist in the house complaining bitterly that the free trade module he's been taught - about how the US successfully uses trade to make friends/ bestride the global economy like a colossus etc - is going to look pretty stupid when rehashed for an exam in June 2025

Comments

cjbill.bsky.social•13 days ago

FWIW I sat my International Relations finals in 1990. My final year modules included Politics of the Communist World... Yeah, that was pretty much filled straight under "redundant" as was Security Politics. Unfortunately they both became uncomfortably relevant again in Feb 2022...

kennystewart.bsky.social•13 days ago

I’m studying an IR module with the OU just now and I’ve genuinely considered putting a wee disclaimer (correct at the time of writing, I think!) in my last couple of essays.

laughinglemon.bsky.social•13 days ago

Even the Roman Empire kept crashing into civil war every hundred years or so. Everything becomes history eventually: you just don't expect to witness it.

jrgiguere.bsky.social•13 days ago

As someone said:" I don't mind about dying. I just don't want to be there when it will happen."

artesea.co.uk•13 days ago

Had my GCSE Business Study exam shortly after Gordon Brown gave interest rates to the BoE. Felt that writing about the change in my answer helped get the A.

copybot.bsky.social•13 days ago

I remember back in 1990 dutifully writing that a command economy was better for the environment because there was less incentive to pollute. The very week that the effects of lignite mining in the GDR was being reported.

trefeca.bsky.social•13 days ago

Why were you dutifully writing this, & in what context? To whom did you owe this duty, and why? Genuinely curious — I was alive at that time, & interested in the environment, & do not recall any delusion that state capitalism was more benign than the other sort. Where was this conventional wisdom?

copybot.bsky.social•13 days ago

It was A-level economics, comparing market economies and command economies.

copybot.bsky.social•13 days ago

It wasn’t a moral comparison as I recall; just an objective comparison based on different objectives, systems, incentives and outputs. Quite a lot of it, as it turned out, was bollocks.

trefeca.bsky.social•13 days ago

By 1990, post-Chernobyl & by a time when the partial opening of the Soviet bloc meant that the dirt was literally seeping out (some “civil society” protests/movements in the final years were explicitly environmentalist, because these issues were both urgent & more discussable)? So already bollocks.

copybot.bsky.social•13 days ago

I don’t think they change the curriculum that quickly. But take it up with the (long-defunct) JMB.

trefeca.bsky.social•13 days ago

Ah — outdated syllabus. Understandable — things changed fast in the late 1980s.

nathanielgraham.bsky.social•13 days ago

Reminds me of maps of Europe in my Geography atlas in 1989/90. Had to get the tippex out.

nathanielgraham.bsky.social•13 days ago

I realise this might not be in an A level syllabus and is arguably more about Law but the importance of the rule of law in a successful economy seems rather pertinent at the moment.

rikkitweets.bsky.social•13 days ago

Every sentence could start 'back in the olden days'

geraintowen.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is my exact worry about the economics A level my son is considering for next year.

gabyhinsliff.bsky.social•13 days ago

srsly mine has loved it *because* of doing it through an actual live economic crisis- has completely brought the subject to life & I bet uptake goes up next year (it did for alevel economics after the 2008 crash)

alj8.bsky.social•13 days ago

As someone who actually did do A level economics at the time of the crash, I can tell you it was completely pointless given that the next 15 years considering the media and political consensus that emerged. The consequences of course to be born by other people

msbluewednesday.bsky.social•13 days ago

Maybe he should tell it like it is - oh, but I forgot, it’s an exam 🙄

agendaforreform.bsky.social•12 days ago

‘A level’ you cannot be serious

jjdg26.bsky.social•13 days ago

The economics has not changes. Just the politics.

genevagnome.bsky.social•13 days ago

My A-level economics teacher used to joke that in economics the exam questions are the same, it's the right answers that change every year

jrgiguere.bsky.social•13 days ago

Or as comic Taylor Tomlinson says:"This show is not about the right answer but about the wrong questions."

genevagnome.bsky.social•13 days ago

Although feels like we’re all trying to sit the exam as the invigilators decide to torch the hall

mslesleysmith.bsky.social•13 days ago

Just needs to open every essay with the phrase “Until January 2025 the global consensus was largely that….”

mikecarey23.bsky.social•13 days ago

The global consensus still is, in as much as a consensus can survive one dissenting voice.

remainvoter.bsky.social•13 days ago

Excellent suggestion, because the questions - and mark scheme (I assume) - will have been decided before then.

johnharris1969.bsky.social•13 days ago

I had a v interesting conversation with an A level politics teacher recently... said the US half is now basically impossible to teach: checks & balances, limits of pres authority etc etc all way outmoded

hugeaction.bsky.social•13 days ago

My son is doing economics & daughter doing politics A levels. These are interesting times. Even the shift in UK politics seems to make parts of the syllabus seem quite anachronistic.

gailfairman.bsky.social•13 days ago

I sat my Higher Modern Studies exam (Scotland, ie Politics and International Relationd) in 1991 just as the Soviet Union imploded under Yeltsin. I remember the teacher tearing up the syllabus.

billheywood.bsky.social•13 days ago

That is now part of the history of trade...

michaeldaly64.bsky.social•13 days ago

I did Economics to A Level, not that I remember anything much of it, & was thinking similar the other day. It would be like someone announcing just before the exam season that all Shakespeare's plays had been rewritten.

