UNITATEA 6:

BALANCING EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE

La sfârşitul acestui curs, studentul va putea:

− să se exprime în limba engleză asupra problemelor ridicate de abandonul
şcolar
− să cunoască utilizarea timpurilor Past Perfect Tense Simple şi Past Perfect
Tense Continuous
− să îşi reîmprospăteze cunoştinţele referitoare la punctuaţia limbii engleze

Cunoştinţe privind formarea timpurilor Past Perfect Tense Simple şi Past Perfect
Tense Continuous

Engleza pentru admitere, Bantaş, Andrei, Ed. Teora, Bucureşti, 1995, vol. 1;
Practise Your Tenses, Adamson, Donald, Longman, 1996;
Exerciţii de gramatica limbii engleze, Gălăţeanu-Fârnoagă, Georgiana, Editura
Albatros, Bucureşti, 1987:

Două ore
Pre-reading:

Group Work: Mention at least 5 shortcomings of the Romanian educational system in

terms of equity (equal opportunities and access) and excellence (competitive process
and results, creativity). Briefly comment on this issue.

Reading:

Text: Sociology, page383.

BALANCING EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE

In 1983, an 18-member National Commission on Excellence in Education
issued a report that was extremely critical of U.S. education. The report indicated that
13 percent of all 17-year-olds and as much as 40 percent of minority youths are
functionally illiterate. In a comparison of U.S. students with students from 21 other
nations, Americans scored the worst on 7 of 19 achievement tests and never came in
either first or second. The commission argued that the problem was caused not by
factors beyond our control but simply by lack of insight and will. The solutions
recommended included:
1) a more demanding sequence of basic courses;
2) longer school days and school years, and
3) higher standards for school achievement.
Generally, the call for excellence in education has been well received. By
1984, 17 states had instituted competency testing for high school graduation and 7
more were in the process of implementing it. Increasingly, however, policy makers
are facing the dilemma posed by the potentially conflicting demands of equity and
excellence (Alexander et al., 1985).

THE DROPOUT PROBLEM

Despite the sharp expansion in education in the last decades, a substantial

minority of the population has not graduated from high school. In 1984, fully 14
percent of all young adults 25-29 had not graduated from high school; this figure is
21 percent among blacks and 41 percent among Hispanic young adults.
These dropouts pose a potentially major social and economic problem. As
one study summarised the issues:
“Dropping out of high school is associated with an array of individual and
social costs. For the individual, failure to complete high school is associated with
limited occupational and economic prospects, disenfranchisement from society and
its institutions, and substantial loss of personal income over his or her lifetime. For
society, premature school-leaving is associated with increased expenditures for
government assistance to individuals and families, higher rates of crime, and
maintenance of costly programmes for purposes such as employment and training.
(Steinberg et al., 1984:113).”
For all these reasons, the dropout problem is a social policy issue. It is an
issue that the reports on excellence ignore altogether. An important question for
policy makers is whether steps made to increase excellence—higher standards, more
basics, longer school years or school days—will increase the dropout problem. If
imposition of higher standards increases the SAT scores of those students who
remain but doubles the dropout rate, especially among minority or disadvantaged
students, will we have gained? Or, as one recent report claims, will this be a
“blueprint for failure”? (McDill et al., 1986:139).

LANGUAGE FOCUS

To issue, an issue; (il)literate, (il)literacy; achieve(ment); youth(s); to argue,

argument; beyond; lack of insight and will; will, testament; demanding; sequence;
call for excellence; politics vs. policy; to pose; to drop out, a dropout; array;
disenfranchisement; loss vs. gain; income; expenditure; to maintain, maintenance;
costly, expensive, dear; altogether; to impose, imposition; to take the floor;
compulsory; eel; squirrel; nervous breakdown; to double vs. to treble; to claim;
blueprint; to sweep (over) –swept – swept; tide; mediocre, mediocrity; tough; trend,
tendency; to attempt; sharp expansion; despite, in spite of.

