Now I have to ask, is there a "second world" qualification?

There is/was. And it's not a gradation. First world means what you'd think, third world is developing countries, and second world was the communist countries. However, it has seemed clear that every time someone was suggesting Jamaica was second world what they meant was "Well, poorer than us, but not that bad, really."

I think these days it's developed country, developing country, and there's a whole semantic tangle involved with "underdeveloped" or "least developed" or whatever.

I've always heard good things about Jamaican schools here. My Jamaican friends were educated in Florida and their parents have expressed the opinion that their schools were better/harder/more disciplined. Don't know if it was just parental opinion.

One of my college professors had the following on his wall:

"Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people and love silly talk in place of exercise. They no longer stand up when older people enter the room; they contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers." Socrates 400 B.C.

I don't know if the quote is accurate, but I do believe that through the ages adults have seen young people this way.

And look what happened to Classical Greece. Totally fell. Darn kids.

Students in Jamaica take the Common Entrance exam to go from primary to secondary school (age 12). EVERY SINGLE RESULT ACROSS THE ISLAND is published in the paper each year, in conjunction with which high school the pre-teen earned their way into.

And don't think for a second that everyone (including kids) doesn't haul out the magnifying glass and pore over that thing.

In fact, after putting me ahead a year, my primary school wanted me to repeat the last year so that I'd take the Common Entrance in a year they thought I could take one of the top spots. Luckily my mother didn't care about stuff like that, and she yanked me and got me into a high school based on her genius rep with the headmistress.

Yeah, folks tend to use "Second World" country to mean "not good enough to be First World, not bad enough to be Third World" anymore.

On the education topic, here's another thing: My high school used a 5.00 scale (an A in an Honors class was worth 5.00, while an A in a normal class was worth 4.00). I've heard all sorts of reasons for this, including "the school district is artificially inflating student achievement" and "that way, someone with a shop/PE/remedial curriculum can't be valedictorian."

I'm not sure why some schools do this, although from my completely unscientific study it seems to be mostly schools in the South that do. Anyone know?

While we were mostly a 4.0-based school (Greensboro, NC, 1983-85) the honors and AP students had the chance to pull a 5.0 if they got A's in their tougher classes. I don't know that it was to punish the shop/PE/remedial folks so much as to reward the students who took the tougher academic classes. Which may work out to the same thing. But a 4.0 still counted as an A.

Brendon gets a 5.0 for A's in honors classes, and sometimes HS credit. Not that his laziness ever gets A's anymore.

I'm sleepy.

K-Bug takes two AP classes and if she earns a C, it is actually counted as a B when figuring GPA (B is an A, and an A is a "5"). I believe the HP classes are graded the same way. The difference between the two is that at the end of the AP class (May actually), they take a test which, if they pass, gives them college credit for the course.

While we were mostly a 4.0-based school (Greensboro, NC, 1983-85) the honors and AP students had the chance to pull a 5.0 if they got A's in their tougher classes. I don't know that it was to punish the shop/PE/remedial folks so much as to reward the students who took the tougher academic classes. Which may work out to the same thing. But a 4.0 still counted as an A.

I would have had such a better record if my school had done this, or what K-Bug's school did. And really, that's the argument: that when colleges are looking at GPAs, the traditional 4-point scale doesn't reflect that some classes (and some schools) are a lot tougher than others.