1.2. Lead-in Discussion. Answer the following questions.

1. How important is a university education in your country?

2. Does a university qualification guarantee a good job?

3. How easy is it to get into university?

4. What are the most useful subjects to study?

5. Some people say that school years are the happiest in their life, but for others the recollections of their school years are unpleasant moments. What is your personal experience?

FOCUS 2

2.1. Read the article and find the information about the changes, which have been introduced in Eton; explain the title of the article. A New Kind of Elite

Twenty or so boys dressed in white tie and tails are being taught at Eton College, the exclusive boys’ school 35 km west of London. For centuries Eton – founded in 1440 – has been synonymous with privilege, the place where Britain’s elite is given its polish and an air of entitlement. But this class doesn’t feel like a hothouse for languid aristocrats. The boys are not declaiming Latin but staring into computer screens, trying to master the database program Microsoft Access. Though a student once said that typing was something he could leave to his daddy’s secretary, the school insists that all first-year students learn to type, so that they can use their mandatory laptops on the fiber-optic network that links every classroom and bedroom to teaching resources and the Internet.

For years, many of modern Britain’s proud meritocrats have thought of the school as a four-letter word, typifying everything that was wrong about a class-bound society, a generator of snobs who didn’t deserve yet another benefit from a nation that had long awarded life’s glittering prizes to those who were lucky enough to have been born to land, money, privilege or all three. But Eton is having a makeover. It’s trying to marry the lessons about educating adolescent boys acquired over 566 years to the spirit of a less hierarchical, more competitive, more globalized Britain, and the effort is bearing fruit. If it plays its cards right – especially if it can open its doors not just to the very bright sons of the wealthy but to the brightest boys there are, anywhere – Eton has a decent shot at becoming the nursery for a 21st century (male) elite. And it won’t be just a British elite, either.

In much of Britain today, being an Etonian is not something you really want to brag about. The well of resentment is too deep. Rory, a student in his fourth year still regrets answering honestly on a transatlantic flight when his seatmate asked where he went to school. “For six hours he kept making snide remarks,” he says.

It’s not because Eton lacks famous alumni. Its graduates include 19 British Prime Ministers, the founder of modern chemistry Robert Boyle, the Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, economist John Maynard Keynes, writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Orwell, Princess William and Harry, the fictional James Bond, even a Roman Catholic saint – as well as generations of less illustrious worthies. The problem is that in a more meritocratic age, Eton became synonymous with “English aristocrat.” Its well-wrong image is as a finishing school for not-necessarily-deserving boys whose parents can afford $44,000 in fees each year (Harvard costs nearly the same) to ensure they develop the easy confidence, posh accent and useful contacts that will guarantee access to the top of British society.

A visitor to the school is struck by Eton’s pungent combination of beauty and history that makes it seem, though it’s in the middle of a small town, a world apart. There really are endless green fields, a soaring 15th century chapel, rooms where centuries have carved their names and a courtyard lined with plaques commemorating thousands of Old Etonians killed in service to their country. Not just the uniform of white tie and black tailcoat, vest and pin-striped trousers, but a collection of customs and slang whose mastery confers membership in the brotherhood. Teachers are “beaks”, the three school terms are called “halves”, “wet bobs” are rowers, “tugs” are the 70 especially bright King’s Scholars, who live together in a house called “College” on reduced fees, as stipulated by the school’s founder, Henry VI.

Of course this breeds insularity and exclusivity; the upside is intensity. Classes are small, teaching is often passionate the boys work hard. By custom, to show the respect they want the boys to give it, teachers must mark written work within 24 hours. They’re given a lot of latitude on how to teach and are well paid but they’re also expected to coach athletic teams and help with extracurricular activities.

One parent says what she likes best about Eton is that her son is “on his own, but not alone.” There are no enforced study periods. Boys are expected to manage their own busy lives. They live in houses with about 50 others, each with his own bedroom, overseen by a senior teacher in residence, perhaps with his own family; this housemaster, whose standard term is 13 years, keeps a close eye on his charges. The reports he writes to a boy’s parents are often gems of shrewd character dissection. The ethos is intimate, reinforced by a compulsory daily meeting of all teachers, who assemble in their gowns to hear a few announcements and then rapidly transact business about individual boys.

A paradoxical result of all this careful human cultivation is that for many, Eton becomes hard to outgrow: a more intense experience, at more formative time, than anything that comes after.

Modern Eton is less of a hothouse, less self-involved and all-consuming. The practice of “fagging”, where younger boys acted as servants to older ones, ended in 1980. Corporal punishment is banned. The boys are allowed out more on weekends. The role of women is still peculiar: with the exception of teachers’ wives, the few present are mainly “dames” who run the domestic side of the boarding houses and maids. But there are a few women teachers and more are coming.

All in all, it’s a good time for Eton. It has only a handful of true competitors at the top of the private-school heap, plenty of money and applicants, and it has honed its procedures to identify the smartest boys.

But a school this old knows a few things about adapting to the times – so Eton is embarking on a campaign to offer more financial aid. Already 13% of boys receive help because their parents can’t afford to pay in full, worth on average half their fees. That costs the school about $4 million a year – out of income from an endowment of $315 million. To raise the share of students getting aid to about 30%, Eton wants to boost its endowment by at least $90 million.

Now 5-7% of Eton students are foreign, and the boys’ range of nationalities and ethnicities is increasing. But Eton’s leaders do not aspire to build an empire. On their own turf, their goal is to preserve quality, reform slowly, and set an example others will want to follow. Those who graduate from Eton will always have a good start in life. But they need not be snobs. And, as the school has a bug chance to prove, they need not all be privileged when they show up.

Source: Time, 2006, June 26

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