What's wrong with this answer? Is it the student's fault if the person who wrote the question wasn't half as clever as the person answering it. As they say; "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer!" My intuition however, suggests to me that the person who gave such a witty answer, was probably slapped down for it, as there's often no place for humour in education. I personally would have allocated full marks for this answer, and used the experience as a lesson to myself for correctly wording questions in future!
I think it's a shameful indictment of modern society, but more particularly in the UK I suspect, that while saying we'd like to see more open thinking and discussion, on the one hand, when it comes to putting those ideas into practice, we get all disapproving and snooty about it!
Fortunately, in this short period I've had so far, of teacher training, has demonstrated to me that there is a significant sea-shift away from the traditional emphasis on assessment and formal teaching, towards promoting greater understanding and a concentration on more narrow topic areas. Government initiatives such as AiFL (Assessment Is For Learning) and cFE (Curriculum For Excellence) are probably going to result in the end of the Standard Grade format which is currently the norm. Many schools have already gone over to teaching subjects at Intermediate 1 and 2 instead. The winds of change, they're gonna blow!
