Well since this same comment has come from people on both sides (American friends studying abroad and saying it was easy, and foreign friends saying that, despite their superior secondary education in their native country, our university classes were difficult for them) I think there's at least some merit to this theory. It seems improbable that all of my American friends are geniuses, and all of my friends from places such as India, China, and the UK are idiots. I've even heard this from foreign professors and teaching assistants... So I'm not the first person to bring this up...

Besides, I wasn't including Canada in my comparison because Canada is just, as we all know, America Lite. Nobody really cares about what goes on up there. They've got Universities in Canada?

Teeheheehehe.

I've always had the impression that the top schools in Europe were substantially harder than the universities of Canada and the US. I don't make it a policy to ask people this stuff, but just my impression form some people I've met over the years. Of course every country has a variety within the educational system. Not all schools in the US are at the same level, nor are they up here in USA Lite. (BTW, I find the major centres of both countries to be about equivalent, and everywhere else to be as back-woods on both sides as well.) Unfortunately, it's our dollar that's truly "lite." I'm hoping someone will try to push the NAbuck currency someday.

Bruno

If you decided to stay in school, then you did so for two more years, and then you took A-level exams, and they functioned as college entrance exams. Is that right?

University entrance exams. Calling them college entrance exams in Britain would only confuse people. In Britain "college" means (as Rob said) either a place you attend between 16 and 18 to study your A-levels (that's if you don't carry on in the same secondary school; not all secondary schools offer A-levels), or, a part of one of the few universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Dublin, Aberdeen) that are in fact collections of affiliated colleges.

Cambridge and Oxford, by the way, also have their own entrance exams (for science subjects, at least), that are taken at the same time as A-levels. Or at least, they did in my day.

The only place where I suspect I'm wrong is that the people that stayed in school from 16 to 18 took the O-levels as well.

They do, yes. Usually they won't let you stay on to do A-levels unless you got fairly decent O-levels/GCSEs, although that's a lot more flexible and informal than university entrance tends to be.

And all of these exams are separate for each subject, right?

Yep.

The only other thing I'd add to Rob's explanation, is that schooling for ages 4-11 is sometimes called "primary school" and 11-18 "secondary school".

Peter

Your description doesn't uniformly describe the US. Where I grew up in New York, we had "elementary school" (grades k + 1-6) followed by "junior high school" (grades 7, 8) and high school (9-12).

The one person I knew who took a GED was completely bored with high school, after grade 9, took the GED and went to college directly.

Calvin

To think, I thought all that stuff in the Harry Potter book accurately described British schooling. Oh well. No broomsticks at all? Damnit.

Calvin

Yeah. I should have said that it varies widely across the US. In fact, when I was in 2nd grade or so, there was a brief period where there were ``6th grade centers'', which were schools that had nothing but 6th grade taught there. Very weird. I think it might have had to do with transitioning the system between junior high and middle school. Regardless, the idea is that if you don't finish those 12 years of schooling (excepting those few that get to skip a grade), you don't get a thing.

Never heard that about getting a GED early. Pretty cool. In most circles, it's considered a ``Good Enough Degree''.

The friend of mine relocated all the classes he wanted to take early. He deferred all his gym classes and introductory classes to "senior year" and took "AP" and other advanced courses for the 9th and most of 10th grade. After that, he figured he took everything he wanted to take, and opportunistically figured (early) that the GED was the exit strategy. Otherwise he would be stuck in 11th and 12th grades with the "introductory" classes and the gym classes left to furfill the graduation requirements. Pretty sneaky bastard! :-D

Calvin

Eastern Canada can get pretty wild with the accents. At some points you might swear you'd crossed the Atlantic.

You might not be able to buy these tracks in most areas but definately download some Buddy Wasisname, In particular "the Vette" and "The Yammie*". After you decipher what this Eastern Canadian (Newfoundlander) is saying laugh a lot... some funny tings is said dere by! If you can buy them... well worth it... if not I can try and get some copies to sell to fellow empeggers if anyone is interested.

*Yammie - A Ski-Doo wit a Yamaha sticker stuck on 'er"

Actually, that just reminds me of one of the most bizarre regional accents, and it's right here in my home state. On the outer banks of North Carolina (in Ocracoke, specifically), there are a group of people known as the ``hoi toiders'', in deference to how they would pronounce ``high tide''. The accent, which is really more of a dialect, is that of Elizabethan England. I've been trying to find an audio sample of these people on the web, but it's like stepping back in time. Very bizarre.