michaeldaly64.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yes, I did English as well & still have Shakespearian anxiety dreams😀

paulpauly.bsky.social•13 days ago

Or studying History & reading contemporary accounts of WWI as 'the war to end all wars' and you can go 'I have bad news for you on that one'...

phillowthian.bsky.social•13 days ago

Add a sentence like “all this soft and hard power held by the US now seriously threatened by the current chaotic US govt approach” should see them through the exam!

lornajan.bsky.social•9 days ago

He’ll get top marks when he points that out

martymcd.bsky.social•13 days ago

'The syllabus for this examination was written before the global economy collapsed under the Trump Administration. This is now a history examination'

gabyhinsliff.bsky.social•13 days ago

we're currently debating whether adding "NONE OF THIS IS TRUE ANY MORE" gets you credit for being dimly aware of the news, or marked down due to this not being on the mark scheme

suethack.bsky.social•13 days ago

Same position here with v. politically engaged 18 yr yr old who wants to do Economics at uni, current position is set out what has been taught then if time add the "No Longer True" element.

essemm.bsky.social•13 days ago

Or a footnote: ‘The above account was written prior to The Great Crash of 2025. The value of your investments can go down as well as up.’

abbyinnes.bsky.social•13 days ago

Erm…no trade expert but suggest reviewing the bits on the perils of protectionism and how it might make sense for sheltering infant industries in emerging markets in early stages but erm…not so much for fully established companies with global supply chains…🤔

jrgiguere.bsky.social•13 days ago

"The econ exam about Trump's policies will be taken in the Psychiatry Department."

samwilson.bsky.social•13 days ago

I was an undergrad studying Britain’s relationship with Europe in 2016

richardfbourke.bsky.social•13 days ago

And? Any war-stories of perilous encounters during the referendum campaign?

gabyhinsliff.bsky.social•13 days ago

thoughts and prayers with whoever's marking that one

absolutelynotpc.bsky.social•12 days ago

🤣

johncains1.bsky.social•13 days ago

Mark History, Government and Politics myself so that's a relief

gabyhinsliff.bsky.social•13 days ago

yeah nothing going on there, all the US constitution stuff absolutely solid as a rock

johncains1.bsky.social•13 days ago

Don't mark US history or politics papers.... thankfully

brnew.bsky.social•13 days ago

Like doing a command economies module during the fall of the Soviet Union. Uncomfortable parallels

cjbill.bsky.social•13 days ago

Ah, just skeeted something similar! Politics of the Communist World for me

brnew.bsky.social•13 days ago

We were wide-eyed and rivetted as our tutor relayed the latest happenings gleaned from his contacts. Pre-internet, of course, so would've have heard such detail elsewhere. Study for exam exceedingly dull by comparison. Wish today was dull. And rational. And legal. 😥

cjbill.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yes, large chunks of our course were being rewritten on the fly. Our field trip to East Germany was really interesting though

brnew.bsky.social•13 days ago

The iron curtain. *Shudders*. Now it's the Western Hemisphere at risk. Damn history and it's repetition

brnew.bsky.social•13 days ago

*Wouldn't have!!

brnew.bsky.social•13 days ago

Felt optimistic at the time. Ha.

ianrobo.bsky.social•13 days ago

well in this case why not make the argument the theory is correct and recent events now prove it ? that should ber A plus stuff :-)

lozluc.bsky.social•13 days ago

My year 12 A level economics daughter hasn't had that topic yet, she did come back a week or two ago to explain how Trump is a liberal

eldergill.bsky.social•13 days ago

Well my old economics teacher for A Level used to say “Economists dear boy, economists; won’t keep you off the dole but will tell you why you’re on it.”

richardfbourke.bsky.social•13 days ago

I was teaching an English course last week. The particular lesson was on how bad tariffs were and how great free trade was. (Pearson, the publisher, FT etc). With FT texts on US suspicon of China. The book was from 2018 or so. We were all laughing sarcastically all though.

stevieinselby.bsky.social•13 days ago

Just change present tense to past tense and it'll be fine...

nmwilkinson.bsky.social•13 days ago

"Historically,..."

judeet44.bsky.social•12 days ago

When I first started studying geology with the OU the concept of plate tectonics was still fairly new.

stephen1958.bsky.social•13 days ago

Easy. Just shift to past tense.

laura-elseplace.bsky.social•13 days ago

I remember friends sitting Higher Modern Studies at FE College as the Iron Curtain fell after the exam questions had been written but before the exam… they were coming out of the papers in a terrible state, poor souls…

brendanfmartin.bsky.social•13 days ago

A great opportunity, surely, to show knowledge of all that history and add that Trump is powerfully proving those interconnections, albeit by default.

ipottsy.bsky.social•13 days ago

😁

winter02.bsky.social•12 days ago

A level exams such as Law, have a date limit so you are expected to know the facts up to that date rather than having to update as news breaks or laws are passed.

robertrodden.bsky.social•13 days ago

Well, now they have actual data to contrast with that viewpoint, showing what happens when the US doesn’t use trade to make friends…

danzacrose.bsky.social•12 days ago

Just put the word historically before any answer. For example - the USA has historically used x and y to promote and increase their trade.

loukangaroo.bsky.social•13 days ago

I was studying US/Soviet Relations in the Nuclear Age (Modern History) for the Aussie Higher School Certificate in 1991.

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