The Linguistic Culture-10 (Education and Science in the USA) (1157948)
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Lecture N 10 Education and science in the USA
The key words and phrases: “Melting Pot”, to be enrolled in, high and higher education, liberal arts colleges, curriculum, extra-curricular activities, vocational courses, 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 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 became the most important aspect of American system of education. As many historians believe a great deal of economic, scientific, and cultural progress America has made in its relatively short history is due to its commitment to the ideals of equal opportunities and opportunity of educating as many Americans as possible, to the best of their abilities.
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. Millions of immigrants coming to America 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 so-called “the American Dream”.
Already in the 17th century the colonists of Northern and Western states showed a great concern for education and required all towns with more than 50 families to provide a schoolmaster at public expense. Before the revolution nine colleges had been opened in North America to train men for service in the church and civil problems. In 1636 more than a hundred years before American independence several Cambridge graduates founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony the first college Harvard. American colleges in those days duplicated the English ones. Special emphasis in them was laid on classical education and only those who knew Latin and Greek were considered educated.
The American Revolution brought a lot of new tasks. The independence of the states raised new questions about what American education should be. The first state universities were founded, though their serious work came a century later, after the Civil War. Rapid development of industry, agriculture and transportation after the Civil War brought about the technological needs and stimulated the creation of agricultural and engineering colleges.
Gradually they 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. Oberlin College in Ohio was the first to admit women on an equal basis with men in 1837. In 1861 the private school known as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded. In 1862, Congress passed a law, which provided states with federal lands for construction and use for higher education. After that many “land-grant colleges” were established. By 1900, in the USA there were already a thousand institutions of higher education. Among them there were law and medical “schools” and hundreds of small colleges, which dealt with 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 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. United Nations figures (1980) show that in the amount spent on education per capita, the U. S. is in ninth place in the world (behind Qatar, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Switzerland, and Canada). An average of 50 percent of the funds for elementary and secondary education come from state sources, 43 percent from local funds, and only about 6 percent from the federal government.
Elementary and Secondary Education.
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 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 country.
Because of the great variety of schools and so many differences among them, no institution 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 be taught in state-supported schools because of separation of church and state.
Because of the inequalities inherent in society as a whole, the goal of equal opportunity in education remains an ideal rather than a reality. As the tuition fees are rather high in private schools they are attended primarily by upper-class children. The reason why parents send their children to these schools is that they often believe they will receive a better education in them and they will associate with other children of their own background.
Today there are around 6 million pupils in private schools and 43 million pupils and students in public schools at the elementary and secondary levels throughout the country. In other words 88 percent of American children attend public schools and only 12 percent go to private schools.
The divisions or stages a child passes in his school educational ladder are elementary, junior high school or middle school, and high school. American children begin to attend school at the age of five or six. There are also pre-school classes or kindergartens. Before this kids may attend nursery school or a day care center.
Schooling is divided into twelve academic levels or grades. There are more or less definite demands at each level. Pupils take classes in major subjects such as English, Math, History and Science. They must also take classes in physical education and a foreign language. Then they can usually choose elective subjects like 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 and homework assignments. As they finish each subject students get a credit. When they have enough of these, they can go further.
The apostle of American school education is philosopher and educator John Dewey. He believed that th
e main aim is to teach kids skills, which they will use in the future. He also greatly stressed that activity and experimentation should come first but factual or theoretical information to students is secondary. So, in American schools much attention is given to creative activities.
American schools try to adapt to the needs of society. Schools are initiating programs previously viewed as a part of home education. These include subjects such as driver’s education, sewing and cooking classes called home economics, health and sex education, where issues like drug and alcohol abuse and smoking may be treated.
In addition to bilingual and bicultural education programs, many schools have special programs for those with learning and reading difficulties. Many schools also support summer classes, where students can make up for failed courses or even take extra courses. They also attempt to integrate students with varying abilities and backgrounds into an educational system shared by all. Nationwide talent searches for minority group children with special abilities and academic promise began on a large scale in the 1960s.
Like schools in Britain and other English-speaking countries, students are encouraged to be creative not only during class time but also in extra-curricular hours. There is usually a very broad range of extracurricular activities available. Most schools, for instance, publish their own student newspapers, and some have their own radio and t.v. stations. Almost all have school orchestras, bands, and choirs, which give public performances. There is theater and drama groups, chess and debating clubs, and, of course, sports. Students can learn flying, diving, and mountain - climbing. They can act as volunteers in hospitals and homes for the aged and do other public-service work.
Often the school-children themselves organize and support school activities and raise 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 state championships, or camping trips. Such activities not only give pupils a chance to be together outside of normal classes, they also help develop a feeling of “school spirit” among the students and in the community.
Whichever varieties of school curricula exist all of them have standard examinations at every level of education.
There are two widely used and nationally administered tests for high school students who wish to attend a college or university. One is the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), which attempts to measure results in verbal and mathematical fields through multiple-choice questions marked by computer. The other is the ACT (American College Testing program), which attempts to measure skills in English, mathematics, and the social and natural sciences. Both tests are given at specific dates and locations throughout the U.S.A. Each year, the SAT is taken by over two million high school students. One million of these students are in their last year of high school. Another million are in their next-to-last year. The ACT, is taken every year by millions h of high school leavers in the western part of the U.S. With so many different types of high schools and programs, and with so many differences in subjects and standards, these tests provide common, nationwide measuring of knowledge.
Higher Education.
According to American statistics over 41 percent of high school leavers apply to colleges and universities. Every year, about 12 million Americans are enrolled in the over 3,000 colleges and universities of every type: private, public, church-related, small and large, in cities, counties, and states. Close to 80 percent of the college students attend public or state institutions while a little over 20 percent are enrolled in privately supported universities and colleges. Every state in the US maintains at least one institution of university rank. Programs in them are often adapted to serve local needs. State universities provide opportunities of higher education usually at a cost considerably below the cost of education in private institutions and the educational fees are lower in them. Each state has the right to found new public or private institutions of higher education within its borders.
The Types of Higher Educational Institutions:
In the USA there is no clear definition of the term "institution of higher education". The institutions, which provide higher education, do not constitute any coordinate system and are not controlled by any centralized national authority In principle, any educational institution offering further training after leaving high school, the so-called "post-secondary educational institution” may be referred to as Higher Educational Institution. The only criterion to determine the nature of any U.S. institution may be a qualitative level of it.
Of the nation’s 1,900 institutions of higher learning roughly one-third are state or city institutions. About 1,200 are privately controlled or controlled by religious groups. The others are vocational or junior colleges.
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