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29 U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS There are many people in the U.S. today who are not satisfied with the education that their children are receiving in the public schools. They are very worried about a number of developments that are taking place there. However, not all of these people are worried about the same things. In fact, they often do not agree about the problems in public education. One group of people is concerned about the quality of the education which young people are receiving. According to these parents, their children are not learning enough in school, and some researchers agree with them. For example, according to recent studies, the number of high school students who cannot read is increasing not decreasing1 Also the number of students who have difficulty with simple mathematics is increasing. Even students who graduate from high school and go to college show a depressing lack of knowledge. In a geography class at a large university, 40% of the students could not find London on a map, 41% could not find Los Angeles, and almost 9% could not find the city where they were attending college. There are a number of possible reasons for the increase in the number of students who are not receiving a good basic education. First, classes are sometimes too large. In some city schools, for example, there are often between forty and fifty students in a class. Then, there are many teachers who do not know enough about the subjects that they are teaching. The college programmes which train future teachers are not always good and do not always attract the top students. But the problems are not always the fault of the teachers or the education system. Often students who do not want to learn behave badly and disturb the classes. As a result, the students who are really interested in their school subjects cannot learn much in these classes. Finally, according to some people, television is also to blame for the lack of success of the public schools. Young people often watch six or more hours of television a day. They do not take time for their homework. They grow to depend on television for entertainment and information, and, therefore, they cannot see any reason for reading in this modern world. All the entertainment and information they want comes from television, not from books. A second group of people is dissatisfied with the public schools for very different reasons. These people usually have very conservative beliefs about life. They do not like the changes which they see every day in American society, and they disagree with many of the ideas which their children hear and read about in school. For example, they are against the sex education classes that some schools give. For them, sex education is not a suitable subject for schools. They also object to schoolbooks that describe the lives of mothers who work outside the home or of parents who are divorced. They do not like history books which criticize the U.S. for mistakes made in the past. They are even against dictionaries that define one or two dirty words. There are, however, many other people who completely disagree with the ideas and actions of these conservatives. "They are trying to limit our freedom. We must protect our children's right to learn about many different ideas,” these parents say. Thus, in the U.S. today there is a lot of discussion about very important questions in education. Who will decide school programmes and books? Does the government have the right to decide? Do the school administrators have the right to decide? Can teachers decide? Do only parents have the right to decide the things that their children learn in school? Watch television and read news magazines; you will hear a lot of different answers to these questions.
30 UNTITLED Companies can increase the money with which they run their business in a number of ways. Besides borrowing money and buying on credit, they can use some other processes of financing. Two ways of increasing money are described here. First, they may provide bonds. Bonds are a special kind of promissory note, a written promise to pay back the money owed. They can be in various currencies, 9r forms of money used in different countries, such as the pound in England or the mark in Germany. These bonds can easily be resold to other people or to other countries. The company that uses bonds guarantees to pay a particular amount of money as interest regularly for a certain period of time. This continues Until the time when the company has to pay back the money owed. Payments of interest must be made on time; it doesn't matter whether the company is making earnings or losing money. Another process companies may use is to provide other forms of promissory notes called stocks. Bonds and stocks are opposite methods of providing money for a company. The people who buy stocks provide capital which is invested in the business. They have a share in the profits and in making decisions, '?ut they must also share the losses. The people who own stocks receive dividends, that is, periodic payments of the earnings of a company. On the other hand, according to the law, the people who own bonds have no control over the decisions of the company.
31 DISASTER AT SEA Along the coast of the United States, the U.S. Coast Guard helps ships that get into difficulty at sea. The Coast Guard, like the Navy, is controlled by the U.S. government. It receives the money that ji needs from the government; therefore, its ships, planes, and helicopters are very modern. In Great Britain the system is very different. There are a small number of men, called lifeboatmen, who go out to help ships in trouble. These brave men often risk their lives, but they receive no money for their work. They live in small towns on the coast, and most have other jobs. The special lifeboats that they need are provided by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (R.N.L.I.), a private group which depends completely on money from private people. The R.N.L.I. does not accept any money from the government. As a result, it cannot always buy the best and most modern lifeboats. For example, ten years ago, British researchers began to criticize the lifeboats which were in use at that time. According to their studies, the lifeboats never sank, but they turned over in certain sea conditions and stayed upside down in the water. However, there was a new kind of lifeboat that did not turn oven The R.N.L.I. began to buy this safer kind of boat, but it could only buy one every year. Some years ago, on the southwestern coast of England, a lifeboat station that did not have the new type of lifeboat received a radio call from a small ship that was sinking. The call came in the middle of the worst storm in forty years. The sea was very rough, but the lifeboat went out to try to save the men on the sinking ship. Two hours later, the radio of the lifeboat stopped, and nothing more was heard from them. One day later a helicopter found the lifeboat. It was lying upside down in the sea. Probably a large wave hit it and turned it oven Everyone in the lifeboat had died. No one had survived. The news of the disaster shocked the people of Great Britain. A number of people began to criticize the lifeboat system. In their opinion, the U.S. system is better. "We cannot send brave men out in boats which aren’t safe," they said. "They need the best boats which money can buy. The government must control the lifeboat system." Today, however, the system remains the same.
