From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Subject: Re: O-levels, A-levels etc was Re: THE COMPLETE BRITISH TO AMERICAN DICT.
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 01:57:51 GMT
Summary: an American perspective on Malaysian/English levels

In article <1992Sep7.220551.10677@news.Hawaii.Edu>, gerard@caliban.soest.hawaii.edu (Gerard Fryer) writes:

(initially quoting something for which I have lost the attribution)

> |> I'm surprised Americans haven't heard of A-levels, as they are used  
> |> (like the Baccalaureate) quite widely outside Britain, to allow students
> |> from backward countries to get a recognised secondary qualification.

read: Commonwealth.  The USA opted out of this a tad over 200 years ago...
(rather before the apparatus of testing existed at any "standard" level
there or here.)  We share (the US inherits) common educational structure
-- primary/secondary/higher, but in the last category the US is totally
chaotic and -- in the more academic reaches -- as much influenced by late
19th century Germany as by English collegiate traditions.

> Here's my experience, admittedly aeons ago (late sixties).  In Malaysia
> I took the University of Cambridge GCE (overseas) exam - supposedly the
> equivalent of O-levels (the A-level equivalent at that time was the HSC

This was indeed the way that staff at Malaysian schools thought about
the different certifications.  I was a volunteer in both The English
College in Johore Bharu and Kolej Malayu in Kuala Kangsar, Perak and
taught 6th form maths in the former, 4th and 5th in the latter posting.
This was in '69 and '70.

> Ha!  I needn't have bothered.  The London A-levels were nowhere near
> the standard of the Cambridge overseas GCE (in Applied Maths, my best
> subject, I wasted much of the time searching for hidden tricks, then
> realised with disgust that there weren't any; the entire paper was
> fourth-form level).  I felt as if I had wasted my time.  Two friends

It was, indeed, my impression that 6th form maths in Malaysia was nothing
but a grab bag of tricks.  Challenging, possibly instructive (though in
what I never quite figured out), sufficient to drive some students to a
sense of personal worthelessness and others to a misleading sense of
competence that would never again be called upon after the exams.

I have no idea if the exams you took were really at a lower level, not
having seen anything from them.  However, what was actively being worked
at the time was some radical change towards emphasizing larger scale
theoretical competence over the solution of pattern problems that were
a dead end as far as actual maths usage in the (current) sciences went.
The same change was underway in physics and chemistry and biology (I
was not in contact with any of the non-science curricula, so cannot say
anything about them.)  This change *had* occured in the A-levels and
O-levels in England, and was slated for happening -- after several
years more of discussions and politicing -- in the Cambridge exams.
I am sure that the curmudgeonly will see the changes as all part of the
sad decline in standards that has, of course, been continuous since Plato.
What is notable here is that the ex-colonies were, in some sense, one
generation behind mother England.  Some of this will be mere inertia,
some the no-longer-automatic sway of English examples overseas, and some
as your Chinese friends suspected may well be bias:

> harder and covered a broader range of topics.  Our conclusion was
> inevitable: the overseas exam was intentionally made more difficult to
> screen out uneducated wogs.

> I am English but in Malaysia I had been coopted into the Chinese
> community.  For my two Malaysian friends, both Chinese, I could not
> return the favour; England's xenophobia was too strong.

I suspect that the racist bias is only a fraction of the truth, maybe
less than half.  Education was (and remains) in ferment throughout the
60s and later.  As an American, I am hardly in a position to lecture
others about racism; I will note, however, that I was uncomfortable
around the more transient ex-pats in Malaysia, feeling in no position
to call them on some of the prejudices they apparently expected me to
share.  The "lifer" ex-pats, especially a few I met in the schools,
were much freer of traditional racist attitudes, though they sometimes
tended to buy rather heavily into local Chinese/Indian/Malay stereo-
typing (it is very seductive, when confronted by a wildly diverse and
new ethnic mix to "simplify" it rather drastically.  This has anasty
tendency to cause "pre-emptive" tracking in mixed schools, like the
first one I was at.)
-- 
Michael L. Siemon			"I know of nothing -- I suspect
					not even death -- that is so fixed
mls@usl.com				in the present tense as love."
standard disclaimer					-- Jess Anderson