Szkoła: Vocabulary and Grammar
Szkoła: Vocabulary and Grammar
Szkoła: Vocabulary and Grammar
V O C A B U L A R Y A N D
G R A M M A R
SEPTEMBER 2015
I like school because ...
Some of the very brightest children are transformed by school - they become bored, bullied and alienated, their giftedness
unrecognised. But withdrawing them is not the only answer. Judith Judd talks to the experts. Opposite, Mike Gerrard meets a
five-year-old who is now being successfully taught at home by his unqualified mother WHAT is the best way to teach a
genius? Britain's two youngest graduates for several hundred years - 13-year-olds Ruth Lawrence and Ganesh Sittampalam
- achieved their success by markedly different routes. Ruth was taught at home by her father who then accompanied her to
Oxford University where she studied full-time. Ganesh attended Surrey University at Guildford one day a week, continuing to
follow the normal curriculum with classmates at King's College Junior School, Wimbledon. He still gained a first-class degree
in two years. When his success was announced last month, the university said it was a landmark in the education of gifted
children because he had not sacrificed his childhood for a degree.
Yet, according to the National Association for Gifted Children, many very able children suffer the same fate as Matthew
Crippen (see case study opposite) when they attend school. They become bored, upset and regress. Dr Edward Chitham,
the association's educational consultant, says: 'There are significant numbers of teachers who do not recognise the signs of
giftedness. The effect is that the child feels very alienated. There is a climate of opinion in some schools that children of high
ability can cope on their own.'
On the contrary, after five years at home with parents who have fostered their interests, the arrival at school where teachers
have often not been trained to spot gifted children can be a shock. The association recently dealt with the case of a highly
intelligent little boy who wrote very little because he worked out so much in his head. He was made to stay in at break to write
down his ideas. Children who have a bad experience at school may suffer debilitating doubts about their ability despite the
fact that they have every reason to be confident. So is the answer to take a child out of school and turn to an organisation like
Education Otherwise, which helps home-educators of children with all abilities?
Mike Turner of the National Association for Curriculum Enrichment and Extension, opposes withdrawal. 'We have a very
good education system and we can cater for these children within it.' His own school, St Anne's, Oldland, Bristol, a state
primary, coped with a talented mathematician by inviting sixth- formers from a local secondary school to come in and work at
problem-solving with him. 'We kept in close contact with his parents who felt a balanced personality was developing as well
as an able mathematician.' If we start taking the most able out of school, he says, we have to think about withdrawing the
least able and any child who is exceptionally talented in one area of the curriculum, which could mean 40 per cent of the
school population.
Dr Chitham is also cautious: 'We can support people who take their children out of school but our long-term aim is to try to
change the climate of opinion in schools.' Parents have other options besides withdrawal, he suggests. They can look around
for a more suitable school. That may well be a state school with the right teacher and the right head. A fee-paying school is
not necessarily the answer. 'We get as many agonised calls from parents of children in private schools as we do from state
school parents. The discipline and regimentation of some private schools is not right for a loner who wants to explore on his
own.' This is particularly true of primary schools. At secondary level, some fee-paying schools, with their greater resources,
are able to offer a wider curriculum.
Rather than switching schools, parents can ask for their child to be put up a class, though experts disagree about the merits
of 'acceleration' and some schools and local authorities refuse to allow it. Mr Turner, who aims to spot and foster musical,
sporting and artistic as well as academic ability in his school, says: 'It is better for them to stay in their age group and for the
teacher to organise the curriculum to meet their needs. It is not necessarily a question of giving them harder work, going on
10 exercises beyond everyone else, but of challenging them to higher and wider qualities of thought.' In the case of sport or
music, special provision may have to be made out of school.
Dr Chitham, however, says schools should be flexible about teaching children either full or part-time with an older group.
Since able children do not always develop at the same rate in all subjects, they can be with an older group for maths, say,
but with their own class most of the time. 'A lot of people worry about the social aspects of acceleration but a lot of these
children are not enormously social whichever group you put them in.'
Many gifted children will progress cheerfully through school to a double first at university. Research by Joan Freeman of the
European Council for High Ability suggests that a very able child is not necessarily a very difficult one. Dr Chitham advises
that parents should remember that education is not a race and that children are not there to fulfil their parents' unfulfilled
ambitions. Teaching should be to satisfy the needs of the child
Read the text and match paragraphs 1-8 with summaries A-I . There is one extra summary which you don't need to
use
A. Advice for parents B. School failure C. Good school example D. Parents attitude E. Special tasks
F. Academic succes examples G. Teacher's blindness H. Timetable I. School teaching drawback
Listening and speaking
1. Listen to the extract from a radio programme and 2. Listen to a part of the programme and decide which
try to answet the question what it is about. sentences are true and which are not.
a. importance of a literacy
b. current thinking in education
1. There is the same hierachical sybject
c. stifling pupils' creativity system everywhere on the Earth
2. We do not use maths on daily basis at all
3. According to the speaker dance is equally
3. Speaking time: The school of your dreams. What important as math
kind of impovements would you like to introduce to 4. The man thinks arts are more imortant
your school to be your dreamt one? than science
5. Nowadays kids are not very physically
active in a school
1. What exactly the girl is doing on her bed? Why do you think so?
2. Do you like to study with your friends or on your own?
3. Tell me about the last time when you had to use a computer to do your homework
* Do you think high technology is relly needed and helpful in the process of learning? Why?
Present Simple and Present Continous
Grammar Time