A-LEVEL history students are campaigning to alter their examination marks after they failed to understand a question.Some pupils have set up a Facebook Group, which makes for interesting reading. There's also a thread on the same subject at the Student Room site.
They say the phraseology in an exam paper describing Hitler as “a despotic tyrant” confused them and meant they did not know how to answer.
What I cannot understand is how pupils could have reached A Level in history without having come across despots and tyrants. What have their teachers been talking about? Have these pupils done no secondary reading? Used dictionaries?
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I would like to point out it was not the word tyranny that confused most students. It was the word Despotic. I'm not a history student, but I am an A level English Langauge student who got 5 A's in AS levels and 7 A* at GCSE, including English and History, and I had never heard of that word either. My Dad, who also took A level English, didn't either, proving that it wasn't known 30 years ago either. The exam is not one of understanding English, and phrases which must be learned are outlined on the sylabus, of which this was not
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