texte engleza

Pinpoint the differences between highly intelligent people and good thinkers, as stated in the text below. Which of the two categories do you regard as more privileged and in what particular contexts? (250 words)

Unfortunately, many people with a high intelligence actually turn out to be poor thinkers. They get caught in the. "intelligence trap". of which there are many aspccts. For example. a highly intelligent person may take up a view on a subject and then defend that view very ably. The better someone is able to defend a view. the less inclined is that person actually to explore the subject. So the highly intelligent person can get trapped by intelligence, together with our usual sense of logic that you cannot be more right than right. into one point ot view. The less intelligent person is less sure of his or her rightness, and therefore more at ease to cxplore the subjcct and other points of view. A highly intelligent person usually grows up with a sense of that intelectual superiority and needs to be seen to be "right" and "clever". Such a person is less willing to risk creative and constructive ideas, because such ideas may take a time to show their worth or to get accepted. Highly intelligent people are often attracted to the quick pay-off of negativity. If you attack someone else's ideas or thinking, there can be an immediate achievement together with a useful sense of superiority. In intellectual terms. attack is also cheap and easy because the attacker can always choose the frame of reference. (adapted from Helen Naylor, Stuart Hagger, Paths to Proficiency)

Can there be any connection between games and magic? Enlarge upon this topic, having the text below as a starting point (250 words)

When they are successful, games blot out the rest of the world. Mere scraps of paper

and plastic magically become instruments of success or failure, and colours and shapes become

lucky numbers, lucky colours upon which all depends.

The whole experience of game playing is steeped in magical expectations, the most basic one being that one can get something to happen simply by wanting it enough. When very young children are struggling to open a puzzle box they often pause, stare at it furiously and then open their mouths wide several times. This is undoubtedly a strange way to try to get a box open, but it' s not only children who act as if they believe in magic. Adult golfers, for instance, sway from one side to the other so as to "influence" the ball they've just hit. Players often stick to bizarre strategies, whichhave by chance once proved successful. Sometimes, a chance success can make one persist with a completely useless bit of behaviour and that is why people believe they can magically influence a game.

(adapted from Helen Naylor, Stuart Hagger, Paths to Proficiencv)

a. Pick up one instance of irony in the text below and comment upon the mechanisms that have generated it (75 words)

b. Write a 250-word essay in which you comment on the author's attitude towards amateur photographers.

In a few short weeks the camera season begins. Loaded down with film and filters and huge black boxes, the first of hordes of tourists will start to flood across the world, an infestation of locusts that give out thousands of dry clickings as they land. Smile, click. Say cheese, click. A bit to the left, click. Keep still, click. All travel is now merely a means of moving a camera from place to place, all travelers are ruled by the all-powerful lens. Visitors old-fashioned enough to wish only to stand and look with their anachronistic eyes are pushed aside by the photographers, who take it for granted that while they do their ritual focusing, nothing else may move or cross their vision. Those peculiar souls without a camera must step aside for those more properly occupied, must wait while the rituals take place. And the populations of whole countries seeing themselves cannibalized, swallowed up, vacuumed into the black-ringed staring eye, take what they can from the cannibals. You want take picture me? You pay. You want picture my house, my camel? You pay.

The camera is the means by which we stamp ourselves on everything we see, under cover of recording the wonders of the world already wonderfully recorded by professionals and on sale at every corner bookshop and newsagent. But what use is to us an illustrated book of perfect photographs if we are not in the picture to prove thatwe were there? (adapted from Sue O'Connell, Focus on Proriciency)

Enlarge upon the narrator’s philosophy about people. Comment on the narrator’s

probable relationship with/ attitude towards women.

Women who have come to know me well have always accused me sooner or later of being

very cold at heart, and while this is a woman’s view of it, and a woman can rarely know the things

that go inside a man, I suppose there is a sort of truth to what they say. The first good English

novelist I ever read was Somerset Maugham, and he wrote somewhere that „ Nobody is any better

than he ought to be”. Since it was exactly what I was thinking at the time, I carried it along with me

as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought,

because it seems to me that some people are a little better, and some a little worse than they ought

to be, or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.

( Norman Mailer, The Deer Park)

Enlarge upon the different attitudes towards art that are implicit in the text. Refer to

Poirot’s attitude, to Simpson’s standpoint, as well as to the point of view imposed by the

unemployed. (250 words)

One thing leads to another, as Hercule Poirot is fond of saying without much originality.

