While the idea that exams are a vehicle of meritocratic social mobility is an alluring one, it stumbles at one important point: power and wealth mean you’re much less likely to be disrupted during study for the exam, have caring demands during the exam, less likely to be ill, less likely to have un- or undertreated chronic health problems, more likely to have private tuition if needed (“A-levels are far from perfect, but in the exam hall every pupil – rich or poor – is equally afraid”, Comment). Any system that demands flawless performance on a single day is going to prioritise those who can better afford to put aside the wider world, and we ignore this at our peril.
C Shearwood
Nottingham
As Martha Gill says, A-levels make every pupil “afraid”, the tests are “high stakes” and “gruelling”, and many people experience a “ripple of nerves in the stomach” and a “recurring A-level anxiety dream”. This all supports the view that the examination system in our country contributes to the mental health difficulties experienced by our young people. Feeling “afraid” and experiencing “anxiety” do not contribute to wellbeing and do not facilitate learning.
The purpose of A-levels is, supposedly, to determine which young people can or cannot go to university. Perhaps it would be better for our young people – and for social mobility – if everyone who wished to go to university could do so, with no tuition fees (like Scotland) and no entry requirements (like the Open University). This would mean that A-levels could be abolished, enabling young people to focus on learning rather than exams.
Cormac Loane
Stourbridge, West Midlands
Cruise at the Olympics
I, like many TV watchers of the Olympics’ closing ceremony, feel deeply insulted by the interjection of the Scientology cult representative (“Tom Cruise pulled off the best Scientology stunt ever. If only he could really levitate”, Comment). This act hijacked the final celebration to what millions believe was a very well planned and executed summer Olympics of which France should be very proud.
Cruise’s intervention and the theatrics around it left a very bad aftertaste and I struggle to understand how the Olympics organising committee could have been so easily brainwashed to accept its inclusion.
Nami Darghouth
Annecy, France
Held back by Brexit
Your editorial suggests that Labour’s plan for growth is heavily reliant on ambitious targets for housebuilding (The Observer view on growth: Labour must be prepared to spend, last week). While the initiative is much needed, long overdue, sensible and should boost growth, it is a catch-up operation until a steady state is achieved between demand and supply.
The suggested extra spending/investment in health, employment services and public infrastructure are also desirable and sensible but the fundamental massive impediment to growth has still to be seriously addressed: the UK’s position, since Brexit, outside the single market and customs union, the biggest trading bloc in the world and on our doorstep. A 2016 assessment by the economic historian Nicholas Crafts put the benefit of our membership of the EU at an annual gain equivalent to about 10% of GDP, far exceeding membership and regulation costs of about 1.5% of GDP.
David Newens
Great Linford, Milton Keynes
AI hastens the climate crisis
I agree with John Naughton’s scepticism regarding AI and delivery drones (“What resistance to delivery drones shows about big tech’s disrespect for democracy”, New Review, 11 August). We should resist blind acceptance of technology for technology’s sake. The moral questioning of this attitude of inevitability and acquiescence is certainly valid, but we should also focus on AI’s central achilles heel – the issue of electricity.
AI uses massively more processing power than previous incarnations of the internet, with most of the energy expended on processing and cooling being generated from fossil sources. On top of this there is the sourcing of rare metals for circuitry, such as coltan, in conflict areas of Africa, and lithium for batteries (a core-feature of data-centres as well as of our beloved gadgetry).
The energy and pollution footprint of AI is astronomically high which is, in a way, an advantage because we can and should simply say that we are “not going there” because this technology will end up frying the climate.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
Remembering TRB
Your report on Love Music Hate Racism’s welcome campaign (Rock Against Racism is reborn as gigs planned in riot towns across Britain, News) correctly says that the Clash and Steel Pulse performed at the first RAR carnival in 1978. Two of my favourite bands, then and now. I’d have also welcomed a mention of the Tom Robinson Band, who headlined the gathering. Their Glad to Be Gay is surely one of the finest protest songs of all time.
Bernard Harbor
Dublin
Another side of Welsh history
It’s good to see that Wales’s National Slate Museum is to be improved (Museum restoration in Snowdonia will put slate back at centre of Welsh history, News).
At nearby Dinorwig, Snowdonia, is the Electric Mountain hydroelectricity plant, the largest in the UK. This used to be open to tourists, but plans to reopen its visitor centre have come to nothing and tours of the plant are no longer on offer. It ought to somehow be associated with the slate museum, which could offer some synergy and provide visitors with a notable double experience.
Harry Boggis-Rolfe
Wormingford, Essex
A fish by any other name
I hope schoolchildren in Plymouth will enjoy the fish fingers made from locally caught, lesser-known fish (Britain is obsessed with cod, haddock, salmon and tuna. Could the Plymouth fish finger help change tastes?, News)
The late Jane Grigson, author of the Observer food column for many years, mentions in her book Fish Cookery that the name dogfish will not do as “we are too closely attached to family dogs to eat anything that bears their name”.
Virginia Brown
Talgarth, Powys
