Сдаем кандидатский экзамен. Учебное пособие

of today's farming practices and the "curiously perverse economic incentive systems" that prop it up, namely taxpayer subsidies.

Today's food system works against those growers and consumers who want sustainably produced food, the prince said, and "favours overwhelmingly" intensive agriculture which leads to environmental damage. "And so this raises an admittedly difficult question – has the time arrived when a long hard look is needed at the way public subsidies are generally geared?" said the prince. "Could there be benefits if public finance were redirected so that subsides are linked specifically to farming practices that are more sustainable, less polluting, and of wide benefit to the public interest?"

In his 42-minute speech at Georgetown University, the prince did not specifically name Europe's Common Agricultural Policy which makes up nearly half of the European Union's budget and distributes money to farmers across the union. According to FarmSubsidy.org, an independent watchdog of EU agricultural subsidies, Prince Charles's Duchy of Cornwall farms received a minimum of Euros 1.45 million between 2000 and 2009. His mother, the Queen, received even more, a minimum of Euros 8.1m.

Charles suggested that governments were already making similar interventions to green the economy, with subsidies to encourage the development of renewable energy. It would not be such a stretch, therefore, for governments to encourage

for changing the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed as well as offering admiration for Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, who introduced the conference.

Words and word combinations

1. overhaul – осмотр, контроль

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2.perverse – противоречивый, изощренный

3.incentive – намерение; стимул

4.quippe – острить

5.prop smth. up – поддерживать, одобрять

6.to be geared – быть запущенным, приведенным в дей-

ствие

7. a watchdog – наблюдатель, контролер

Questions for the discussion:

1.What did Prince Charles propose to do concerning farming?

2.Why does intensive agriculture always lead to environmental damage?

3.What was the prince’s speech at the conference about?

4.What was a political strategy made by state governments aimed at?

TEXT 5

«The most surprising demographic crisis» (The Economist)

A new census raises questions about the future of China’s one-child policy.

Does China have enough people? The question might seem absurd. The country has long been famous both for having the world’s largest population and for having taken draconian measures to restrain its growth. Though many people, Chinese and outsiders alike, have looked aghast at the brutal and coercive excesses of the one-child policy, there has also often been a grudging acknowledgment that China needed to do something to keep its vast numbers in check.

But new census figures bolster claims made in the past few years that China is suffering from a demographic problem

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of a different sort: too low a birth rate. The latest numbers, released on April 28th and based on the nationwide census conducted last year, show a total population for mainland China of 1.34 billion. They also reveal a steep decline in the average annual population growth rate, down to 0.57% in 2000-10, half the rate of 1.07% in the previous decade. The data imply that the total fertility rate, which is the number of children a woman of child-bearing age can expect to have, on average, during her lifetime, may now be just 1.4, far below the “replacement rate” of 2.1, which eventually leads to the population stabilising.

Slower growth is matched by a dramatic ageing of the population. People above the age of 60 now represent 13.3% of the total, up from 10.3% in 2000. In the same period, those under the age of 14 declined from 23% to 17%. A continuation of these trends will place ever greater burdens on the working young who must support their elderly kin, as well as on government-run pension and health-care systems. China’s great “demographic dividend” (a rising share of working-age adults) is almost over.

The government denies the one-child policy was irrelevant. It insists that, thanks to the policy, 400m births were averted which would otherwise have taken place, and which the country could not have afforded. Ma Jiantang, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, insisted “the momentum of fast growth in

the government’s hard-line defence of its one-child policy. One is a perhaps understandable view that China is unique, and that other countries’ experience is irrelevant. A second is that, though the policy may not have done much to push fertility down at first, it might be keeping it low now. A third is that, if controls were lifted, population growth might rise. In fact, there is little justification for such fears: in practice, the one-child policy varies from place to place; it hardly applies to China’s minorities and is more lightly applied in rural areas – and there is no population

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boom in those parts. Anyway, argues Joan Kaufman of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, official support for the policy is only partly to do with its perceived merits: it is also the product of resistance by China’s family-planning bureaucracy.

Mr Wang and his colleagues argue the one-child policy should go. The target reductions in fertility rates were reached long ago. Current rates, he says, are below replacement levels and are unsustainable. The time has come for the first big step: a switch to a two-child policy. Research by his group suggests few families in China would choose to have more than two.

There are signs that the academics are succeeding in their campaign to make the population debate less politicised and more evidence-based. Mr Ma of the National Statistics Bureau spoke not only of adhering to the family-planning policy, but also of “cautiously and gradually improving the policy to promote more balanced population growth in the country”. In his comments on the census, President Hu Jintao included a vague hint that change could be in the offing. China would maintain a low birth rate, he said. But it would also “stick to and improve” its current family-planning policy. That hardly seems a nod to a free-for-all. But perhaps a “two-for-all” may not be out of the question.

Words and word combinations

1.look aghast – быть потрясенным чем-либо; быть в ужасе от чего-либо

2.coercive excesses – принудительные крайние меры

3.fertility rate – коэффициент фертильности; (фертильность – способность зрелого организма к воспроизводству)

4.irrelevant – неподходящий, несоответствующий, неуместный

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5.avert – предотвращать что-либо

6.adhere to – следовать курсу, программе

7.in the offing – в перспективе

Questions for the discussion:

1.What’s the attitude to the one-child policy in China?

2.What are the latest data of the annual population growth rate and the total fertility rate?

3.What are the reasons for the government’s hard-line defense of the one-child policy?

4.What could this policy lead to in the offing?

TEXT 6 «Admission impossible»

(The Economist)

It will not be easy to reform the complex rules on school admissions.