He adds that this was never more clearly evidenced than in the case of the stolen Rubens.

He was never much interested in the Rubens. For one thing, Rubens is not a painter he

admires, and then the circumstances of the theft were quite ordinary. He took it up to oblige

Alexander Simpson, who was by way of being a friend of his and for a certain private reason of his

own, not unconnected with the classics!

After the theft, Alexander Simpson sent for Poirot and poured out all his woes. The Rubens

was a recent discovery, a hitherto unknown masterpiece, but there was no doubt of its authenticity.

It had been placed on display at Simpson’s Galleries and it had been stolen in broad daylight. It was

at the time when the unemployed were pursuing their tactics of lying down on the street crossings

and penetrating into the Ritz. A small body of them had entered Simpson’s Galleries and lain down

with the slogan; Art is a luxury. Feed the hungry. The police had been sent for, everyone had

crowded round in eager curiosity, and it wasw not till the demonstrators had been forcibly removed

by the arm of the law that it was noticed that the new Rubens had been neatly cut out of its frame

and removed also!

( adapted from Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules )

Enlarge upon the different kinds of costs specified in the text regarding energy

consumption. ( 250 words )

We’re all involved in the oil business. Every time we start our cars, turn on our lights,

cook a meal or heat our homes, we’re relying on some form of fuel to make it happen. Up to now,

it’s inevitably been fossil fuel, part of the carbon chain. And, just as inevitably, that will have to

change. Long before we decide to stop using fossil fuel, costs will have already made the decision

for us. Not just the monetary cost, but the human cost, the cultural cost, the environmental cost. We

will, quite rightly, demand that our future energy is both sustainable and renewable. We will expect

a lot from the likes of solar power, wind power, geothermal power and hydrogen fuel cells. And it

will take time.

Various estimates suggest that by 2050, nearly one third of the world’s energy needs

could come from just such sources. Which leaves the other two thirds to come from conventional

fuels, such as oil and gas. To make that happen, we have to strike a balance. Between the need to

protect people’s way of life and their environment, and the need to provide them with affordable

energy. Between the cost of developing new technology to extract the utmost from current fuels,

and the cost of developing new power sources. This is the real price of energy and it’s worth it, if

only to make sure our children have the chance to buy it.

Enlarge upon Mark Boxer’s artistic creed. ( 250 words )

Mark Boxer was entirely self-taught and strongly opposed to any form of art training,

which he thought had the effect of weakening any natural, individual ability. His own ability ( he

wasn’t vain about it, though he knew he was good ) meant a great struggle in pursuit of perfection.

He always refused to draw people he didn’t know or hadn’t met. Watching them on video might be

good enough: a glance, the shape of an eyebrow, a wave of the hand, all helped. Sometimes, he took

a table in a restaurant if he knew his subject would be there. He’d ask to see people at their office

and walk around them while they made telephone calls or run meetings.

If he was asked to draw someone who didn’t interest him, he’d ask if a photograph could

be used instead. He never understood how he could be expected to draw someone for whom he had

no feeling, whose face or character didn’t make him want to draw them. There were certain people

he could not draw. Ordinary, good-looking faces didn’t interest him, and he found women difficult..

There were also certain people whom, out of a sense of decency, he refused to make fun of with his

drawing.

Comment upon the author’s attitude towards travelling. (250 words )

I don’t want to travel. I don’t know why, but when God was handing out the

wanderlust, he forgot to give me any. I’m quite happy to watch the world go by through my living

room window and I have no desire to go out there and see it, explore it, or eat any of it. The fact that

other people have done so – and destroyed vast acres of its natural resources to regale the stay-at-

homes with their travelogues – just increases my determination to stay put.

Why should I go to Mongolia when friends have been there before me, photographed it

from every possible angle and gave me long, unsolicited testimonials about it? And when all is said

and done, the main preoccupation of the average traveller is not with the places they’ve seen or the

people they’ve met, even if they do feign an interest in the lost Amazonian tribe they ran into.

