Junior high school and high school

Students at junior high school take different lessons from different teachers who are specialists in their subjects. Students are required to study certain subjects, but they can choose which classes they take. For example, students may be required to study a science for three years, but they can choose whether to take chemistry, physics or biology. There are also many subjects that students can choose to do or to drop, without any limits at all.

At high school, students may take technical subjects such as computer programming alongside academic subjects. As in elementary school the aim is to help children develop their natural potential. Additional summer sessions enable students to catch up with work they have missed or to take a course they did not have time for during the year. When students graduate from high school they receive a diploma, a document to say that they have finished their courses.

An important part of junior high school and high school is, for many students, the increasing amount of independence and responsibility they are given. Students in high school have special names: ninth-grade students are called freshmen; tenth-graders are sophomores; students in the eleventh grade are juniors, and those in the twelfth grade are seniors. As students go through these levels, they expect to have more and more freedom.

Part of the independence of secondary education comes from being away from home for longer, and having to travel further to school. Many students go to school in a school bus which picks them up near their homes and takes them back again in the evening. 'Busing' students for long distances became necessary in some cities in order to keep a mix of white and black students in each school. At the age of 16, when most Americans learn to drive, students often go to school in their own car or borrow that of their parents.

After school, students can choose from many extra-curricular activities. These include joining clubs based on a particular interest, e.g. chess, computers, acting or cooking, working on the school newspaper or playing in a sports team. A teacher from the school spends time with each group, but as students get older they are expected to organize and run things themselves.

During the school year there are important social activities. In the autumn homecoming, the day when former students return to the school, is celebrated with a big football game and a dance. Other dances are held during the year. The most important of these is the Prom which is held near the end of the school year. Students take special care to find the right clothes for this event, which is usually limited to juniors and seniors. Younger students are very pleased if they have the chance to go as the guest of an older student.

1. Sum up the main points of Text 1 and Text 2.

2. Single out and enumerate the main differences between British and American school systems.

Main Text 3 An Education for Life?

Read through the passage and answer these questions:

1 What are the two traditional reasons for education?

2 What changes might occur in future?

3 What might make it difficult for us to adjust to any changes?

4 What evidence does the writer give to suggest that we will succeed in adjusting?

There is a problem that will touch us all - men, women and children - in the not too distant future, a problem that resolves itself into a question: what is education

5 for? At the moment most of us can answer that fairly practically and without too much soul-searching. On the lowest level education is for enabling us to cope in an adult world where money must be added

10 up, tax forms filled in, numbers looked up in telephone directories, maps read, cur­tains measured and street signs under­stood. On the next level it is for getting some kind of job that will pay a living

15 wage.

But we are already peering into a future so different from anything we would now recognise as familiar that the last of these two educational aims may become as

20 obsolete as a dodo. Basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic) will continue to be necessary but these, after all, can be taught to children in from one to two years during their childhood. But educa-

25 tion with a view to working for a living, at least in the sense of earning daily bread, may well be on its way out right now for the majority of us. Then the question 'what is education for?' becomes much

30 more complex. Because what the future proclaims is: an education is an education is an education.

In other words, our grandchildren may well spend their lives learning as, today,

35 we spend our lives working. This does not simply involve a straightforward substitu­tion of activity but a complete transform­ation of motive. We work for things basically unconnected with that work -

40 usually money, prestige, success, security. We will learn for learning's sake alone: a rose is a rose because it is and not what we can get out of it. Nor need any cynic doubt that we shall not wish to work

45 without there being any obvious end in view. Already, adult education classes are overcrowded - one friend of mine teach­ing French literature says she could have had 10 pupils for every one she has.

50 Nevertheless, we still live in a very competitive society and most of us will need to reshuffle the furniture of our minds in order to gear our children towards a future in which outer rewards -

55 keeping up with the Joneses – become less relevant than inner and more individ­ual spurs. The existence of competition has always meant doing things because they win us some essentially unconnected

60 advantage but the aim of the future must be to integrate the doing with its own reward, like virtue.

Oddly enough it is in America, that citadel of competitiveness, that the first

65 experiments in this change of mind are taking place. In that New World, there are already organisations set up to exam­ine ways in which competitiveness can be replaced by other inner-directed forms of

70 rewards and pleasures. Take one inter­esting example in a Foundation whose aim is to transform competitive sport. A tug-of-war, as we all know, consists of one team pitting its strength against another

75 team. The aim is to tug the opposing team over a line and, by doing so, win.

In the brand-new non-competitive ver­sion, things are very different. There are still two teams on either end of a rope but

80 now the aim is not to win but to maintain the struggle. As the two teams tug, any individual on either team who senses a coming victory must let go the winning end of the rope and rush over to lend his

85 weight to the other side, thus redressing the balance, and keeping the tug-of-war going as long as possible. If you actually imagine doing this, the startling fact that emerges is that the new game offers more

90 possibilities of individual judgement and skill just because victory is not the aim and the tug-of-war is ended only by defeat of those judgements and skills. What's more, I think most people would

95 get more pleasure out of the neo-tug than the old winners-take-all concept.

So could it be for learning. Most of us, at some time or another, have glimpsed one of the real inner pleasures of educa-

100 tion - a sort of one-person chase after an elusive goal that pits You only against You or, at the very most, against the dis­coveries of the greatest minds of other generations. On a more humble level,

105 most of us have already got some pleasur­able hobby that we enjoy for its own sake and become expert in for that enjoyment. In my own stumbling efforts, since last year, to learn the piano, I have seen the

110 future and it works.

from an article by Jill Tweedie in the Guardian

Look at paragraphs 1-5 and find words or phrases which mean the same as:

a can be converted (1) ...............................................

b deep examination of the mind (1) ...............................................

с manage (1) ...............................................

d out-of-date (2) ...............................................

e rearrange (4) ...............................................

i our ideas (4) ...............................................

g prepare ... for(4) ...............................................

h competing socially (4) ...............................................

i motives (4) ...............................................

j combine (4)

Now complete these statements by choosing the answer which you think fits best.

1 In the future envisaged by the writer,

a there would be no need to deal with money.

b there would be no need to communicate in writing.

с there would be few employment prospects.

d there would be few educational prospects.

2 According to the writer, the most difficult adjustment for us to make will be

a getting used to having more free time.

b working without the hope of material reward.

с seeing education as being its own reward.

d learning essentially impractical subjects.

3 Our duty towards our children will be to

a prepare them to set their own goals.

b encourage them to be more ambitious.

с improve their chances of employment.

d teach them basic moral values in life.

4 According to the writer, future learning will resemble the new-style tug-of-war in that

a there will be no possibility of failing.

b the object will be to avoid winning.

с it will depend on operating as a team.

d it will involve a personal challenge.

5 The reason for the writer's optimistic conclusion is that she has

a discovered how satisfying learning can be.

b shown a new talent for playing the piano.

с found how easy it is to develop a new skill.

d taken up a hobby for the first time.