From: gerard@caliban.soest.hawaii.edu (Gerard Fryer)
Subject: Re: O-levels, A-levels etc was Re: THE COMPLETE BRITISH TO AMERICAN DICT.
Organization: Scum Of the Earth and Senile Tenured
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 22:54:46 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.015751.9525@cbnewsm.cb.att.com>, mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:

[Stuff deleted, including some of my post about relative levels of
A-levels in UK and overseas, especially Malaysia.]

|> 
|> 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.
|> 

That's an interesting perspective.  I hadn't thought about it that way
but you are absolutely right.  While the exams I took in Malaysia were
unquestionably harder than the equivalent exams in England, the answer
to "Were you a better mathematician for having worked through the
harder syllabus?" is definitely "No."

|> 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.

I would have agreed with the curmudgeonly when I first entered
university, but now that I face fresh undergrad faces myself I am
convinced that such reforms are worthwhile. (My pet peeve these days is
how inappropriately mathematics is taught in high school and university
in the U.S.  From what I have seen of modern texts used in British
schools and universities the same problem exists across the water.  But
that discussion is not for s.c.b.)

|> 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:
|> 
|> > 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.  

Believe it or not, that makes me feel a lot better.  Through the
jaundiced eyes of youth I was convinced that my fellow Brit was
intrinsically racist.  As a result, England felt totally alien to me.
Now I am much more forgiving.  The Mother Country calls, perhaps?

|> 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.  

Certainly the old cliches all fit.  The ex-pats I knew were mainly of
the I-own-the-place-but-I-don't-like-it school.  As a teenager in
Malaysia I was ashamed of my white skin and embarassed by the behaviour
of my compatriots.  That perspective was the inevitable result of five
years in a local school (Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur).  Had I
gone to a white school (Bourne School, for example) I would no doubt
have ended up as obnoxious and insensitive as the average lout.  The
training in race relations, however, was good for me.  I'm in Hawaii,
with its large Asian population, largely because of my experiences in
Malaysia.

-- 
Gerard Fryer  (g.fryer@soest.hawaii.edu)     | We're not worthy.
School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology | We're scum.
University of Hawaii at Manoa                |   - Wayne's World