6. Culture of the usa

6.1. American Culture Characteristics

American culture is rich, complex, and unique. Although European cultural patterns predominated, especially in language, the arts, and political institutions, people from Africa, Asia, and North America also contributed to American culture. All of these groups influenced popular tastes in music, dress, entertainment, and cuisine.

Americans attend museums, operas, and ballets, as well as they listen to country and classical music, jazz and folk music, classic rock-and-roll and new wave. They attend and participate in basketball, football, baseball and soccer games. They enjoy food from different foreign cousins (Chinese, Thai, Greek, French, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Ethiopian, and Cuban). They also developed their own regional foods, such as California cuisine and Southwestern, Creole, and Southern cooking.

American culture has come to symbolize what is most up-to-date and modern. American culture has also become international and is imported by countries around the world.

In the late 19^th c. Americans who enjoyed the arts usually lived in big cities or had the money to attend live performances. People who were poor or distant from cultural centers settled for second-rate productions mounted by local troupes or touring groups.

For most of the 20^th c. the common quarrel that has absorbed many American artists and thinkers has been one between the values of a mass, democratic culture and those of a refined elite culture accessible only to the few – the quarrel between “low” and “high”.

At the beginning of the 20^th c. new technologies and new machines began to appear (the motion-picture camera and the phonograph) that made it possible for music, drama and pictures to reach more people. During the 20^th c. mass entertainment extended and the world became consumers of American popular culture. America became the dominant cultural source for entertainment and popular fashion, from the jeans and T-shirts to the music groups and rock stars and the movies. American entertainment is one of the strongest means by which American culture influences the world, although some countries, such as France, resist this influence because they see it as a threat to their unique national culture.

Answer the questions:

1. Why is American culture rich, complex and unique?

2. What does American culture symbolize?

3. What developed American culture during the 20^th c. in comparison with the previous century?

6.2. Education in the usa

The general pattern of education in the USA is an 8-year elementary school, followed by a 4-year high school. There is no single governmental agency to prescribe for the American school system; different types of organization and of curriculum are tried out.

Admission to the American high school is automatic on completion of the elementary school. Usually there is no admission examination required by a state university for those who have finished high school within the state.

Private colleges and universities, esp. the larger, well-known ones such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, have rigid requirements for entrance, including an examination.

It usually takes 4 years to meet a degree – a Bachelor of Art or Bachelor of Science. A Master of Arts or Master of Science degree may be obtained in one or two additional years. The Highest academic degree is the Doctor of Philosophy. It may take any number of years to complete the original research work necessary to obtain this degree.

The first American colleges were small and attended by an aristocratic student. The earliest institutions were established in the U.S. between mid-17^th – mid-18^th cc.:

● Harvard University (1636) – its purpose was to provide a literate ministry for colonial churches, and then it became theological training school;

● the College of William and Mary (1693) at Williamsburg, Virg.;

● Yale University (1701);

● the University of Pennsylvania (1740);

● Princeton University (1746);

● Columbia University (1754);

● Brown University (1764);

● Rutgers University (1771);

● Dartmouth College (1769).

The last three private institutions initially prepared students for careers in theology, law, medicine, and teaching.

An important development occurred in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morril Act, which donated public lands to provide colleges with the resources necessary to teach such branches of learning as agriculture and the mechanical art:

● the University of Arizona (1885);

● the University of California and Berkeley (1868);

● the University of Florida (1853);

● the University of Illinois (1867);

● the University of Maryland (1807);

● Michigan State University (1855);

● Ohio State University (1870);

● Pennsylvania State University (1855);

● the University of Wisconsin (1849).

Answer the questions:

1. What is the name of a single governmental agency to prescribe for the

American school system?

2. What well-known private colleges and universities can you name?

3. What were their students prepared for?

4. What is the essence of the Morril Act signed by President Abraham

Lincoln?