Punctuation marks:

ü comma ,
ü full stop .
ü semicolon ;
ü colon :
ü inverted commas “ ”
ü hyphen -
ü question mark ?
ü exclamation mark !
ü dots …

GRAMMAR FOCUS

I. The Present Perfect and the Past Perfect (recycling).

Practice

1.Identify the present perfect and the past perfect forms of the verbs in the text
above.
2.How much freedom should children have? (B.J. Thomas, Advanced Vocabulary
and Idiom, Longman, 1989, page 6).
II. The Past Perfect Progressive
Use: to express:
ü an action continuing up to a specific time in the past;
ü a continuous, past action which had visible results or effect in the past.
 Time Expressions: before, for.., since…, after , just, aready, yet, ever never,
till/until, when, by, by the time.
Form:
Affirmative: S + had + verb -ing….
Interrogative: Had + S + verb -ing….?
Negative: S + had + not + verb -ing….(short form: hadn’t).

Choose the correct item:

1) She……………in a stable family before she got married in 2000.
a. has been brought up; b. was brought up; c. had been brought up.
2) Harry………..an ugly accident a couple of years before they moved house.
a. had; b. had had; c. has had.
3) He is weary. He………………….at the boring project all day.
a. has been working; b. has worked; c. had worked.
4) They were worried. The police……………….for their kidnapped children for a
fortnight without finding a clear lead.
a. had looked; b. has been looking; c. had been looking.
5) He……………..all the possible assumptions until yesterday morning when he had
that illumination.
a. had exhausted; b. had been exhausting; c. has exhausted.

Listening

Listen to “The Animal School” fable and find the flaws that such a school has,
from the points of view of equity and excellence (see the tape script).
Also comment on “The family that learns together, earns together.”
Tape script
The Animal School

Once upon a time, an animal meeting was held in the forest. The issue at
stake was animal education. The animals were going to set up a school. An Animal
School Board was elected.
Despite some stifled protest, the Animal School Board decided on a common
curriculum for all the animals. The four compulsory curriculum areas were: Running,
Climbing, Swimming, and Flying. There were no optional subjects. All the animal
students had to attend all these four types of classes.
But, no matter how dedicated efforts the students made, some difficulties
were encountered.
The duck was very good at Swimming, even better than the teacher, but it got
poor grades at Flying; and the Running classes were a disaster as the duck hurt its
legs because of over-exercise so that even the performance at Swimming got lower.
The squirrel was excellent at Climbing but had some problems with taking off
from the ground at Flying as it expressed preference to fly down from a tree.
Because of the stress of all the Swimming lessons it had a nervous breakdown and
dropped out.
Some similar experiences had the rabbit—though it was a brilliant student at
Running. Eventually, it had to see an animal psychotherapist because of the
enormous effort made at the other classes.
Anyway, by the end of the school year, a common eel ended up valedictorian
as it could swim well, was able to climb, crawl and fly a little, no matter how small
and insignificant it was.
(adapted from the fable quoted by
Stephen Covey)

the dropout problem

1.Match the concepts in column A to their appropriate definition in column B:

CONCEPT DEFINITION
A. self-actualization 1. unique identity, individuality
B. self-assertion 2. reliance on one’s capacities
C. self-composed 3. the process of understanding
oneself and developing one’s
own capacities and talents
(coined by Abraham Maslow)
D. self-confidence 4. having one’s emotions under
control
E. self-esteem 5. the ability to exercise the will
so as to prevent oneself from
expressing strong emotion or
acting impulsively
F. selfhood 6. behaviour asserting one’s
claims or rights, expressing
confidence in one’s proper
merit or aggressively asserting
the superior quality of one’s
own mind and body
G. self-control 7. one’s good opinion of one’s
dignity or worth

2. Practice
Fill in the blanks using either MAKE or DO at the right tense.
1. She has already…………..dinner.
2. It’s hard to ……….a decision at such short notice.
3. Patience ……….wonders (miracles).
4. You shouldn’t………….the polite if you don’t feel that
way.
5. I hate……………the washing up.
6. …….as you would be done.
7. I haven’t …………up my mind as to what I
should……next.
 8. She……..her hair at the hairdresser’s last Wednesday.
9. Why haven’t you………your homework.
10. ………the housework is equivalent to chores (A.E.) /
chares (B.E.).
11. She ……always……….a mountain out of a molehill.
12. ………hay while the sun shines.
13. ………haste slowly.
14. ………yourselves at home.
15. Don’t……such a fuss!

1. H-10, I-13, J-11, K-9, L-14, M-8, N-12

2. 16- made
17- make
18- does
19- make
20- doing
21- do
22- make
23- does
24- done
25- doing
26- making
27- make
28- make
29- make
30- make