Is your son an accomplished violinist? Buy a house near one of the many state-funded schools that can now prefer pupils with musical talents, and he will sail to the front of the queue for a place. Is little Johnny a whizz at maths? Alas, only a few scattered patches of England now have academically selective “grammar” schools that can legally admit him ahead of his innumerate friends. Piety might help: have him baptised and attend services regularly and he could win a place at one of the many high-performing church schools.

England’s state schools have an absurdly complex rule book for how they may and may not choose their pupils. (The rest of Britain goes its own way in education policy.) This infuriates conscientious parents and forces them to resort to all sorts

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of tricks to get their offspring a decent, publicly-funded education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, is bent on overhauling the rules. But it will not be easy.

Past changes to the admissions rules have sought to make it harder for determined, middle-class parents to work the system to get their children into the best establishments. Schools can no longer interview parents as part of the application process – those that did were suspected of favouring well-heeled families above poorer ones – and even the price of uniforms is regulated. Six codes have appeared over the past 12 years. The most recent one, devised by Mr Gove’s Labour predecessor, Ed Balls, runs to 126 pages.

Mr Gove wants to modify the code so that children do not suffer if their parents cannot afford to pay for extra music lessons or the higher cost of a home near a good school, or who do not wish to feign religious faith. He has an ally in the bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard, who is overseeing a revision of the Church of England’s school-admissions code, which operates alongside the state’s version. The church runs 4,800 state-funded schools, of which about half are permitted to reserve some or all of their places for children from churchgoing families (which tend to be better-off). Each is free to determine how many places to retain for regular worshippers but Bishop Pritchard thinks they should limit the proportion to about 10%. If his ideas gain clout within the church, that could greatly improve the lot of the poor.

One in six of England’s state secondary schools has now broken away from the control of local authorities to become an “academy”, and their numbers are expected to double in the coming year or so. Academies are exempt from their council’s admissions policies, though they remain subject to the national code and so, for example, cannot select by academic prowess. Parents who set up state-funded “free” schools face the same restrictions and cannot favour the founders’ children under the existing rules.

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Giving such schools a bit more freedom to manage their admissions would make sense – it should help them to build a clear identity and thus a stronger esprit de corps. But squaring this with Mr Gove’s promise to ensure that more parents get their first choice of school will be a difficult trade-off. At best his revised rule book seems likely to end up only a little less complex than its predecessors.

Words and word combinations

1.a whizz – знаток ч-л; мастер, дока

2.infuriate – приводить в ярость, бешенство

3.conscientious – добросовестный, сознательный

4.feign – притворяться, симулировать; создавать ложные представления

5.piety – набожность

6.gain clout – добиться влияния, поддержки

7.prowess – мастерство, умение

8.esprit de corps – чувство солидарности; забота о чести

9.square – (зд.) урегулировать, согласовать, приводить

всоответствие

Questions for the discussion:

1.What can help to have your child admitted to England's state schools?

2.What are past changes to the admission rules aimed at?

3.How can the Church of England’s school admissions code operate with the state’s version?

4.What are the differences between “academies” and statefunded “free” schools?

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TEXT 7

« Loud talk, small stick» (The Economist)

Plans to cut the number of foreign students are less draconian than feared

The home secretary, Theresa May, has a distinctive approach to immigration policy: she threatens Armageddon and settles for a middling skirmish. The explanation lies in her Conservative Party’s pre-election pledge to cut annual net immigration, running at 226,000 in the year ending last June, to “tens of thousands” over the course of this parliament. The pledge has proved difficult to fulfil (because British emigration keeps dropping, and because European Union citizens cannot easily be kept out) and controversial (arguably the economy needs immigrants to grow).

There are non-political reasons to want to discourage some types of foreign students from coming to Britain. Despite a reform of the regime by the previous government, abuses remain. Some young people see a study visa as a quick ticket to the British job market and eventual settlement. But teaching foreigners is a thriving business. Overseas students pump at least £10 billion a year into the economy. The higher fees they pay at university subsidise domestic students. Every ten full-time university students from outside the EU create three full-time British jobs, according to Ursula Kelly of Strathclyde University. These benefits are spread around the country, not concentrated in London and the south-east. Many think it would be mad to imperil this proven source of economic growth.

Mrs. May expects her new measures to cut non-EU student numbers by at least 70,000-80,000 a year, or more than a quarter

a work in progress. Private colleges recruiting foreign students will be subject to tighter scrutiny. Most students will have to show greater proficiency in English and more robust proof that

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they can support themselves. The rules on part-time working are to be tightened. But three big threats have been averted. Educators feared that all courses below university level might be ruled off limits to overseas students, even though between 40% and 50% of foreigners at British universities had taken an earlier course in Britain, usually to hone language or study skills. That will not be the case. They worried too that the two-year poststudy work privilege, a big draw for international students, would be revoked altogether. It has not been.

This is not Mrs. May’s last word on immigration. She will be back shortly, she says, with proposals to narrow the family-reunion immigration route (including a crackdown on sham marriages), and then to make it harder for holders of time-limited visas for study or work to convert them into permanent settlement. Expect more apocalyptic proposals – and, with luck, more discreet retreats.

Words and word combinations

1.skirmish – схватка, борьба, состязание

2.pledge – обязательство, обещание

3.abuse – злоупотребление; нарушение

4.imperil – подвергать опасности

5.tighter scrutiny – тщательное изучение

6.hone – «оттачивать» мастерство в ч-л

7.draw – (зд.) приманка, соблазн

8.sham marriages – фиктивные браки

Questions for the discussion:

1.What is Mrs. May’s approach to immigration based on?

2.What are the benefits of teaching foreigners?

3.What threats have been averted?

4.What are Mrs. May’s further proposals aimed at?

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