To think, I thought all that stuff in the Harry Potter book accurately described British schooling. Oh well. No broomsticks at all? Damnit.

Well, everything Rob and I have said applies to state schools, or what in the USA would be called "public schools". Private schools, the posher ones of which are confusingly known in the UK as "public schools", much more closely resemble Harry Potter's school. Except for the broomsticks. Or at least, not for that purpose. Allegedly. (UK "public schoolboy" is AFAICT the equivalent term to USA "preppie".)

I was just thinking that the UK is quite well-supplied with depictions of USA schools (My So-Called Life, Welcome To The Dollhouse, and the brilliant The Wonder Years); I bet Grange Hill isn't shown in the USA at all.

Peter

...confusingly known in the UK as "public schools"...

Agreed it's confusing. A little history (from memory, so it's probably wildly inaccurate):

Once upon a time (like in the Dark Ages), nobody went to school. Those kids lucky enough to have rich parents (nobles, etc.), had private tutors.

When the merchant class started to blossom, they wanted to educate their kids, too, but couldn't afford private tutors. This led to the foundation of schools that anyone could join, as long as they had the cash -- hence "public" school.

These days, most people use the two terms interchangeably.

Personally, I don't care -- I went to a governors' conference school .

Yeah, well i went to a Laboratory school on the campus of a major University! =P

(What's a governors' conference school anyhow?)

What's a governors' conference school anyhow?

I have no idea. My school was one, though.

These days, public/private/whatever schools usually come under the umbrella term "independent school" -- see http://www.isis.org.uk/

Schooling can vary based on district here in the USA as well. For example, I started out with one year of "preschool" at a private school. There are no public forms of this around here. I then attended "elementary" school for grades kindergarten through 6th grade. The class structure here was one teacher for everything except a few things like gym, music, art, and for those selected for it, GT or "Gifted and Talented". GT students were usually selected by a test used by the district. This is where I first got my hands on computers and programming, the courses weren't standard for all students yet. Grades were assigned for a particular subject and determined what a student needed help on.

I then moved on to junior high school, and when I started it was grades 7 to 9. This introduced the credit system to some extent, but it wasn't a huge part. Each year, students pick their own classes. There are requirements like one English class, one math class, then there are other credits used on wood shop, or other practical application classes. Each class is taught by a different teacher, and is usually the same amount of time. Some schools did a block schedule where a class was longer, but was only attended every other day, while others did a shorter class that was attended every day. This seemed to vary based on school, and wasn't a standard across the district. When I moved to 8th grade, I found myself at the top of the school, as it was now called middle school where 6th to 8th attended. When I was there, 6th graders basically did the same thing I did. But later it changed into a mixture of the two.

9th through 12th grade is high school. 9th grade for me was the first year of actually having credits matter to graduate. I picked classes again just as the last few years, but this time I had more freedom. From here until 12th grade, I needed x amount of credits in different areas to get my diploma. Credits are not standard between districts, and transferring can be a pain. Also students who did poorly but did want to continue usually has a 5th year of high school where they attended half the day. Credits were the deciding factor of advancement. if you didn't have x amount of credits, you were considered to be in the same grade the next year. Based on what you wanted to do, Advanced Placement classes could be taken. These classes taught content intended for post high school education. And most of the time students had to take a test at the end to determine their final grade, and the amount of credit they obtained to then apply towards higher education. I was always good with math, so I have a credit for Calculus I, usable at most colleges here.

The ACT is what I took (since I am on the western side of the east/west divider for schools). There are 4 different sections with scores from 1-18. Then a final number between 1 and 36 is generated as your final score. The colleges I looked at had a guide indicating if you could easily enroll. It was based off your ACT score and your grade point average (GPA) from high school. The higher the score, the less they cared about grades.

Around here, 16 was also the age you could decide to no longer attend school, though you got nothing for your credits. The GED can be taken for the equivalent of a high school diploma, but some places of employment will deny GED applicants. I know a few people with one, but have never asked much about it. I know they attended some night classes at the high school before taking a test to get the diploma.

Most private schools follow a similar model to this to help with transfers into or out of the public system.