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A) Read it carefully and note down the arguments for and against the idea of a year-round compulsory schooling.
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Year-Round Schooling Is Voted In Los Angeles
The L.A. board of education, has voted to put all its schools on a year-round schedule. This decision does not necessarily increase the number of school days, but it is expected to save money on new construction and allow more efficient use of existing school facilities. Students would go to school for the same total 180 days a year, but they would have more, shorter vacations. In crowded schools, vacations would be staggered to ease the demand for space. Educational experts would study closely whether the benefits of a year-round program are worth the sacrifice of the traditional summer vacation. If it is proven that test scores of students are improved and performance is up, other cities win emulate the program.
The supporters of year-round education believe educators simply cannot justify that long three-month summer vacation any more. The nine-month schedule was never designed for education. It is a 19th century agricultural-economic schedule. Supporters, many from Hispanic and black inner-city areas, contend that the year-round schedules are the only economically practical way to cope with continuing influx of new students into schools that are already strained beyond capacity.
But there is a lot of opposition simply because it's a change. It's a deep-seated tradition that kids don't go to school in the summer and teachers don't teach.
The decision in Los Angeles was driven primarily by a need to alleviate overcrowding in the schools. Besides many educators also back the theory that children learn and retain more when breaks from class-room work are shorter and academic performance often ijhpcoves in year-round schools. The exact calendar to be used is still under study, but most students will either go to school on a cycle of 60 weekdays of class followed by 20 weekdays of vacation, or 90 weekdays of class followed by 30 weekdays of vacation. For example students would have one-month vacation in August, December and April. In most crowded schools students would be broken into "tracks", or groups that would follow overlapping schedules to ensure that school facilities are in constant use with a minimum of overcrowding.
Parents in Los Angeles had jammed hearing on the issue for several years with many protesting that vacations would be hard to coordinate, especially if children in different schools were in different schedules, and that it would be difficult for older children to find summer jobs. Others say that they would just as soon have vacation time to ski in the winter as they would have time off in the summer.
B) The issue of putting your school on a year-round schedule is to be debated at the sitting of the school board of education. Pair work. Enact a dialogue between a parent and a teacher on the issue offering valid arguments noted down from the text above.
C) Work in groups of 3 or 4 (buzz groups) and assign one of the views on the issue of a year-round schooling to each group.
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D) Spend a few minutes individually thinking of further arguments you will use to back up the opinion you have been assigned.
E) Enact the debates on a year-round schooling at the sitting of the school board of education. Do your best to support those who share a similar point of view and try to persuade those who disagree (use phrases of persuasion and agreement/disagreement given in the Appendix).
8. Below are the extracts bringing out some problems American higher education is faced with at present. Read the selections carefully and comment on the way constitutional statement guaranteeing the theory equality of educational opportunities to the people of the USA is carried out the practice:
1. "After ten years of affirmative action and federal legislation prohibiting sex discrimination, women are still second class citizens on the campus, but women are a new advocacy group — this is how we have to think of ourselves in the 1990s."
2. "Having come with too little too late to the slums, our country has failed to provide lower educational resources through which many of our young black Americans may realize their potential. We have failed to provide adult-learning institutions effectively addressed to the backwash of racism and slavery."
3. "... Deep split in American life transcends black and while, rich and poor, educated and ignorant, slum and suburb.
Black America is the testing ground for our moral crisis. There is no more prevailing American tradition than having our black do the dirty, messy, difficult business of society. In those institutions where people can be hurt — in bad schools, in inferior and demeaning occupations, in wars — the black people have manned the front lines."
9. Group discussion. Read the following selections. The issue discussed is the role of the student in the university. Consider each ot the categories presented below and discuss the position of the Russian students at the institute in view of the recent changes in the Russian system of higher education:
1. "Is the student's role similar to that of an apprentice — studying the master and gradually becoming a master? Or is the proper relationship one of a ward of the university, which is responsible for the student's welfare and moral and intellectual training? Or is the student a client of the university — where the student seeks out professors to help in areas of interest and need?
2. "It is probably safe to say that in England, Canada and the United States, until recent years, there has always been a sharp distinction between the role and status of the teacher and the role and status of the student — a simple recognition of the fact that the former by virtue of his knowledge, age and experience should exercise some domination and direction over the latter."
3. "A person's role in any given situation is defined not only by the individual but by other people and institutions in the environment. Up to 1950 there seemed few differences in the views of students, professors, or the university in respect of the student's role in the university.
Quite clearly the student was not a member of the university if membership is defined as having a shared responsibility for the program, regulations, welfare of the institution. In these respects the student was without status or recognition.
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The attitude of the university was paternalistic and authoritarian; this was accepted by all concerned."
4. "It was obvious in the seventies that student protest had altered the ethos of the campus in many significant ways. There was, for example, the relaxation of admission requirements, the adoption of pass-fail grading in many courses, the increasing provisions for independent study, the emphasis on creative art; the growth of work-study programs, the free choice of a wide variety of subjects.
There was now no argument: students did share the power. The vital question was to what extent and in what areas?
But in respect of the student's role in the university, a significant point in the history of the university was turned. Students could no longer be considered children, they were adults with responsibility for their own behaviour and conduct; they were franchised members of the university with voting rights on some issues and potentially on all issues within the university community."
10. Enact a panel discussion:
A panel discussion programme appears on TV. Four members of the public are invited to give their opinions. The questions for discussion are sent in by the viewers. The chairperson reads out the questions and directs the panel.
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