I suppose it’s just that I’m not imbued with the spirit of imperialism; the burning desire

to go to far-flung corners of the globe, trample a couple of blades of grass underfoot and claim them

as my own. I prefer charter flights and package deals, a full complement of luggage and the fact that

my destination is likely to be a hotel with my name indelibly written in its register. I just couldn’t

bear the unpredictability of being in foreign climates and not having a brochure to wave in anger at

the hotel manager. I run my holidays with the precision of a military campaign.

Comment on the following text and the author’s point of view. ( 250 words )

Here is a confession: sometimes I have to succumb to the urge to slam doors. It’s childish,

I know, but it is exactly what I need when I don’t want to be grown-up and talk about it.

Whether you’re aged four or forty, being childish is considered to be a „bad thing”.

Everybody is liable to be told to „act your age”, „grow up” or „stop being such a baby”. To say that

someone is childish is to imply they are selfish, silly, insensitive, immature or embarrassing. But

most of the things we do as adults contain elements of childishness. If it’s so childish to care about

winning or losing a game, for example, why are the sports pages of every newspaper given over to

describing just that.

We live in a culture which prizes self-restraint; childishness is equated with being ruled

by moods and emotions. But what we are critical of is often nothing more harmful than exuberance.

While there is a place for self-restraint, too much of it can be bad for you.

Many people say they feel guilty about being childish. That is because being childish is

the luxury of doing all the things you are no longer supposed to do now that you’re a grown-up. But

there is no need to satisfy our non-adult whims, which is not all about slamming doors, but also

playing, having fun, letting go some tension which has accumulated after days, weeks or years of

sensible, mature, rational and responsible behaviour.

Comment on the following text and the situation presented. ( 250 words )

I recently saw one of the world’s most famous women tennis players reel with shock at a

linesman’s call. She stopped playing, walked over to her chair, gathered the five or six rackets,

tucked them under her arm and, as she walked off the court, she poked a forefinger up at the umpire

in what the spectatorsapplauded as an obscene gesture. She hadn’t quit. She was just biding her

time, and temper, till the officials came running, or kneeling, begging her to return. Which, about

three minutes later, she graciously consented to do, as thousands of spectators came to their feet to

pay tribute to an act of bravery in defying the umpire. The umpire didn’t fume or shout. He blushed.

He cowered. He knew he had behaved badly. He seemed truly sorry. And the crowd cheered their

heroine again and forgave him.

Money has got to be the reason, a primary reason anyway, why the insulted umpire sent his

officials to beg the tennis star to return to the court and go on with the game. She earns a fortune.

The fans pay to subsidize that fortune. The fans come not merely to see a game superlatively

played, they have learned to expect a show as well. Any sports promoter will tyou that a spots

crowd spurned is a dangerous social animal. In other words, the officials, who sometimes seem so

cowered, must have in mind the maintenance of public order, which has little to do with public

courtesy.


During the long vacation I was accepted as a trainee bus conductor. I found the job

fiercely demanding even on a short route, with a total of about two dozen passengers. I pulled the

wrong tickets, forgot the change and wrote up my log at the end of each trip in a way that drew

hollow laughter from the inspectors. The inspectors were likely to swoop at any time. A conductor

with twenty years’ service could be dismissed if an inspector caught him accepting money without

pulling a ticket. If a hurrying passenger pressed the fare into your hand as he leapt out of the back

door, it was wiser to tear a ticket and throw it out after him. There might be a plain-clothes

inspector following an unmarked car.

I lasted about three weeks all told. The routes through town were more than the mind could

stand even in the off-peak hours. All the buses from our depot would be crawling nose to tail

through the town while the entire working population of Sidney fought to get aboard. It was hot that

summer: 37 degrees Celsius every day. Inside the bus it was hotter still. It was so jammed inside

that my feet weren’t touching the floor. I couldn’t blink the sweat out of my eyes. There was no

hope of collecting any fares. At each stop it was all I could do to reach the bell-push that signaled

the driver to close the automatic doors and get going. I had no way of telling whether anybody had

managed to get on or off.


The video wave has swept too far. It bears a large responsibility for the declining interest

in reading among the young. If we don’t do something to stem the tide, the reading impulse will

soon be drowned. The time-honoured way of improving reading is by reading fiction. Everyone,

psychologists tell us, needs stories. Mythologies and folk stories have been passed between

generations for centuries. Most of us are literate, and theoretically our fictional needs could be

satisfied by reading.

