Teaching topics that rarely, if ever, come up in the exam

Wait! Before you say, “What an irrelevant article this is, because exams have been cancelled this year”, bear in mind that (a) they haven’t been cancelled everywhere in the world as far as I know, and (b) presumably they will come back at some point.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me explain why I felt it necessary to teach certain topics even though they almost never popped up in the exam paper. The course in question was ‘A’ Level Economics, but don’t allow that specificity to deter you from reading the remainder of this article. I believe the same considerations apply to any course, including Computing.

Important questions

The questions that one needs to ask oneself are:

1. Do I want my students to learn this subject, or do I want them to become thinkers in this subject? For example, do I want my students to learn Computing, or to think like computer scientists? Or, in my case: do I want my students to learn Economics, or how to think like economists?

2. Do I want my students to pass the exam, and then forget the subject matter, or do I want them to become knowledgable and useful members of society?

On the first question, I always took the view that if I taught my students how to think like an economist, they would be able to work out the answer to most exam questions from first principles. That’s a lot more efficient than trying to learn possible questions and answers in case they come up. My experience has never proven me wrong in this respect.

On the second question, I think there’s a moral dimension to it. For example, I think even if issues like the inherent possible bias in algorithms rarely appear in the exam paper, they should still be taught. What’s the point of turning out students who can obtain an A* in the exam and yet not have enough knowledge or understanding with which to navigate the world, or to create their own programs with minimal bias?

The topics

Here are the topics I taught, and why, even though they rarely cropped up in the exam paper.

The European Union

IN 1975 the UK had elected to remain in what was then the Common Market, but given the plans set out in the Treaty of Rome (1956) I knew that at some point decisions would have to be made about whether or not we wished to remain in the club. So with my students I looked at the stages of integration, from free trade area to full economic, monetary and fiscal union. With any luck some of my students will have remembered some of the issues and arguments (for and against) all these years later!

The developing world

I always thought that as citizens of the world my students should know about the problems faced by what was in those days referred to as the “third world”, and whether overseas aid worked well or not.

Road pricing

How to pay for using the roads was and is a fascinating topic because it brings so many concepts to the discussion. For example, we considered not only costs, but perceived costs (motorists always underestimate the true cost of their journeys). Thus I covered this topic because we could apply the principles covered in other topics to this one, and vice versa.

Concluding remarks

I always had the conviction that if my students loved the subject and understood its underlying principles then they would do well in the final exam without our having to predict what questions were likely to come up. I was never proved wrong. Although the experiences described above relate to my Economics teaching, I’d be surprised if the same principles didn’t apply to the teaching of ICT or Computing.