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Opinion: Exam results: how mindfulness can help you make better life choices

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 14:15:24 +0000

One of the most important events in the British education calendar is approaching: A-level results day. Beyond A-levels, choosing what you want to do, or what you want to study are two of the big decisions in life. And, as such, they are not easy ones to make. You weigh up alternative options, and find a good number of reasons behind each of them. Many in the Twittersphere are already reliving their own results day memories with one user saying: “Aaaah I remember #Alevelresults day. Led me to a glittering English Literature degree which is why I work in IT”.

Philosopher Ruth Chang – who studied law, but then switched to philosophy – has dedicated her life to the study of hard choices. She explains that when it comes to making difficult decisions, it is often not about which alternative is better, because there is no such alternative.

You might be scratching your head at this point, but just bear with me, because Chang’s philosophy is a good one. ̽��ֱ��idea is that if you are free from the illusion of a “correct” and an “incorrect” answer, you can more easily make choices in line with an outcome that is more important to you – enabling you to become the kind of person that you want to be. And it’s in this nebulous space of hard choices, that we can be the authors of our own life.

This doesn’t really make the decision any easier, but at least it makes things much more interesting. Because, it doesn’t really matter what you choose, but how you choose it. And this should be done reflectively, slowly, wholeheartedly. Definitely not as a knee-jerk reaction – not in denial, and I hope not out of panic.

Who do you want to be?

To work out which choice is right for you, you first need to decide who you want to be, and to do that, you need to know who you are – which requires careful self-observation. If you have ever tried to practice meditation or mindfulness you might have noticed how difficult it is to watch your own breath without trying to change it. But difficult as it may be, these types of exercises – which involve paying attention to the present moment on purpose and non-judgmentally – can help with (self) observation.

Recent studies show that mindfulness meditation can be effective at reducing anxiety and depression, because it reduces our tendency to react to situations without thinking, and increases our self-compassion. Mindfulness exercises facilitate our awareness of the space between a “trigger” and our response to it. They also train us in bringing our attention back to the present moment after our mind has wandered, without criticising ourselves.

With lower reactivity and higher self-compassion it is easier to explore chains of thought, emotions and sensations without immediately trying to condemn, suppress, or change them. And this carefree exploration may even help new insights to develop and change your perspective on a situation.

If you get to know yourself better, you’ll find it easier to see which things you value and enjoy most – and what you care most about. You’ll be able to come up with new plans that are aligned with these things, integrating your past, present and future – to create your own meaningful story.

So even if the career you so passionately want to do typically leads to unstable employment, which your parents have warned you off, but you know that you value passion above financial stability and feel able to manage uncertainty, then that career may be your best option. You may instead prefer an easy and predictable professional life. Or you might realise through being a bit more self-aware that your real interests lie outside your career – it’s all there to be discovered.

Mindful living

When I learnt meditation I embarked in a deep inner exploration that helped me to see what was important for me, and gave me the courage to go after my dreams. However, mindfulness should not be viewed as an answer for every problem. It is not easy, it requires regular practice, and not everyone likes it or benefits from it. Indeed, there are other ways of effectively exploring the inner self, managing emotions and maintaining a mindful attitude to life. But, at least for some, mindfulness meditation can be a great ally when it comes to making important decisions.

Developing your career can be a fantastic experience if you have chosen it wholeheartedly, even in spite of all the challenges that lie ahead. Essential to this is living in a less automatic way, reminding yourself of why you have chosen this path, and taking up the challenges with some sporting spirit, even if they end up in a career switch.

̽��ֱ��very fact that some of us are able to choose what to do in life, try a path, and have some degree of support if we fail is still, unfortunately, a rare privilege. So if we don’t take the risk and go after our dreams, who will? After all, as a friend of mine once said: “Life is the art of doing things for which you are never prepared enough.”

Julieta Galante, Research associate at the Department of Psychiatry, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Julieta Galante (Department of Psychiatry) discusses how self-observation can help you choose a career path.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Opinion: ‘Difficult’ Latin risks remaining a qualification for elite pupils

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 12:20:21 +0000

In a recent column for ̽��ֱ��Telegraph, Angela Epstein branded Jeremy Corbyn as “too thick to be prime minister”. ̽��ֱ��basis of this accusation was the Labour leader’s two Es at A-level, among his other academic adventures. In a world where jobs are won on the basis of experience and networks, one might expect Corbyn’s A-levels – taken in the late 1960s – to be ancient history. Yet the fact this argument can be made in a national newspaper shows that school qualifications matter long into one’s life, and are expected to stand for something.