But it’s not so. Today’s generation of average school children rely on video, television and

film. These offerings may be harmless in themselves, but they do nothing to build up reading skills.

If some of the hours children spend watching television were devoted to reading, the population

would be better educated.

Watching a story is a totally passive pastime. Someone else has made all the decisions

about casting, set, clothing, facial expressions, tone and so on. Reading a story is an active

partnership between writer and reader. Ideas are sketched and the mind of the reader creates the

rest.

Why is dramatized fiction usurping the written plot? It is because children whose reading is

hesitant cannot readily identify and enjoy the plot. Watching something is easier. This is leading to

a generation whose mental processes are too stultified.

Comment upon the extent to which scientific theories can be accessible to ordinary people,

having the text below as a starting point. ( 250 words )

What would it mean if we actually did discover the ultimate theory of the universe? We

could never be quite sure that we had indeed found the correct theory, since theories can’t be

proved. But if the theory was mathematically consistent and always gave predictions that agreed

with observations, we could be reasonably confident that it was the right one. It would bring to an

end a long and glorious chapter in the history of humanity’s intellectual struggle to understand the

universe. But it would also revolutionize the ordinary person’s understanding of the laws that

govern the universe. In Newton’s time, it was possible for an educated person to have a grasp of the

whole of human knowledge, at least in outline. But since then, the pace of the development of

science has made this impossible. Because theories are always being changed to account for new

observations, they are never properly digested or simplified, so that ordinary people can understand

them. You have to be a specialist, and even then, you can only hope to have a proper grasp of a

small proportion of the scientific theories. Further, the rate of progress is so rapid, that what one

learns at school or university is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the

rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and

specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being

made or the excitement they are generating.

Enlarge upon the various types of discrimination included in the text below and the

hardships they imply. ( 250 words )

Despite severe illnessw and painful poverty, and despite jobs that always discriminated

against me as a woman – never paying me equal money for equal work, always threatening or

replacing me with a man or men who were neither as well educated nor e4xperienced, but just men

– despite all these examples of discrimination, I have managed to work toward being a self-

fulfilling, re-creating, reproducing woman, raising a family, writing poetry, cooking food, doing all

the creative things I know how to do and enjoy. But my problems have not been simple; they have

been manifold. Being female, black and poor in America means I was born with three strikes

against me. I am considered at the bottom of the social class-caste system in these United States,

born low on the totem pole.

Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives

in an atmosphere of freedom. The world is dominated by fear and greed. It consists of pitying the

vicious and the avaricious against the naive, the innocent and the victimized. Power belongs to the

strong, and the strong are BIG in more ways than one. No one is more victimized in this white male

American society than the black female.

Comment upon the changes in microelectronics as apparent in the text below. (250 words)

This decade is likely to be considered as more than somewhat interesting for the United

Kingdom and indeed for other industrialized countries. The political, social and economic

autonomic reflexes in operation for the greater part of this century will have to give way to the new

as conditions change. Paramount amongst these changes is the advent of microelectronics with their

ability to increase productivity and the end of cheap, easily manipulated sources of energy.

Together these will undoubtedly change the pattern of industrializatio and industrialized life in a

radical manner not seen in the UK since the early 19th century.

Most technological changes are somewhat less than fundamental. Many act on an individual

process or industry and so their effects on the general economy can be boxed off. Others act on the

demand side with new products, often for new markets. Microelectronics, though, is different. It is

difficult to think of parts of the economy on which it will not have an impact; it is especially very

difficult to think of the many new consumer products that will evolve. It is already being used, in

productive processes through robotics, in production planning through cheap computers, as cheap

and easy to maintain components, and through telecommunications, teletext systems and word

processing to provide, transmit and store information.

Comment on the text below. ( 250 words )

Tribalism has never disappeared, however much the societies in which we live may be

removed from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Because we are essentially social animals, we

have a drive to establish particular forms of affiliation with other people. We might be Americans,

British, French or australian, but identification solely with others of our own nationality is not in

itself enough: it is too abstract, and it lacks the sense of true bonding which can be established only

in the context of smaller groups. So, as our national units become increasingly large and

heterogenous, we recreate social units on a more human scale. Even in the anonymous societies of

our major conurbations, people band together to create modern tribes which share the basic features

of traditional ones.

