Exams for terrorists

Do you have an A level or AS level in biology or chemistry? Then you must be one of those evil terrorists the government is always warning us about. At least that’s the conclusion one can draw from this report in Nature:

A British resident who is under surveillance for suspected terrorist activities is being prohibited from taking secondary-school-level science courses by the government, Nature has learned.

The man, referred to as A.E., is contesting the decision in court, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind. The preliminary hearing over whether A.E. should be allowed to take AS-level courses in human biology and chemistry took place on 16 November at London’s High Court. The UK Home Office, which has an order restricting A.E.’s actions and affiliations, argues that such coursework could be turned towards terrorism. His solicitors counter that the knowledge is public, and that the furthering of A.E.’s education poses no threat.

I was in Waterstone’s the other day and they had a whole shelf of revision guides for AS levels. I guess they must be in league with the terrorists too, which demonstrates that the terrorist conspiracy is much bigger than I had hitherto suspected, and that the government is therefore right to throw away all our civil liberties to combat it.

How to get people to study science

Norm Geras writes:

If there’s a long-term decline in the number of pupils studying science, is it a good idea trying to remedy this by making science exams easier? The Royal Society of Chemistry doesn’t think so.

Nor do I.

It benefits society the more people understand science. If exams are dumbed down, and as a result, more people study science, there will be more people with science GCSEs, but each of them will know less science. But that doesn’t help society; we need people to have a greater understanding of science not a lesser.

Managing groups of people is in principle very simple: to decide what you want people to do, and what you want them not to do, and you provide incentives for them to do the things you want, and disincentives against doing the things you don’t want. This principal holds whether you’re managing a small number of people within an organisation, or managing a whole country. (Of course, the devil’s in the details).

In this case you might ask how do you incentivise kids to take science at GCSE and A level? Well you could stipulate that science exam passes count for more than non-science subjects for getting in to university, or you could offer a bounty for each science GCSE or A level passed, or you could say that every child in a year at a school gets a rewards for each child in that year who passes science exams (this might encourage a co-operativre spirit). Or you could try other incentives — no doubt some would work better than others, and it’s hard to tell in advance which would work best.

But if the government isn’t prepared to provided incentives for school students to study science then they are giving out a message loud and clear that they don’t think it is important for science to be studied. And every speech they give saying the opposite is, without incentives, a lie pure and simple.