For two long years I studied mathematics at A-level. We pored over pure
maths, applied ourselves to applied maths and nine in every 10 of us got
stuck into statistics. And do you know what I can remember from those two
years? Nothing but a rather limp joke.
One morning, our teacher Mr Jones asked us to consider the dynamic properties
of a helical spring. “Not a big spring, then?” piped up a voice (not mine)
from the back of the class. “H’a lickle spring.”
That alone is the legacy of two years’ study. You will not be surprised to
learn I failed my maths A-level. Yet it seems I’m not alone.
A rash of books is about to be published that will cater for people who once
had a firm grasp of the second law of thermodynamics and the date of the
battle of Marston Moor, but who can now only just about remember - if they
were eating fish the previous evening - which school they attended. (Marston
Moor, by the way, is a doddle because there’s a rhyme: battle of Marston
Moor, sixteen forty-four. Battle of Newbur-ee, sixteen forty-three. For the
rest of the civil war, you’re on your own.)
The first book to be published - I Used to Know That (Michael O’Mara Books) by
Caroline Taggart - is like a school textbook for anybody who has to revise
before helping a child with homework. It tells you about predicates,
oxidation, photosynthesis, equilateral triangles, isosceles triangles and
onomatopoeia.
The Universal Crammer, a book based on a similar idea, comes out in October;
while Homework for Grown-Ups by E Foley and B Coates - to be published in
August - not only covers much of the same ground but reproduces the
authentic school experience by setting tests. And you’ll probably need to
read all those books before you tackle Match Wits with the Kids, a quiz book
by teacher Jonathan Green on sale now.
These new books speak, as we say in academic circles, to a growing fear that
the British are no longer as clever as they might be. While everybody in
China and India has brains that are virtually bursting from their skulls, we
have shrunken heads that have forgotten everything we might once have known
about ablative absolutes and what became of Dido and Aeneas.
As a result, books have been pouring into this vacuum of knowledge. A surprise
hit of Christmas 2004 was Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It was a surprise
because it’s about grammar: probably the only bestseller with a chapter
devoted to the colon and semicolon. The following year’s Christmas hit was
science: Does Anything Eat Wasps?.
Even the Dangerous Book For Boys, published in 2006, wasn’t just a handbook
for making catapults and tying knots. It gave an account of the battle of
Thermopylae and a guide to the subjunctive.
Some readers, of course, won’t understand what we’re on about. They don’t need
books and revision notes: they not only know the civil war battles - even
the ones that don’t rhyme - but could probably give me a lecture on the
dynamic properties of the helical spring.
If you are one of these people, well, congratulations. If you are like the
rest of us, test the depths of your academic amnesia with our quiz.
SCIENCE
1 What is the pH of pure water?
2 Veins carry blood away from the heart. True or false?
3 The volume of a given mass of gas at a constant temperature is
inversely proportional to what?
4 How many chromosomes are there in a normal human cell?
5 Potassium, sodium, lithium, calcium. What comes next?
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
1 Name the Brontë sisters
2 “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Simile or metaphor?
3 On a bright cold day in April 1984, what time was it?
4 Robert Browning’s 1845 poem The Lost Leader - “Just for a handful of
silver he left us / Just for a riband to stick in his coat” - is an attack
on whom?
5 “By the shores of Gitche Gumee / By the shining Big-Sea-Water.” These
are the opening lines of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. What metre are they written
in?
HISTORY
1 In their proper order, which of Henry VIII’s wives were divorced,
beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived?
2 Who succeeded George IV?
3 As what are the following men better known: James Loveless, John
Standfield, James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, Thomas Standfield?
4 When were: the battle of Crecy, the signing of Magna Carta, the first
Spanish armada, the opening of the Great Exhibition?
5 Which king’s supposed cry “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”
led to the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket?
GEOGRAPHY
1 What is the highest mountain in North America?
2 Chesil Beach near Weymouth, Dorset, is a much-quoted example of what
geographical feature?
3 A curved area of water formed by the meander of a river cut off from
the main flow is known as what?
4 Where would you find the lithosphere?
5 Triassic, Jurassic - what came next?
MATHS
1 A 5ft ladder is propped up against a wall so that one end is 3ft away
from the base of the wall. How high up the wall does it reach? (For the
purposes of this quiz, the wall and the ground are perfectly perpendicular)
2 What comes next in this number series: 1 4 9 16?
3 In the opening moments of Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, the two men are tossing coins. If Rosencrantz gets
heads five times in a row, what are the chances of that?
4 A glass is perfectly cylindrical. Inside, it is 20cm deep and 8cm in
diameter. Filled to the brim, what volume of liquid will it contain?
5 Here are the points scored by five countries in last month’s rather
average Eurovision song contest: UK 14, Finland 35, Romania 45, Iceland 64,
Germany 14. What is the mean score? What is the mode? What is the median
score?
Teacher’s note: assume p (pi), on the off-chance that you
might need it, to be 3.1416
Answers
SCIENCE 1 7 2 False. Arteries carry blood away from the heart. Veins
carry blood to the heart 3 Pressure. It’s Boyle’s law 4 23 pairs 5
Magnesium. It is the activity series (sometimes known as the reactivity
series)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 1 Emily, Charlotte, Anne 2 Simile 3 In
the opening of Orwell’s novel 1984, the clocks were striking 13 4
William Wordsworth, who had accepted a government post 5 Trochaic
HISTORY 1 Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of
Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr 2 His brother William IV 3 The
Tolpuddle martyrs 4 1346, 1215, 1588, 1851 5 Henry II
GEOGRAPHY 1 Mount McKinley, Alaska 2 A spit 3 Oxbow lake 4 Under your
feet. It’s the name of the Earth’s crust 5 Cretaceous
MATHS 1 4ft. The ladder forms the hypotenuse of a right-angled
triangle. Using Pythagoras’s theorem we know that x2+32 = 52 where x
is the height up the wall. So x2 = 25–9 = 16. So x = 4 2 The next
number is 25. The sequence listed so-called square numbers (1x1, 2x2, 3x3
etc) 3 One in 32 (½x½x½x½x½) 4 Volume is 1,005.3
cubic centimetres. The volume of a cylinder is calculated with the formula p
r2 h (p, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, is
often given as 3.1416, r is the radius of the base — that is, half the
diameter — and h is the height) 5 Mean score: 34.4; mode: 14 (score
that occurs most often); median: 35 (the middle number when the figures are
arranged in order of size)