Anthropologists define a tribe as a collection of groups of people who share patterns of

speech, basic cultural characteristics and a common territory. The most important feature, however,

is that members of a tribe feel that they have more in common with each other than with

neighbouring groups. This sense of community both binds the members of a tribe together and

distance them from non-members of the tribe.

Many traditional tribes lack centralized authority. The adult members share in decision-

making and all have roughly equal status. Such tribes are known as „acephalous” societies, meaning

that they have no single head. Political organization is often based on kinship networks and

alliances between extended family or clan grouping. Even where there are marked differences in

status, such as between males and females or between adults and juveniles, there tends to be a clear

sense of equality within age or gender groups.

Enlarge upon the problem of unemployment, focusing on past and present attitudes towards

this issue, as mentioned in the text below. ( 250 words )

All industrial societies must live with a certain degree of unemployment. The problem for

policy-makers is to define what they consider to be an acceptable level of unemployment and justify

this definition to the electorate. In the post-war period unemployment throughout the Western world

was, by historical standards, extremely low. Politicians and voters alike soon grew accustomed to

the belief that at least 98 per cent of those who were willing and able to work should at all times

have a job. If unemployment rose above this level, it was generally believed that the government of

the day had a moral as well as a political duty to increase the level of economic activity. Since the

later 1960s, however, the „normal” level of unemployment both in the UK and Western Europe as a

whole has risen, and the ability of governments to reverse this trend by expansionist fiscal and

monetary policies is now in doubt. No politician has yet dared say that „full” employment might in

the future mean that only 94 per cent of those who are willing and able to work can reasonably

expect to have a job. But economists have been less than reticent. In societies which for more than

twenty years after the Second World War prided themselves on being fully employed, such

predictions must surely give cause for concern.

Comment on the following text. ( 250 words )

Racism is not the same as racial prejudice. Prejudice is a partial rejection of a man on the basis

of his real or supposed specific or specifiable characteristics. A white man may be prejudiced

against a black man because he thinks he is lazy, sexy, dirty, mean, unclean, unintelligent and so on,

even as a black man might be prejudiced against a white man because in his view he is selfish,

inhuman, merciless, devious, emotionally undeveloped and the like. Since prejudice is based on

some assumed characteristic of the victim, it can be countered by showing that he does not in fact

possess this characteristic, or that it is not really obnoxious, or that he can be helped to get rid of it.

Racism belongs to a very different category. It involves a total refusal to accept the victim as a full

human being entitled to the respect due to a fellow human being, and implies that his belonging to a

particular race has so corrupted his humanity, that he belongs to an entirely different species.


Successful marriage is the most effective form of social support. It relieves the effects of

stress, and leads to better mental and physical health.

While many studies have shown the importance of social support, it is still not clear exactly

what it means. Most likely it consists of being sympathetic listener or offering helpful advice;

providing emotional support and social acceptance; giving actual help or financial help, and simply

doing ordinary things together, like eating and drinking.

Husbands seem to benefit much more from marriage than wives do. Married women are in

better physical and mental health, and are happier than single women, but these effects are nearly

twice as great for men. Various explanations have been considered, but the most plausible is that

wives provide more social support than husbands. Perhaps men need it more? They are more

exposed to stresses at work, and have worse health, and die earlier than women.

In addition, when women get married, their way of life is subject to much greater change and

this often leads to boring and isolated work in the home for which they are ill-prepared. Despite the

benefits of marriage, women find it stressful, and are in better shape if they also have jobs; their

earnings and status increase their power in the home, and they may also get social support at work.


Back when you were a small child and you stood in the aisle of a store and pleaded with a

parent for the purchase of a cereal, a toy, or a game, you were negotiating. You may have been

promising you’d be good. You may have been articulating that the item was needed, it was the thing

to have.Your simple persistence may have been the biggest bargaining chip you held in these

dealing with grown-ups. Somehow, many people seem to lose the boldness and creativity needed to

negotiate as they come into adulthood. Whining as you did when you were a child is certainly no

longer appropriate, but other strategies are. Why don’t you use them? Maybe you just don’t know

what they are. Sometimes you may not recognize when there’s an opportunity to negotiate and think

of negotiating as being applicable only to international peace relations, boundary disputes, and

maybe car buying. Yet, there are plenty of opportunities to negotiate when taking a job, making a

purchase, or working out chores or divisions of financial responsibility with a housemate. If you

don’t practise your negotiating skills, you’re apt to miss chances to improve situations for yourself.

