The quality of education....

It's that time of year again. Many extremely intelligent students get their A-Level result(s). Personally, it's been a long time since I did my A-Levels, 1992 in fact (14 years????), but one thing never changes.... the ability of other people to criticise. How many times do you hear it on the news? "A-Level's are getting easier", "They were harder in my day". The fact is that every year, thousands of students say to the world, "Yes! I've shown what I can do".

In my mind, the people who criticise the exams are the kind of people, usually much older, who will one day say "Oooh.... the youth of today!", or "They don't know they're born!". It's almost like some people are so insecure of their own intelligence, and defensive about the quality of their own education, that they seek to cast dispersions about the current batch of students. It's a real shame.

I honestly can't see why certain people can't understand that younger generations may actually (shock, horror!) be getting more intelligent. I consider myself intelligent, but that doesn't mean
I don't think that my two kids will easily surpass me in years to come. On the contrary, I expect them to significantly eclipse their old man. Teaching improvements and resource improvements (where was the Internet / Google Earth etc. when I was at school?) all contribute to a major improvement in society. Average IQs increase year on year, every other metric increases.
Okay, so there may be an element of 'knowing how to pass the exam', but why is that a problem? Most exam / learning situations in life are about getting an advantage, I didn't pass my Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) without looking at the scope of the exam (such as the Oracle curriculum), nor did I pass my driving test without reading the highway code).

One of the best quotes I heard was on the BBC website, stating "So, exams are getting easier because more people are passing them? More people are reaching the summit of Mt. Everest, it doesn't mean that it's getting smaller". Perfectly said.