(from "Blond's Encyclopaedia of Education")
1. The term refers to the apprenticeship served by students during their course of training before they become certificated teachers. Broadly speaking, these are two types of teacher-training course in Great Britain. One, provided by the colleges of education, lasts for three years and is classed as a "concurrent" course in which the student's general education and professional studies run parallel with periods of supervised practice teaching in the schools. The other, provided for graduates in departments of education in universities in England and Wales (but not in Scotland), is a one-year course and normally follows the first degree award.
2. In "concurrent courses", periods of school practice are spread over the three years: in one-year courses they tend to be concentrated in blocks either of one whole term or six-week periods. Very little is known about the correct admixture of theory and practice in such courses. The arrangements vary from institution to institution and are largely dependent upon the number of schools available in the catchment area.
3. Many colleges of education have their own demonstration school in which students observe experienced teachers in action and discuss the various methods they used. The general policy is to place the student in the classroom initially as an observer, then as a practitioner under the supervision of the teacher in charge of the class, and finally to leave him in full control. The student is supervised and advised by a college or university tutor.
4. While the arrangments often leave something to be desired, it is probably true to say that the majority of students find this on-the-job experience more directly helpful than the theoretical studies of principles and methods which bulk so large in most courses for prospective teachers. In some European countries, considerably less time is devoted to teaching practice than in Great Britain; on the other hand, more use is made of the internship system in which students who are not yet qualified serve their apprenticeship under a master teacher and receive a salary. With a chronic shortage of teachers, which promises to be permanent, and with solutions such as team teaching finding increasing favour, it may well be that some similar system will have to be devised in Great Britain.
Notes
1. apprenticeship—период «ученичества»
college of education — педагогический колледж, готовящий учителей для общих начальных и средних школ
concurrent — параллельный
first degree — степень бакалавра
2. admixture — смесь; зд. взаимосвязь
available — доступный
catchment area — микрорайон, обслуживаемый школой
3. demonstration school — зд. базовая школа
on-the-job experience—повышение квалификации во время работы
4. to bulk — нагромождать
internship system — система интернов
master teacher — старший учитель
permanent — постоянный
team teaching — бригадное обучение
Text 6
TV's Impact on Children
(interview with Professor Postman, New York University)
1. Watching television over a long span seriously damages children's ability to think clearly, says a media expert.
Q. Professor Postman, is television a good or bad influence on the way children learn?
A. It's turning out to be a disastrous influence, at least as far as we determine at present. Television appears to be shortening the attention span of the young as well as eroding, to a considerable extent, their linguistic powers, and their ability to handle mathematical symbolism.
2. Q. Is television more pervasive in a child's world than school?
A. Absolutely. I call television the "first curriculum" because of the amount of attention our children give to it. By now, the basic facts are known by almost everyone:
between the ages of 6 and 18, the average child spends roughly 15,000 to 16,000 hours in front of a television set, whereas school probably consumes no more than 13,000 hours.
3. Moreover, it is becoming obvious that there really is no such thing as "children's" programming. Between midnight and two in the morning, there are something like 750,000 children throughout America watching television every day. There's a fantasy people have that after 10 p. m. children are not watching television; that's nonsense.
4. Q. How does TV hurt a child's linguistic ability? A. Television is essentially a visual medium. It shows pictures moving very rapidly and in a very dynamic order. The average length of a shot on a network-TV show is about three seconds, and on a commercial about 2.5 seconds. Although human speech is heard on television it is the picture that always contains the most important meanings.
5. Television can never teach what a medium like a book can teach, and yet educators are always trying to pretend that they can use television to promote the cognitive habits and the intelectual discipline that print promotes. In this respect they will always be doomed to failure. Television is not a suitable medium for conveying ideas, because an idea is essentially language—words and sentences.
6. The code through which television communicates — the visual image—is accessible to everyone. Understanding printed words must be learned; watching pictures does not require any learning. TV is a medium that becomes intelligible to children beginning at about the age of 36 months. From this very early age on television continuously exerts influence.
7. For the reason, I think it's fair to say that TV, as a curriculum, moulds the intelligence and character of youth far more than formal schooling. Beyond that, evidence is accumulating that TV watching hurts academic performance. A recent California Department of Education survey indicated that the more children sit in front of the television, the worse they do on achievement-test scores.
8. Q. Should teachers employ audio-visual aids that have a relationship to television to enhance their instruction?
A. No. I'm against that for a couple of reasons. The most important is that a high degree of visual stimulation, such as you get with these audio-visual media, tends to distract attention away from language. I recently reviewed some studies on the effects of illustrations in learning-to-read books, and the evidence is that the more illustrations in readers, the less well the students learn the words. I think this "hidden curriculum" runs through all the new media—television, movies, video-tape and computerized video games. We become more sensitive to visual representations and less to language.
Notes
1. to damage—вредить
media expert — зд. эксперт в области телевидения
disastrous — губительный to erode — разрушать
2. pervasive — проникающий
to hurt—подорвать, вредить
network-TV — телевизионная сеть
commercial — рекламная, коммерческая передача
5. cognitive habits — познавательные навыки
to be doomed to failure — быть обреченным на провал
6. accessible—доступный
intelligible — понятный, доступный
7. to mould — формировать, создавать
8. to enhance — усиливать
to distract — отвлекать
Text 7