By Sam Wolfson
Every 16-year-old in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has to take GCSE exams. They're sort of like American SATs, but you can take them in doss subjects like Religious Studies and Citizenship. The exam results come out on the Thursday before Reading and Leeds, which means the festivals have become the place teenagers go to either celebrate their achievements with warm Tuborg and dodgy pills or drown their sorrows with warm Tuborg and dodgy pills.
BUT
How will this year's Reading line-up cope with recent GCSE exam questions? Let's fucking find out.
Noisey: "Suffering makes you stronger", do you agree? (Religious Studies)
Pete: The internet has made it so that suffering makes people weaker. They don't have a good grasp of what suffering really is. I mean, yesterday I tweeted I was gonna be gone till November. I just meant that I wasn't going to see my own bed till November, at the end of our tour. Then everyone started tweeting back "I'm crying right now! why are you leaving the band!"
It's a Wyclef Jean reference taken to a national emergency."People cannot know God through TV". Discuss. (Religious Studies)
Andy:There's no God, so you'll never know God through anything. But I think people do - a lot of people like think that the Kardashians are God. They definitely worship them.
A lot of people probably worship you.
Probably. Hopefully we're all headed to the same place, whatever that may be.
Name one political party in Wales. (Citizenship)
Um... the Welsh Conservative...
Party?
Yes! I was pretty close!
"Married couples should never divorce". Discuss. (Religious Studies)
As a person who's been married but got divorced, I feel like you shouldn't have to commit to being unhappy for the rest of your life. I don't know if some people are even meant to get married. I have friends who live together and are super committed to each other, but aren't married. And in America more than half the states think that gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married. So that's kinda a bummer.
Bad vibes. OK. Do you agree that the voting age should remain at 18? (Citizenship)
I don't know about worldwide, but in the US, in the two most recent presidential elections it was definitely the youth vote that made the difference, and it seemed like they were the people that were super informed. But I don't think it would work if people got drafted into the army again, and the voting age was still 18. If people had to go to war, but couldn't choose elected officials then it wouldn't work at all.
It's pretty scary that you can go to war before you can vote. But that's kind of a downer to end on. How about "Children are a gift not a right". Discuss. (Religious Studies)
I agree. I think that children are a gift... I'd like to give you a gift right now Andy
I'm sure I can spin that into a really great headline about inter-band romance.