The Linguistic Culture-9-10 (Political Parties and Elections_ Media_ Soap Operas)(Education and Science in the USA) (1157947), страница 3
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Quite a few have “daughter” editions in other countries. Among such internationals are Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Time, Newsweek, and Psychology Today. The best known professional periodicals The Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Educational Review, Saturday Review, National Geographic, Smithsonian (published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.), Scientific American have a huge readership both in the USA and abroad.
Radio and Television
There are many different types and varieties of American radio and television: commercial, non-commercial, individual, etc. All radio and television stations in the United States, public or private, educational or commercial, large and small, must be licensed to broadcast, by the independent federal agency The Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
There are several such regulations, preventing any single group from having too much influence in any area. E.g., laws prohibit any state or the federal government from owning or operating radio or television stations (stations such as Voice of America may only broadcast overseas). The FCC regulation, the so-called Fairness Doctrine, requires stations to give time not only to opposing views but also devote some part of their broadcasting time to “public service” advertising free of charge: e.g. advertisements for Red Cross blood drives, for dental care, for programs on Alcoholics Anonymous and car safety.
There is also a great variety among television stations. The majority of commercial television stations buy most of their programming, roughly 70 %, from the three commercial networks: ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company). Two of the TV commercial stations in Louisville are “independent” and take their programs from a wide variety of sources. The growth of public television in the past two decades has been dramatic. PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) with its 280 nonprofit, non commercial stations has become also very popular.
There are plenty of cable systems serving the cities The largest cable networks are CNN {Cable News Network) which carries only news and news stories and ESPN, the all-sports cable network, or MTV, which is famous for its music videos.
There is no nationwide system or policy on cable television. There are many different types of schemes, systems, and programs. Some offer top-rate recent movies on a pay-as-you-watch system, some offer opera and symphonic music. All are willing to provide “public access” channels where individuals and groups of citizens produce their own programming. Cable firms are trying to offer something special to get many people to pay. Over the years, technology and economics have produced more and more ways of occupying people’s time: more television channels, more magazines, more theme parks, and now besides traditional media video and computer games, chat rooms and all other delights of the information age.
Advertising through Commercials
Every country has the radio and television service it deserves ( George Mikes “How to Scrape Skies”). American radio and television is the reverse of the Shakespearean stage. In Shakespeare’s time the world’s greatest dramas were acted with the most primitive technical means; on the American air the world’s most primitive writing is performed under perfect technical conditions.
Numerous articles have been written about American commercial television, its quality or lack of it, its power or effects. Commercials -advertisements in a form of a small play-take up about ten minutes of every 60 minutes of viewing (roughly 20% of the broadcasting time). Every performance (even the news), except the sacred baseball match commentaries, is interrupted by commercials.
Commercials range from witty, well made, and clever to those that are dull and boring. The money for the advertising is provided by the manufacturers of cars, soap, cigarettes, spaghetti, cosmetics, etc. Commercials are declaimed in prose and recited in verse, sung by soloists and choirs, persuading you that you will become rich and beautiful if you eat Z cheese or else you die young, poor and neglected. They tell you that if you use a certain orange squeezer in your kitchen, you remain young, lovely and beautiful; if you wash with a certain soap, you’ll become rich; if you wear a certain type of underwear you’ll inherit a large sum from a wealthy uncle and if use only a special kind of tomato ketchup you’ll learn foreign languages more easily. Once during a performance of King Lear, the tragedy flowed on in its majesty until at its climax King Lear broke in, condemning all his daughters for not drinking ‘Optimum’ orange juice for breakfast.
Commercials make you feel that you really must have the product you see on t.v. To do this a number a different effects are used:
-The snob effect. This tells you that the product is most exclusive and of course rather expensive. Only the very best people use it.
-The scientific effect. A serious-looking man with glasses and a white coat, possibly a doctor or a professor, tells you about the advantages of the product.
-The words-and-music effect. The name of the product is repeated over and over again, put into a rhyme and sung several times, in the hope that you won’t forget it. The sung rhyme is called a “jungle”.
-The ha-ha effect. The advertiser tries to make you laugh by showing people or cartoon figures in funny situations.
-The VIP (Very Important Person) effect. Well-known people, like actors or football-players, are shown using the product.
-The super- modern effect. The advertiser tries to persuade you that his product is a new, sensational breakthrough.
-The go-go effect. This is suitable for the teenage market. It shows young people having a party, singing, laughing, having a wonderful time, and, of course, using the product.
Soap Operas
Another special feature and invention of American broadcasting is the soap opera. Soap operas are plays originally sponsored by soap advertisers, hence the name. They are called “operas” because they present highly emotional situations like European operas. Over the past years television soap operas have attracted a large audience. Approximately thirty million people watch soap operas, 70 percent of them female. Millions of American teenagers are “hooked” on soap operas. “General Hospital” soap has been the number one for several years among teens – partly because its 3:00 airtime means they can dash from school bus to the living room in time to tune in. Another most popular soap example is the Romance of Helen Trent. Miss Trent is just an average American girl. She has been thirty-two for the last twenty years. She is intelligent, beautiful and employed as a designer by one of the Hollywood film companies. In spite of the fact that she is begged to become a film star she has never been. Instead she solves life’s problems for anyone who happens to come near her or pass down the street in front of her window. There is for example a young man who has charming manners and an admirable character. He is a graduate of Princeton University, has an income of four million dollars per year, loves Helen Trent’s colleague madly. She loves him too, and their parents agree to their marriage – what are they to do? Everybody is at a loss until Helen, with a few simple, calm, wise words arranges their lives and separates them forever.
