UNIVERSITY EXAM HOWLERS

Exam Howlers Revealed: 'Darwin Discovered Sex'The 19th century naturalist's apparent breakthrough is just one of the howlers showing how stumped students can get in exams.8:23am UK, Thursday 18 July 2013 Darwin was not only behind the theory of evolution, according to a student
EmailSex was discovered in the 1800s by Charles Darwin and his contemporary Gregor Mendel - at least according to one university student.

This misguided statement is just one of the bloopers lecturers have submitted to the Times Higher Education's annual exam howlers competition.

Adam Hart, a professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire, told how he was faced with an "unpleasant image" of an unlikely union between the two eminent Victorians when the student wrote: "Sex has puzzled biologists ever since it was discovered by Darwin and Mendel."

Another classroom clanger saw a student tell his tutor Nicholas Martin, a reader in European intellectual history at Birmingham University, that underwear was the secret weapon in General Franco's armour.

"General Franco was supported by right-wing panties," the student wrote in the paper on the Spanish dictator.


The famous director Hitchcock was a "torched Catholic", said one student

And a film studies student revealed several of Hitchcock's recurring themes arose because he was a "torched Catholic".

Martin McLoone, director of the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster, who submitted the entry, said: "Of course, in another era, he might well have been."

Another student at a different institution mixed up his metaphors to describe Alain Resnais' controversial Holocaust documentary Night And Fog as a "hotly contested potato".

Jackie Eales, professor of early modern history at Canterbury Christ Church University, submitted an entry which stated: "Britain under the Cromwellian Protectorate was a piranha state."

There was also some confusion about the benefits of Nigella seeds and the effect of Ebola.

In one paper a student revealed that "Nigella seeds can cure all disease except death" while another student suggested that "Ebola could lead to death, in some cases fatal".

The mistakes were submitted by staff at University of Westminster, including Keith Redway, a senior academic in microbiology and molecular biology.

the only confusion is students not being taught to proof read properly. Most of these "howlers" consist of the spell checker automatically correcting, but using the wrong word, and the document has then not been proofread before submission. There's no stupidity here, just sheer bloody laziness.

There was I thinking that sex was a mere 50 years old, having been invented by the Beatles!

This is all the more reason to NOT have spellcheckers, and calculators banned from the classroom , Computers too for the younger children. It makes for lazy pupils.

There was a teacher in my school who still has me quaking at the knees at the memory of incurring her wrath.

We were having a mental arithmetic test and it was strictly forbidden to write any calculations down on paper. The dreaded Miss D was walking round the class to check that nobody was cheating and she stopped at my desk and picked up a piece of blotting paper on which there was some scribbling.

I was able to pass that off as innocent doodles but, had she turned over the paper, she would have seen that I had indeed been working out the answers.

Phew, what a relief that was!

Not Born Yesterday wrote:There was a teacher in my school who still has me quaking at the knees at the memory of incurring her wrath.

We were having a mental arithmetic test and it was strictly forbidden to write any calculations down on paper. The dreaded Miss D was walking round the class to check that nobody was cheating and she stopped at my desk and picked up a piece of blotting paper on which there was some scribbling.

I was able to pass that off as innocent doodles but, had she turned over the paper, she would have seen that I had indeed been working out the answers.

Phew, what a relief that was!

My Form Mistress when I was in Huniors used to terrify us, if you had your desk lid up she would come along and smash it on your head, talking in class got a rap on your knuckles with a Pencil and guess what her bane was....Miss Wellbeloved, I kid you not!!! However, we did learn our timtestable off by
heart could add and subtract, divide, and spell.