Or you may feel vaguely resentful and shortchanged after certain encounters, without really being

able to pinpoint how things may have turned out more to your liking.


If asked, „ What are health decisions?”, most of us would answer in terms of hospitals, doctors

and pills. Yet we are all making a whole range of decisions about our health which go beyond this

limited area; for example, whether or not to smoke, exercise, drive a motorbike, drink alcohol

regularly. The ways we reach decisions andform attitudes about our health are only just beginning

to be understood.

The main paradox is why people consistently do things which are known to be very

hazardous. Two good examples of this are smoking and not wearing seat belts. Smokers run double

the risk of contracting heart disease, several times the risk of suffering from chronic bronchitis and

at least 25 times the risk of lung cancer, as compared to non-smokers. Despite extensive press

campaigns which have regularly told smokers and car drivers the great risks they are running, the

number of smokers and seat belt wearers has remained much the same. Although the number of

deaths from road accidents and smoking are well publicized, they have aroused little public interest.

If we give smokers the real figures, will it alter their views on the dangers of smoking?

Unfortunately not. The kind of information that tends to be relied on both by the smoker and the

seatbelt non-wearer is anecdotal, based on personal experience. All smokers seem to have an uncle

Bill or an auntie Mabel who has been smoking cigarettes since they were twelve, lived to 90, and

died because they fell down the stairs.Similarly, many motorists seem to have heard of people who

would have been killed if they had been wearing seat belts.


Molecular genetic studies over the last half-a-dozen years have shown that we continue to

share over ninety-eight percent of our genes with chimpanzees. So we still carry most of our old

biological baggage with us. Since Darwin’s time, fossilized bones of hundreds of creatures

variously intermediate between apes and modern humans have been discovered, making it

impossible for a reasonable person to deny the overwhelming evidence. What once seemed absurd –

our evolution from apes – actually happened.

Yet the discoveries of many missing links have only made the problem more fascinating,

without fully solving it. The few bits of new baggage we acquired – the two percent of our genes

that differ from those of chimps – must have been responsible for all of our seemingly unique

properties. We underwent some small changes with big consequences rather quickly, and recently

in our evolutionary history. In fact, as recently as a hundred thousand years ago, possible

extraterrestrial visitors would have viewed us as just one more species of big mammal.


You can rob a bank without leaving the house these days. Who needs stocking masks, guns and

getaway cars? If you’re a computer whiz-kid, you could grab your first million armed with nothing more

dangerous than a personal computer, a telephone and a modem to connect them. All you have to do is dial

into the networks that link the computers in large organizations together, type in a couple of passwords and

you can rummage about in the information that is stored there to your heart’s content.

Fortunately it isn’t always quite as easy as it sounds. But, as more and more information is processed

and stored on computer, whether it’s details of your bank account or the number of tin of baked beans in the

stockroom at the supermarket, computer crime seems set to grow.

A couple of months ago, a newspaper reported that five British banks were being held to ransom by a

gang of hackers who had managed to break into their computer. The hackers were demanding money in

return for revealing exactly how they did it. In cases like this, banks may consider paying just to protect

themselves better in the future. No one knows exactly how much money is stolen by keyboard criminals –

banks and other companies tend to be very secretive if it happens to them. It doesn’t exactly fill customers

with confidence if they think their bank account can be accessed by anyone with a personal computer! Some

experts believe that only around a tenth of all computer crimes are actually reported. Insurance company

Hogg Robinson estimate that computer frauds cost British companies an incredible 400 million pounds a

year.


The best way to learn is to teach. This is the message emerging from experiments in several schools in

which teenage pupils who have problems at school themselves are tutoring youger children – with

remarkable results for both sides. According to American research, pupil-tutoring wins over computerized

instruction and American teachers say that no other recent innovation has proved so consistently successful.

Now the idea is spreading in Britain. Throughout this term, a group of 14-year-olds at Trinity

comprehensive in Leamington Spa have been spending an hour a week helping children at a nearby primary

school with their reading. The younger children read aloud to their tutors ( who are supervized by university

students of education ) and then play word games with them. All the 14-year-olds have some of their own

lessons in a special unit for children who have difficulties at school. Though their intelligence is around

average, most of them have fallen behind on reading, writing and maths and, in some cases, this has led to

truancy or bad behaviour in class.