Indeed, qualifications matter so greatly that the Department for Education has for more than a year now been consulting teachers and other interested parties about the reform of GCSEs. ̽��ֱ��final stages of this reform is still underway, and the government is explicit about its intention to make these qualifications “more academically demanding and knowledge-based”.

A key shift in policy is the move to measure schools’ performance or progress primarily on the basis of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), the achievement of pupils in English, maths, science, a language and history or geography – rather than English, maths and three other subjects, as has been measured previously.

What this shift appears to acknowledge by focusing on “academically demanding” subjects, is that grades at GCSE mean different things between different subjects. Not all GCSEs are directly comparable – and those which do not make it into the EBacc are understood to be absolutely “less demanding” as courses.

Certainly, this is backed up by research. In a working paper from 2006, Robert Coe of Durham ̽��ֱ�� undertook a study of GCSE subjects using a statistical model developed by Georg Rasch, a Danish statistician of the mid-20th century who specialised in psychometry. It was a comparison of the likelihood for success in different GCSE examinations, based on a pupil’s ability. Coe’s findings are graphically represented below:

Relative difficulty of grades in 34 GCSE subjects ordered by difficulty of grade C. Robert Coe, Author provided

̽��ֱ��general disparity between subjects is clear. But as Coe comments, one of the most striking things about this data is just how difficult Latin appears when compared to other subjects: it is about as difficult to get a grade C in Latin as it is to get a grade B in chemistry, or a grade A in sociology. One is further able to group subjects between those on the left-hand side of the median line – science, technology, maths and engineering subjects, languages and humanities – and those on the right-hand side, which are more vocational in character.

Degree of difficulty

It is important to remember that this is no reflection of any inherent easiness or difficulty in a subject: sociology would not exist as a degree or research specialism if one could not think about it on the same level as Latin or chemistry. What this data instead shows is that these GCSEs test different levels of skills, some of which may be more readily acquired in a lower number of contact hours and some of which take more time.

Pupil achievement appears to be measurable only in relation to the expectations for an individual exam, rather than across all GCSEs. As a result, these grade levels also reflect the typical profile of those taking these exams. In Latin, data from the Cambridge Schools Classics Project suggests that 97% of the candidates taking the examining body OCR’s Latin GCSE are in the top third of the national ability range. What this means is that a profile similar to the sociology GCSE would be useless for classing candidates.

What these profiles really reflect, however, are the groups one would have expected to take these subjects in the 1950s the peak of grammar school education. Vocational subjects, which one might imagine transplanted back into secondary modern schools, could be taught with the expectations of 16-year-olds mastering skills at one level down from the average grammar school student, studying the subjects on the left-hand side of this chart.

While both grammar school pupils and secondary modern pupils would have studied maths, history and other subjects now on the EBacc, secondary modern pupils would typically not have learned Latin: the preserve of those at grammar or fee-paying schools. Those at the top of their sets in these schools, hoping to gain entry into Cambridge or Oxford, would be the ones for whom it was most important to be qualified in Latin, which was a requirement for entrance into both of these universities until 1959.

Quod erat demonstrandum

Today, in spite of this legacy, it can no longer be assumed that the average Latin learner is at the top of the ability range for their school. Since 2000, the numbers of schools offering Latin has increased dramatically, with reportedly 50,000 pupils starting to learn the language each year. For what must be the first time in Latin’s history in the UK, the majority of schools offering Latin right now are non-selective state institutions. Yet, despite this, the numbers of entrants into the OCR GCSE qualification have declined steadily since 2000. We have a situation where more and more young people are interested in Latin and the ancient world, but ever fewer have a qualification to show for it that will survive the current reforms.

Latin has long been defended as a difficult GCSE on the basis of the challenge it offers to the brightest 16-year olds. But as long as qualifications matter, it should be a concern for us all that the middle-range of schoolchildren in this country are put into a situation whereby Latin is inaccessible to them if they want to achieve that “good” rating of A*-C on their CV and they don’t have the opportunity or time to join an after-school club.

If Latin continues to function as a badge of distinction for those at the very top – an A* more impressive than every other A* – then it is a subject that can never belong to everyone. It remains a tool for social elites, with resources of extra contact hours, study time and tutoring, to be classed on their own terms – to the detriment of those now interested in the subject who never had access to it at school before.

This is an edited version of a talk delivered by the author at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Francesca Middleton, Lecturer in Classics (Greek), ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Francesca Middleton (Faculty of Classics) discusses the reform of GCSEs and Latin's reputation as an academically demanding subject.

General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale ̽��ֱ��

Childrens talk, English & Latin : divided into several clauses

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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