Different Worlds the Boy on the Left the One on the Right

Different Worlds The boy on the left … The one on the right… -

Kamal Ahmed

Pre-reading

1. Match word and definition. The words and definitions refer to the British school system.

compre’hensive school / a private school for pupils between 13 and 18 whose parents pay for their education
grammar school / school where some or all of the pupils live during the term
pre’paratory school / school for young people between 11 and 18
public school / school for children between 5 and 11
boarding school / a large secondary school at which pupils of all abilities are taught
primary school / a private school for pupils between 7 and 13 whose parents pay for their education
secondary school / a type of secondary school which concentrates on academic rather than technical or practical courses

2. Do you agree (A) or disagree (D) with the following statements?

A / D
People’s qualities are determined mainly by their genes.
People’s qualities are determined mainly by their environment.
The way parents treat their children has a lasting influence on their behaviour and character.
A child’s friends have a far greater influence on his/her behaviour and character than his/her parents

b. Read the following text and compare the views expressed with your answers in 2.a.

What makes us who we are?
Are people's qualities determined by their genes (nature) or by their environment (nurture)? The debate has grown more intense since the human genome (kromosomsæt) has been found to consist of only 30,000 genes. Some scientists claim that we don’t have enough genes to explain all the existing human differences.

According to Judith Rich Harris, heredity (arv) accounts for about 50 percent of the variation in personality traits, while environment accounts for the other half. Since genes are a given, the interesting question is what is going on in the environment that shapes human personality.

Pre-reading

In The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Harris takes the extreme position that parental nurturing is not an important part of a child's formative environment. She argues that the way parents treat their children has no lasting influence on their behaviour or character or development.

What does affect a child's personality and development, then, apart from his or her genes? What in a child's environment does matter, if parents don’t? Harris answers: Peers. She calls this "group socialization theory", the idea that children learn how to behave by identifying with a peer group and taking on its attitudes, behaviour, way of speaking and so on. The theory predicts "that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we left their lives outside the home unchanged - left them in their schools and their neighborhoods - but switched all the parents around."

For too long, Harris says, we have persuaded ourselves (or allowed experts to persuade us) that the behaviour of children is controlled and conditioned (betinget) by their parents. But our real characters, she argues, are formed outside the home - by the group dynamics operating in schools, in playgrounds and in society as a whole. Kids who attach themselves to a naughty group soon grow naughtier; overweight children quickly get fatter; those who team up with children who study very hard soon start doing "push-ups with their brains".

Children don't grow up talking like their parents (unless they go to the same kind of schools their parents went to); they learn by imitating their peer group. Immigrant children quickly swap their mother tongue for the idioms and accents of native kids and when a young boy skins his knee at home he may well cry, but in front of his pals he is more likely to be tough.

(Adapted from The Nation, November 16, 1998)

c. Discuss your views on the matter. Use the underlined words in your discussion.

Post-reading

1. Are your views on pre-reading questions 2 and 4 still the same, or have they changed after you have read the article?

2. Try to predict what Ryan’s life will be like both one year and ten years later. Explain what you base your predictions on.

a. What should schools teach? Number the following suggestions according to how important you consider them to be (1 being the most important). Add one or more suggestions of your own. Compare your way of numbering the suggestions with that of your partner.

Schools should:

· teach pupils to be good and responsible citizens

· prepare children for future careers

· teach useful subjects

· help children pass exams

· teach basic skills

· teach about right and wrong

· educate for leisure as work is only part of life

· give children the possibility to get to know other children

· help children to develop as individuals

b. To what extent was Ryan’s previous school able to live up to your suggestions? Why?/Why not?

c. To what extent is Ryan’s present school able to live up to your suggestions? Why?/Why not?

4. Discuss the following statement. Use Ryan’s situation in your discussion.

“People should have the right to buy a better education for their children. It is therefore important to have private schools.”

5. Read the article TV, public school and Ryan’s fall.