Jean Bond, who is running the special unit, says that the main benefit of tutoring is that it improves the

adolescents’ self-esteem. The younger children come rushing up every time and welcome them. It makes the

tutors feel important whereas, in normal school lessons, they often feel inadequate. The older children need

practice in reading but, if they had to do it in their own classes, they would say it was kids’ stuff and be

worried about losing face. The younger children get individual attention from very patient tutoers. That is

because the tutors are struggling at school themselves so, when the younger ones can’t learn, they know

exactly why. So everyone benefits.


The contemporary industrial robot, in the eyes of politicians and others, may wear the halo of high

technology, but it came into being to meet a rather mundane need. In the booming labour market of the early

1960s, it became increasingly difficult to find people willing to do boring, repetitive and unpleasant jobs.

What was needed was not a machine which could master elaborate human skills, but one which could

provide the mindless manpower demanded by mass production.

What had to be learnt, and proved well within the robot’s capacity, were sequences of precise

movement of the arm and hand. Such sequences were relatively easily programmed into a computer memory,

especially after the advent of the microprocessor freed robots from their dependence on the giant mainframe

computers of the 1960s. But however impressive, even uncanny, a robot may appear to the layman as it

repeats a series of movements with flawless precision, it is in fact operating blindly.

Repetitive manipulation is, of course, a skill common to many machines; what differentiates the robot

is that it makes use of an articulated arm analogous to the human limb and it can be reprogrammed to

perform a whole variety of tasks without the need to redesign or adjust its mechanical components. There

are, however, a limited range of applications in which a manipulator arm, operating blindly and without

intelligence, is useful.


In their first years, children learn extraordinarily complicated things like walking and talking. At

nursery and primary school, they mostly show wonderful creativity. And then something goes wrong. The

reason children don’t like going to school is that it interrupts their education.

Personally, I quite enjoyed my schooldays, but I feel sorry for anyone who says they were the happiest

days of their life. I’m sure that many would agree that their education began or was resumed the day they

left school.

Where the school system goes wrong is on thinking that education and passing exams are the same

thing. They are not. Anything learned in order to pass an exam is immediately forgotten, because it is

required through compulsion rather than motivation. Certainly, I remember the works of Rider Haggard

more vividly than those of Virgil. Why weren’t we taught something useful, like mending fuses, how

plumbing functions, and all the rest of the complex business of how a house works. Or simple book-keeping.

Or first aid.

Languages are useful, too. I was taught French for about ten years at school, and since then have spent

about five years in France. I can read French fairly easily but I still feel inhibited about speaking it, because

always at my back I hear some schoolteacher giving me marks and pulling me up for incorrect use of the

conditional or the subjunctive. I also speak Italian, though I was never taught this language at school, but I

worked in Italy and picked up the language as I went along. School made French an effort. Italian is a

pleasure.


The idea of preserving biological diversity gives most people a warm feeling inside. But what,

exactly, is diversity? And which kind is the most woth preserving? It may be anathema to save-the-

lot environmentalists who hate setting such priorities, but academics are starting to cook up

answers.

Andrew Solow, a mathematician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and his

colleagues argue that in the eyes of conservation, all species should not be equal. Even more

controversially, they suggest that preserving the rarest is not always the best approach. Their

measure of diversity is the amount of evolutionary distance between species. They reckon that if

choices must be made, then the number of times that cousins are removed from one another should

be one of the criteria.

This makes sense from both a practical and an aesthetic point of view. Close relatives have

many genes in common. If those genes might be medically or agriculturally valuable, saving one is

nearly as good as saving both. And different forms are more interesting to admire and study than

lots of things that look the same.

Dr. Solow’s group illustrates its thesis with an example. Six species of crane are at some risk

of extinction. Breeding in captivity might save them. But suppose there were only enough money to

protect three. Which ones should be picked?

In practice, it is difficult to choose between species. Most of those at risk – especially plants,

the group most likely to yield useful medicines – are under threat because their habitats are in

trouble, not because they are being shot, or plucked to extinction. Nor can conservationists choose

among the millions of species that theory predicts must exist, but that have not yet been classified

by the biologists assigned to that tedious task.

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