Authors can have different viewpoints, but their opinions can sometimes be similar. Review opinion 1 (on pages 68-69) and opinion 2 (on pages 70-72).

Work in groups. Read the statements. Discuss whether Muhammed and/or Ford would agree with them. Put a check (Ö ) in the box if you think they would agree. Give evidence to support the statement.

	Mohammed: Commentator (Opinion 1)	Ford: Author (Opinion 2)
African-Americans are at an educational disadvantage when they study in all-black schools.
Preserving an African-American identity should be an educational goal.
American schools should be more concerned about their lack of excellence than about segregation.
Busing has been an effective remedy for integration.
Integrated schooling implies African-Americans integrating into the mainstream.
The Brown v. Board of Education decision should be celebrated.
Government should be responsible for educational reforms.
Taxation is a solution to inequality in education.

? Writing

After you have distinguished the opinions of the commentator and the author, express your own opinions on the above statements in writing.

 

& Reading 3

In some US universities and high schools there are summer schools where high school students may repeat the courses to improve their grades or they may take up some additional courses to get better opportunities while applying for admission to a university. College students attend summer schools for the above-mentioned reasons and also to speed up getting a degree by earning additional credits. (The classes are paid for on per hour basis). There have been years of debate to introduce a year-round compulsory schooling. Below is the text about an experiment, which was made in Los Angeles.

Year-Round Schooling is Voted in Los Angeles

The LA. board of education has voted to put all its schools on a year-round schedule. This decision does not necessarily increase the number of school days, but it is expected to save money on new construction and allow more efficient use of existing school facilities. Students would go to school for the same total 180 days a year, but they would have more, shorter vacations. In crowded schools, vacations would be staggered to ease the demand for space. Educational experts would study closely whether the benefits of a year-round program are worth the sacrifice of the traditional summer vacation. If it is proven that test scores of students are improved and performance is up, other cities will emulate the program.

The supporters of year-round education believe educators simply cannot justify that long three-month summer vacation any more. The nine-month schedule was never designed for education. It is a 19th century agricultural-economic schedule. Supporters, many from Hispanic and black inner-city areas, contend that the year-round schedules are the only economically practical way to cope with continuing influx of new students into schools that are already strained beyond capacity.

But, there is a lot of opposition simply because it’s a change. It’s a deep-seated tradition that kids don’t go to school m the summer and teachers don’t teach.

The decision in Los Angeles was driven primarily by a need to alleviate overcrowding in the schools. Besides many educators also back the theory that children learn and retain more when breaks from class-room work are shorter and academic performance often improves in year-round schools. The exact calendar to be used is still under study, but most students will either go to school on a cycle of 60 weekdays of class followed by 20 weekdays of vacation, or 90 weekdays of class followed by 30 weekdays of vacation. For example, students would have one-month vacation in August, December and April. In most crowded schools students would be broken into “tracks”, or groups that would follow overlapping schedules to ensure that school facilities are in constant use with a minimum of overcrowding.

Parents in Los Angeles had jammed hearing on the issue for several years with many protesting that vacations would be hard to coordinate, especially if children in different schools were in different schedules, and that it would be difficult for older children to find summer jobs. Others say that they would just as soon have vacation time to ski in the winter as they would have time off in the summer.

4 Do the following exercises

1. Match the words on the left with their definitions on the right:

stagger	make to house more than designed
emulate	constant inflow of large numbers
influx	make impossible
strain beyond capacity	keep
alleviate	try to do as well as or better than
jam	arrange times of events so that they do not all occur together
contend	support
back	make easier to bear
retain	state, believe

2. a) Note down the arguments for and against the idea ofa year-round compulsory schooling.

b)The issue of putting your school on a year-round schedule is to be debated at the sitting of the school board of education. Pair work. Enact a dialogue between a parent and a teacher on the issue offering valid arguments noted down from the text above.

c)Work in groups of 3 or 4 (buzz groups) and assign one of the views on the issue of a year-round schooling to each group.

d)Spend a few minutes individually thinking of further arguments you will use to back up the opinion you have been assigned.

E)Enact the debates on a year-round schooling at the sitting of the school board of education. Do your best to support those who share a similar point of view and try to persuade those who disagree.

& Reading 4

Read the text slowly and then answer the questions that follow.

School and life

In my experience the problem of what to do in life was not made any easier by those who were entrusted with my education. Looking back, it seems most odd that never once in all the years that I was at school was there any general discussion about careers. If presumably the main object of going to school is to prepare for afterlife, it surely would have been very easy and relevant to organize lectures or discussions designed to give boys a broad view of the enormous variety of occupations open to men of average intelligence. Ofcourse many boys were destined from birth to follow their fathers’ careers, but even these would have benefited by glimpse of a wider horizon. Often and often in afterlife I have come across people doing jobs that I had never dreamed of before, and which would have thrilled me had I been told about them at school. I suppose the reason for this extra-ordinary omission is that so many schoolmasters had themselves such a restricted view. Spending all their time working to a rigid curriculum, the passing of examinations by their pupils gradually became the whole object of their working life. I recognize the importance of being made to learn things that one does not like, but surely it was not good to give the young mind the impression that all education was a form of mental gymnastics. For example, I used to find geometry rather fun, and when I still had the naive idea that what I was being taught might have some practical value, I asked what geometry was for. The only answer I ever got was that it taught one how to solve problems. If, instead, I had been told the simple fact that the word was derived from the Greek ge, the earth, and metron, a measure, and that the meaningless triangles that I was asked to juggle with formed the basis of geographical exploration, astronomy and navigation, the subject would immediately have assumed a thrilling romance, and, what is more, it would have been directly connected in my mind with the things that most appealed to me.

My experience in this connection may have been unfortunate, but it was by no means unique; many of my friends who went to different schools confess to a similar experience, and complain that when they had completed their school education they had not the remotest idea of what they wanted to do. Moreover I do not think that this curiously detached attitude towards education was confined to schools. It had been intended that I should go to one of the great universities. I was tepid about the idea myself, for I had developed a dislike for the very thought of educational establishments. However, the prospect of three extra seasons in the Alps was a considerable incentive, and by dint of an enormous mental effort I succeeded in cramming sufficient Latin into my head to pass (at my second attempt) the necessary entrance examination. In due course I went to be interviewed by the master of my prospective college. When I was asked what subject I proposed to take when I came up to the university, I replied, somewhat diffidently, that I wanted to take Geology - diffidently, because I still regarded such things as having no reality in the hard world of work. The answer to my suggestion confirmed my fears. “What on earth do you want to do with Geology? There is no opening there unless you eventually get a first and become a lecturer in the subject.” A first, a lecturer - I, who could not even learn a couple of books of Horace by heart! I felt that I was being laughed at. In fact I am sure I was not, and that my adviser was quite sincere and only trying to be helpful, but I certainly did not feel like arguing the matter. I listened meekly to suggestions that I should take Classics or Law, and left the room in a state of profound depression. “Oh Lord, ” I thought, even here I won’t be able to escape from Kennedy’s Latin Primary with which I had been struggling for ten years.

 

4 Do the following exercises

⇐ Предыдущая45678910111213Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: