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Over to you
I. Arrange discussions and round-table talks on the following.
1. The generation gap: myth or reality?
2. The parents choice: permissiveness or authority?
3. Is it really hard to be young?
4. Juvenile delinquency. Who is to blame: family? school? street? social conditions?
5. The terrible maladies of the young: early alcoholism, drug-taking, sexual promiscuity. Whats to be done?
6. The problems of the young: low incomes, house problems, lack of entertainments, etc.
II. Find counterarguments for the following opinions:
1. The young do not seek responsibility: they evade it.
2. The young lack noble ideas.
3. The young should be grateful to the older generation.
4. The young have had everything easy.
5. Appearance of many young men, and especially women, is repulsive.
6. The old should step aside and never interfere in the young peoples life because their time has gone already.
7. The old hold obsolete ideas which prevent the society from quick changes.
8. The old are envious because in the time of their youth they could not enjoy life as the young do it now.
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EDUCATION & STUDENTS LIFE
Before you read
I. Consider the following:
1. Do you like to study?
2. Did you like school as a child? As a teenager?
3. Is there something you learned in school that you find totally useless now?
4. How important do you think is a college education now?
5. Do you think people value education enough in our society?
6. What kinds of problems could be eased in our society by education?
II. Read the poem by Confucius, a great Chinese man of wisdom and explain his ideas reflected in the poem:
The Great Learning
When knowledge is extended,
The will becomes sincere.
When the will is sincere,
The mind is correct.
When the mind is correct,
The self is cultivated.
When the self is cultivated,
The clan is harmonized.
When the clan is harmonized,
The country is well-governed.
When the country is well-governed,
There will be peace throughout the land.
III. Which country, in your opinion, has the best education system? While studying the materials in this part of the book compose a chart which can help you to compare and estimate the educational systems in the USA, Russia, and Europe.
Reading tasks
I. Read the text The Great Learning to answer the questions afterwards:
The idea that a well-schooled society is a prosperous and stable society, and therefore that educating the people is a desirable goal for a nation, dates back at least to Confucius 2,500 years ago. Today, in the worlds rich countries, almost all children spend around ten years in classes that the state compels them to attend, usually at its expense. In the richest of the rich, around half of all children are in formal education by the age of four and a third to a half are still there at 20.
For a long period of time schooling even though in most countries it had been originally created as job training for those entering the institutions of government or religion was more about instilling character, culture and morality into young minds than passing on skills. Oriental schools looked to the works of Confucius and the sayings of the Buddha for these virtues. Those in the West looked to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and historians, at least as far as the elite were concerned. For the rest, the Bible was the main textbook.
Long before the idea took hold in the West that extending education to the masses was a responsibility of the state, the churches had come to see it as a part of their mission. As Europeans spread to new territories across the world, priests and monks set up schools, hoping to convert their inhabitants through education. Despite the growth of rationalism from the late 18th century on, the churches, or individuals with a desire to spread the Good Word, continued to be a driving force in bringing literacy to lower classes.
From the Enlightenment onwards, the idea of education as an entitlement began to take hold, and curriculums were broadened to include more utilitarian subjects such as the sciences and modern languages. But the process took time. Utility was a relative notion: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most important Enlightenment thinkers on education, considered that girls schooling should concentrate on the practicalities of being a good wife and mother.
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Nor did the governments rushed to proclaim their educational duty. The bill of rights attached to the constitution of the newly formed USA in 1789 guaranteed free speech and a fair trial, but no right to be taught to read and write. Constitutions written in the 20th century, however, show that it is now taken for granted that the state has a duty to ensure that all its children receive an education.
In many countries, the state is still unable to fulfill that duty. Sometimes the fault is that of corrupt or chaotic government. For many poor countries, even well governed ones, building schools and (still more so) the costs of keeping them running and of training teachers are both a battle for money and a race against population growth. Though the worldwide rate of illiteracy among people aged over 15 fell to 23, but that still left some 900m illiterates, more than half of them in India, only about half of whose billion people can read or write.
In the rich world, almost everyone can read and write, a stupendous change achieved mostly in the past 300 years. But literacy too is a relative term. An international study in 1997 measuring depth of literacy found that, even in highly educated Switzerland, about a fifth of all adults were at level one: they could understand the instructions on a bottle of aspirin, but nothing much more complicated.
Throughout the previous millennium, the demand for more education was spurred by technology. Chinas movable type, added to an earlier invention, paper, meant that more people had access to something to read and therefore it was worth learning to do so. In Europe, the industrial revolution at first needed large quantities of unskilled manual labor; but as it developed, there was a growing need for the workforce to be literate and numerate. In recent years access to employment has increasingly become a function of a workers level of education.
1. What role did the church play in mass education?
2. How did curriculums change from the Enlightenment onwards?
3. What can prevent the state from ensuring that all its children receive an education?
4. Why is literacy called a relative term? Who can be called a literate person?
5. Why does the development of technology spur up the demand for more education?
II. Find the following expressions in the text and translate the sentences in which they appear:
a well-schooled society; a desirable goal for nation; at its expense; instilling character; passing on skills; extending education to the masses; to convert through education; bringing literacy to lower classes; education as an entitlement; to ensure that all its children receive an education; costs of keeping them [schools] running; the worldwide rate of illiteracy; a stupendous change; a workers level of education.
III. Read the text and write out the boldface words and phrases to form the topical vocabulary:
