Forgive me, Ms Gadian, but you’re missing the point. You’re not being discriminated against. You’re being weeded out. It’s quite deliberate. If you can’t read or write sufficiently well to pass a multiple-choice test, you shouldn’t be a doctor.
Quite Right
July 31st, 2008 · 9 Comments
Tags: Newspaper Watch
9 responses so far ↓
1 Mark Wadsworth // Jul 31, 2008 at 10:12 am
It’s the “Answer A, B, C or D” that throws them, presumably.
2 Andy Cooke // Jul 31, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I fully concur with Pollard here.
My cricketing skills and talent are sorely lacking, although I enjoy the game. If I batted in a Test match, I’d be lucky to get any runs at all. But I’d love to captain England. Can I?
(Actually, on reflection, it looks like my batting ability is actually at the appropriate level for an England captain these days – never mind …)
3 Kay Tie // Jul 31, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Speaking from my experience (and not a dyslexic) I always found multiple choice the hardest type of exam. The alternatives are often so subtle, playing on misconceptions, that confidence in the right answer is shaken.
I don’t criticise them: they are often held to be a soft option and I think that the opposite is true.
4 Gasman // Jul 31, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Having done many multiple choice questions both at medical school and in post graduate exams I can confirm that they are very difficult, as Kay Tie says, and also they’re supposed to be – that’s the idea of exams!
If some idiotic judge(s) decide that the poor illiterate shouldn’t have to do them then it will be the end of any form of exam in this country – some-one will always be disadvantaged by being crap.
PS I know she’s dyslexic not illiterate, but in this context it amounts to much the same
5 Monty // Jul 31, 2008 at 3:46 pm
If you have ever been with someone during the process of admssion to hospital, as I often have, you will know that the staff have to go through myriad multi-choice forms during that procedure. Ticking off the blood group, whether diabetic, registered disabled, and all the blood tests and scans that need to be done or scheduled.
And after all that, the poor bloody patient can’t even order his meal selection without filling in another multi-choice form.
I don’t reckon it is feasible to expect to qualify if you can’t cope with such forms. They form the basis of inter-departmental communication.
6 Eva // Jul 31, 2008 at 3:49 pm
If Ms Gadian’s arguments were to hold, deaf people should be considered as qualified candidates for jobs as telephone dispatchers for ambulances, blind people should be permitted to be air traffic controllers, people missing limbs should be able to become firemen, and idiots should be allowed into politics…
7 Mark Wadsworth // Jul 31, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Eva: Wanted, Bling air traffic controller
8 Mark Wadsworth // Jul 31, 2008 at 4:54 pm
“Blind”, not “Bling”, obviously.
9 Eva // Jul 31, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Mark: Thanks for that and it’s on its way to friends already! But I should have known – no matter what bizarre and improbable scenario or stupidity our imagination can come up with, real life trumps us every time.
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