Are these kind of A's worth anything?

This Malaysian Today news article (from Aliran) caught my eye! I agree with the writer's assessment. I have heard too many first hand horror stories ...

A's galore - is this for real?

(Aliran) So many students these days obtain a string of A's in public examinations. And yet, most people who were in school, say 50 years ago, can recall how difficult it was in those days to obtain an ‘A’ for any subject in the study syllabus, observes Inhindsight.

I heartily congratulated my nephew on the seven A’s he got in the 2009 SPM exams. All the family are happy that he can now launch himself into the world of higher education in pursuit of his ambition to become an electronics engineer. Yet, he doesn’t appear overly impressed with this apparently ‘shining’ success. He is glad but still finds an A1 in Add Maths rather unbelievable. Some of his friends share these feelings. My nephew and his friends are not the boastful sort and in a way, they may be rightly suspicious of such “cermerlang gemilang” results, as obtaining A's in major school exams nowadays is becoming rather common.

Click here for the rest of the article. Particularly interesting for me is the comments ...

Is this a problem that is only plaguing the secondary school system and the local government universities? I think it is much wider and affects some of the local Colleges and twinning programmes based on some personal experiences. Perhaps not openly dumbing down the grades but other creative ways of bending the rules to help some students? It's the "Malaysian way" after all? Are our seminaries also affected?  I am glad that Kar Yong will not bend and compromise .... (see his interesting blog post ..."Please can you pass my paper based on ...?" )

Personally the thought of unqualified doctors and engineers in the market place scares me. I won't mention other professions ... for now.