Studies among teens in the US Northeast have given some surprising conclusions. In the long run, soap operas with all the shortcomings uphold many traditional American values. Despite the scandals, the good guys always win in the end, and villains lose, die, or are banished to a prison or a mental hospital. Some psychiatrists think that soaps bridge the gap between generations. Grandparents and parents can watch the serials together and talk about difficult problems with their kids.
1. Answer the questions.
1. What are the major broadcasting networks in the USA?
2. Which American newspapers and magazines do you know?
3. Do you think that now people get more news from the Internet than from traditional sources?
4. How much of TV and radio air time is given to commercials in the USA and in Russia?
5. What is the main function of commercials?
6. Why is advertising called a fine art sometimes?
7. What effects do TV commercials use?
8. What is the origin of “soap-operas”?
9. Is there anything positive about soaps?
10.What do you think of the T.V. and internet influence on young children?
2. Find the English equivalents corresponding to the Russian ones:
1. Освещать какое-либо событие в прессе; 2.освещать новости и события объективно3. малоформатная газета со сжатым текстом и многими иллюстрациями; 4. аудитория, имеющая одинаковые возрастные и социальные характеристики; 5. место (в газете), отводимое рекламе; 6. занимать позицию по какому-либо вопросу; 7. предоставлять одинаковое время (на радио и телевидении).
3. Discussion problems:
1. Television and radio are one of the most powerful forces for good or evil in modern life.
2. “Detailed information about television content can help us make informed choices”.
3. The televiewers have a right to control television content if the content is harmful to society.
4. Television, internet and young generation.
Lecture N 10 Education and science in the USA
The key words and phrases: “Melting Pot”, to be enrolled in, high and higher education, curriculum, extra-curricular activities, vocational courses.
One of the fundamental parts of the American “Melting Pot or “Americanization” is its education. According to the ideas of the creators of American Constitution the education of their country should reflect the nation’s basic values and ideals. Equality of opportunities for developing the nation’s greatest potential has become the most important aspect of American system of education. As many historians believe a great deal of economic, political, scientific, and cultural progress America has made in its relatively short history is due to its commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity. This is the ideal of educating as many Americans as possible, to the best of their abilities.
Millions of immigrants coming to America often tied their hopes for a better life to a good education for themselves and, most importantly, for their children. They view the education as a way of “rising in the world”, as a fundamental part of the American Dream.
In the whole American society there has always been the belief, that the more schooling a person has, the more material success he or she will achieve in the future. The colonists of Northern and Western states showed a great concern for education. In these states there were many literate people at a time, when education was still uncommon in many countries of Europe. Already in the 17PthP century they required all towns with more than 50 families to provide a schoolmaster at public expense. Other colonies also made provisions for free public schools. In the course of the 17PthP century, for instance, free schools had been established in a number of places such as New Haven, Hartford, New London, and Fairfield. In 1636 more than a hundred years before American independence several Cambridge graduates founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony the first college, called after the name of Harvard.
Before the revolution nine colleges of higher learning had been opened in North America to train men for service in the church and civil state and later they became universities. Special emphasis was laid on classical education and only those who knew Latin and Greek were considered educated. American colleges in those days tried to duplicate the English ones, but unlike old English universities they were not self-governing bodies.
The American Revolution brought a lot of changes. The independence of the states raised new questions about what American education should be.
The first state universities were founded, though their flowering came a century later, after the Civil War. Rapid development of industry, agriculture and transportation brought about great changes. The technological needs of agriculture and business stimulated the creation of agricultural and engineering colleges. The mid-nineteenth century saw the foundation of private school known as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1861).
Gradually universities, private and public, became the dominant and most influential structure of higher education, a position they still hold. Many of the oldest and best-known liberal arts colleges, such as Yale, Columbia and Harvard, became universities during this period. In 1862, Congress passed a law, which provided states with public (federal) lands to be used for higher education, especially for the establishment of agricultural so-called “cow” and mechanical-arts colleges. Many “land-grant colleges” were established. These new state-supported institutions joined the large number of older, well-established, and well-to-do privately funded universities. They were important in the democratization of higher education in the United States.
By 1900, there were almost a thousand institutions of higher education in the U.S. Among them were law and medical “schools” and hundreds of small, four-year liberal arts colleges. One of the latter, Oberlin College in Ohio, was the first to admit women on an equal basis with men in 1837. There were many other institutions of higher learning, which emphasized everything from the training of teachers to the pulling of teeth.
The United States have never had a national system of education although there is a Federal Department of Education, which in some ways corresponds to the Russian ministry of Education. Its function is merely to gather information, to advise, and to help finance certain educational programs. Education, Americans say, is “a national concern, a state responsibility, and a local function”. Since the Constitution does not state that education is a responsibility of the federal government, all education matters are left to the individual states.
In turn, however, state constitutions give the actual administrative control of the schools to the local communities. In 1986, an average of 50 percent of the funds for elementary and secondary education came from state sources, 43 percent from local funds, and only about 6 percent the federal government. There are some 16, 000 school districts within the 50 states. School boards made up of individual citizens elected from each community oversee the schools in each district. They, not the state, 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 variety and flexibility in elementary, secondary, and higher (university) education throughout the nation.
Elementary and Secondary Education.
Because of the great variety of schools and the many differences among them, no one institution can be singled out as typical one.
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