32 HOW TO USE THE READER'S GUIDE The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature is a subject and author list of many (but not all) magazine articles published in the U.S. This list, called an index, is sent to U.S. libraries every two weeks so that interested people can find out quickly what current information is available. For university or college students who must frequently do research, this list of subjects written about in magazines of general interest can be valuable. Learning to use The Reader's Guide is, therefore, important to all university students in the U.S. The content of The Reader's Guide consists of subject and author entries to periodicals; that is, magazines published regularly. This information is listed alphabetically. After the subject or author's name, information is given which tells the student where to find the magazine article. For example, if you want to look up the subject 'Education', you should look up the letter 'E' and then find the word 'Education'. If you want to look up an author whose last name is 'Rodriquez', you should look up the letter 'R' and then find the word 'Rodriquez'. Under the subject or the author listing, you will find articles listed, in alphabetical order, about that subject or by that author. Each article is listed by the first word in the title of the article except for the words 'a', 'an', and 'the'; these initial words are not considered in the alphabetizing of articles. The Reader's Guide also has two kinds of cross-references; that is, information about other places to look in The Reader's Guide for more articles about a subject. After a heading, you might find the word 'see’ which is followed by other subject headings also found in the index. For example, 'Higher Education' isn't a subject heading in The Reader's Guide; if you look up 'Higher Education' you will find: "see Universities and Colleges". Then you will look under 'U' for universities. The other kind of cross-reference is 'see also'. For instance, if you look for 'Education', The Reader's Guide will list articles about education, but it also says: "see also: Adult Education, Elementary Education, Special Education". If you are interested in any of those headings, you can look them up in The Reader's Guide.
33 PALEOGEOGRAPHY To answer questions about the ancient geography of the earth~ in order to make comparisons with the present day geography, it Is necessary to make maps of the lands and seas that existed during past ages. This process of reconstructing ancient geography is called paleogeography (from the Greek word palaious, meaning ancient). Like a modern day detective, the geologist must search for clues about the nature of the ancient geography among the rocks. The clues are of two main kinds: the types of fossils preserved in rocks and the properties of the rocks themselves. By studying these clues, the geologist gains direct knowledge about the distribution of the lands and seas and also the natural environment of the area, such as climate, the temperature and salinity, i.e. the salt content, of the water, and the downhill direction of slopes on the earth's surface. The last item~ is very important in helping the geologist to guess where the mountains and basins were located in the geologic past.snıad The distribution of fossils (skeletons, shells, leaf impressions, footprints, and dinosaur eggs) in rocks can provide information about the ancient distribution of lands and seas. For example, the remains ?f corals and clamshells (sea animals) in very old limestone deposits indicate that the area was once part of a shallow sea. Similarly, when the remains of ancient animals, such as horses and camels, are found, it can be assumed that the area was dryland or that land was nearby. Fossils can also show the depth and temperature of ancient waters. For example, certain kinds of shelled sea animals live in shallow water, others in deep water. Certain kinds of present day coral need warm and shallow tropical salt waters to be able to live. When similar types of coral are found in ancient limestone, it can be surmised that the area at one time had a warm, tropical climate. The properties of rocks are also important clues about the ancient past and are used as guides to reconstruct paleogeography. In 1863, the famous naturalist, Louis Agassiz, helped to solve a mystery about the origin of certain kinds of rocks containing a mixture of sand, silt and clay. Some experts thought 'the rocks originated during the Biblical flood, but others suggested that they were caused by sediment, i.e., anything left behind from melting icebergs. After a summer in the Swiss Alps studying glaciers and glacial deposits, Agassiz discovered that the rocks found, for example, in much of Europe had been spread by large continental glaciers. Much of what Agassiz saw could be explained only by glacial action. Because a glacier is a solid mass of ice, it moves slowly, and as it moves, it picks up all sizes of debris; in other words, the scattered remains of broken particles, ranging from huge rocks to silt and clay. As the ice melts, all the debris is left behind in the form of a layer or material of many kinds. Using these two important clues - fossils and rocks - plus other information, geologists are able to reconstruct ancient geography0 to make comparisons with the earth’s present geography. By comparing these, geologists know that. the appearance of the earth's continents has been constantly changing over the centuries. And this changing of the earth's surface is still going on today, but it is so gradual that people are aware of the change only occasionally. Earthquakes and the formation of new volcanoes are two spectacular actions used by nature to change the face of continents. Truly, we live in a changing world.
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