The Linguistic Culture-10 (Education and Science in the USA) (1157936)
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Lecture N 10Education and science in the USAThe key words and phrases: “Melting Pot”, to be enrolled in, high and highereducation, liberal arts colleges, curriculum, extra-curricular activities, vocationalcourses, per capita, transcript.One of the fundamental parts of the American “Melting Pot or “Americanization”is its education. According to the ideas of the creators of American Constitutionthe education of their country should reflect the nation’s basic values and ideals.Equality of opportunities for developing the nation’s greatest potential became themost important aspect of American system of education.
As many historiansbelieve a great deal of economic, scientific, and cultural progress America hasmade in its relatively short history is due to its commitment to the ideals of equalopportunities and opportunity of educating as many Americans as possible, to thebest of their abilities.In the whole American society there has always been the belief, that the moreschooling a person has, the more material success he or she will achieve in thefuture. Millions of immigrants coming to America tied their hopes for a better lifeto a good education for themselves and, most importantly, for their children. Theyview the education as a way of “rising in the world”, as a fundamental part of socalled “the American Dream”.Already in the 17th century the colonists of Northern and Western states showed agreat concern for education and required all towns with more than 50 families toprovide a schoolmaster at public expense.
Before the revolution nine colleges hadbeen opened in North America to train men for service in the church and civilproblems. In 1636 more than a hundred years before American independenceseveral Cambridge graduates founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony the firstcollege Harvard. American colleges in those days duplicated the English ones.Special emphasis in them was laid on classical education and only those who knewLatin and Greek were considered educated.The American Revolution brought a lot of new tasks. The independence of thestates raised new questions about what American education should be. The firststate universities were founded, though their serious work came a century later,after the Civil War.
Rapid development of industry, agriculture and transportationafter the Civil War brought about the technological needs and stimulated thecreation of agricultural and engineering colleges.Gradually they became the dominant and most influential structure of highereducation, a position they still hold. Many of the oldest and best-known liberal artscolleges, such as Yale, Columbia and Harvard, became universities during thisperiod.
Oberlin College in Ohio was the first to admit women on an equal basiswith men in 1837. In 1861 the private school known as the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology (MIT) was founded. In 1862, Congress passed a law, whichprovided states with federal lands for construction and use for higher education.After that many “land-grant colleges” were established. By 1900, in the USA therewere already a thousand institutions of higher education.
Among them there werelaw and medical “schools” and hundreds of small colleges, which dealt witheverything from the training of teachers to the pulling of teeth.The United States have never had a national system of education althoughthere is a Federal Department of Education, which in some ways corresponds tothe Russian ministry of Education. Its function is merely to gather information andto help finance certain educational programs. Education, Americans say, is “anational concern, a state responsibility, and a local function”.Since the Constitution does not state that education is a responsibility of the federalgovernment, all education matters are left to the individual states.
In turn, however,state constitutions give the actual administrative control of the schools to the localcommunities. United Nations figures (1980) show that in the amount spent oneducation per capita, the U. S. is in ninth place in the world (behind Qatar,Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Switzerland, andCanada). An average of 50 percent of the funds for elementary and secondaryeducation come from state sources, 43 percent from local funds, and only about 6percent from the federal government.Elementary and Secondary Education.There are some 16, 000 school districts within the 50 states.
School boards madeup of individual citizens elected from each community oversee the schools in eachdistrict. They set school policy and actually decide what is to be taught.The major result of this situation is that there is an enormous amount of varietyand flexibility in elementary, secondary, and higher (university) educationthroughout the country.Because of the great variety of schools and so many differences among them, noinstitution can be singled out as typical one. There exist public and private schools.There are also many schools, supported by the church since religion cannot betaught in state-supported schools because of separation of church and state.Because of the inequalities inherent in society as a whole, the goal of equalopportunity in education remains an ideal rather than a reality. As the tuition feesare rather high in private schools they are attended primarily by upper-classchildren.
The reason why parents send their children to these schools is that theyoften believe they will receive a better education in them and they will associatewith other children of their own background.Today there are around 6 million pupils in private schools and 43 million pupilsand students in public schools at the elementary and secondary levels throughoutthe country. In other words 88 percent of American children attend public schoolsand only 12 percent go to private schools.The divisions or stages a child passes in his school educational ladder areelementary, junior high school or middle school, and high school.
Americanchildren begin to attend school at the age of five or six. There are also pre-schoolclasses or kindergartens. Before this kids may attend nursery school or a day carecenter.Schooling is divided into twelve academic levels or grades. There are more or lessdefinite demands at each level. Pupils take classes in major subjects such asEnglish, Math, History and Science.
They must also take classes in physicaleducation and a foreign language. Then they can usually choose elective subjectslike art or music. At the end of a term students get a grade of A, B, C, D, or F (fail)for each subject. Grades are based on test scores, class participation, and class andhomework assignments. As they finish each subject students get a credit. Whenthey have enough of these, they can go further.The apostle of American school education is philosopher and educator JohnDewey. He believed that the main aim is to teach kids skills, which they will use inthe future. He also greatly stressed that activity and experimentation should comefirst but factual or theoretical information to students is secondary.
So, inAmerican schools much attention is given to creative activities.American schools try to adapt to the needs of society. Schools are initiatingprograms previously viewed as a part of home education. These include subjectssuch as driver’s education, sewing and cooking classes called home economics,health and sex education, where issues like drug and alcohol abuse and smokingmay be treated.In addition to bilingual and bicultural education programs, many schools havespecial programs for those with learning and reading difficulties. Many schoolsalso support summer classes, where students can make up for failed courses oreven take extra courses. They also attempt to integrate students with varyingabilities and backgrounds into an educational system shared by all.
Nationwidetalent searches for minority group children with special abilities and academicpromise began on a large scale in the 1960s.Like schools in Britain and other English-speaking countries, students areencouraged to be creative not only during class time but also in extra-curricularhours. There is usually a very broad range of extracurricular activities available.Most schools, for instance, publish their own student newspapers, and some havetheir own radio and t.v. stations. Almost all have school orchestras, bands, andchoirs, which give public performances. There is theater and drama groups, chessand debating clubs, and, of course, sports. Students can learn flying, diving, andmountain - climbing.
They can act as volunteers in hospitals and homes for theaged and do other public-service work.Often the school-children themselves organize and support school activities andraise money through “car washes”, baby-sitting, bake sales, or by mowing lawns.Parents and local businesses also help the groups to have a chance to go to statechampionships, or camping trips. Such activities not only give pupils a chance tobe together outside of normal classes, they also help develop a feeling of “schoolspirit” among the students and in the community.Whichever varieties of school curricula exist all of them have standardexaminations at every level of education.There are two widely used and nationally administered tests for high schoolstudents who wish to attend a college or university.
One is the SAT (ScholasticAptitude Test), which attempts to measure results in verbal and mathematicalfields through multiple-choice questions marked by computer. The other is theACT (American College Testing program), which attempts to measure skills inEnglish, mathematics, and the social and natural sciences. Both tests are given atspecific dates and locations throughout the U.S.A. Each year, the SAT is taken byover two million high school students.
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