READING PASSAGE 2

Read the text and answer questions 14-26.

WHY DO WE NEED THE ARTS?

Sometimes people question why we need the arts what functions do art, music, dance and literature serve?

A. Imagine a world in which people spend hours working in offices or factories, and then go home in the evening to sit down to dinner, after which they sleep until it’s time to get up and work again. In this world, people do not read or watch TV, listen to music, play computer games or have pictures to decorate their homes. In fact, there are no pictures in this world - not even advertisements are illustrated, but all are words, and very plain ones at that, with no playfulness left in them. The buildings are completely functional without a single decorative feature anywhere, and there is no music to dance to and enjoy. Such a world is a world without the arts in any form.

B. To ask what the arts are good for is not exactly the same as asking what their purpose is. The arts do not have to have a purpose - they do not exist in order to teach, to make a moral point, to entertain, to distract, to amuse, to support a revolution, to disgust, to challenge, to stimulate or to cheer; they exist chiefly for their own sake. It is artists, not the arts as such, that may have an aim in mind, and their aim may be to do any of the things just listed. But equally, artists may just make a work of art because they feel compelled to. Because the work is its own justification, no aim or goal is necessarily required to explain or, still less, to justify its existence.

C. But to say that the arts do not have to serve an aim beyond themselves, even though they may sometimes do so, is not to say that they are good for nothing. On the contrary, as such an important part of human experience, they are good for many things. The distinction here lies between things that are instrumental and things that are ends in themselves. An instrument exists for something beyond itself - namely, for what it can be used to do. We know that pictures are used as instruments in advertising, and the objective is always to persuade us to buy something. Similarly, music can be written chiefly to accompany dancing, or as a soundtrack to a movie. A play can be written to point out to the theatre audience a social injustice or other problems that should be dealt with. But even though the arts can sometimes be instrumental, that fact is not essential to their nature. What the arts are ‘good for’ arises from their being an end in themselves, or more accurately, representing many different things that are valuable for their own sakes - such as, for instance, the creation of beauty.

D. The phrase ‘the arts’ includes painting, sculpture, music, literature, dance and theatre performance, and whatever else (to quote the famous US artist Andy Warhol) anyone can get away with in calling their creation a contribution to ‘the arts'. But the generalisation that the arts, whatever else they are, are always an end in themselves, applies to them all. The arts are one major form of response to the world. They are often an attempt to capture an aspect of the world, to draw attention to something about it to comment on it, to present a surprising or fresh angle on it, to represent it for the sake of exploring something about it, or enjoying or celebrating it. They can help people to focus on, for example, the colour or shape of an object, its eccentricity or typicality, and the interest or perhaps disgust it provokes in them.

E. For a loose comparison, think of laughing at a joke. We do not laugh so that we can achieve a further goal - in order to be healthy or relaxed, say, even if we thereby succeed in being healthier or more relaxed - but simply because the joke has elicited that reaction. But although it is merely a reaction, laughing is, in fact, good for something nevertheless; it does make people feel better. The arts are a reaction in the same way. French artist Cezanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire repeatedly because he was fascinated by it, not because he thought that painting it would say something about politics or society or human hopes. Being fascinated by something, attracted to it, repelled by it, keen to reveal an unusual aspect of it, are all responses to that thing; the making of the arts is one outstanding way of expressing such responses.

F. But the arts are a response not only to things in the world but also lo experience of the world, which lies inside the artist himself. And they are also often an expression of what presses from within the artist without being elicited by externals. Music is a prime example. A symphony, unless it is devised to represent bird song, rain, the sea and the like, is an abstract expression of a composers conception. We may be able to describe what the Russian composer Tchaikovsky is doing in his ballet music, but how can we describe what he is expressing in his piano concertos? Composers may experiment with melody and rhythm in very abstract, sometimes mathematical, ways.

G. When artists get to work responding to and expressing ideas, whether or not they also want to make a point, entertain, distract, support a revolution and the rest, they are producing something that someone else will react to in some way. They seek to connect with their audience and express an idea or emotion which has the capacity to enrich our experience of life itself.

READING PASSAGE 3

Read the text and answer questions 27-40.

THE SIGNIFICANT ROLE OF MOTHER TONGUE LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION

One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not the language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for years, but educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Some political parties and groups search for ways to ‘solve the problem’ of diverse communities and their integration in schools and society. They see few positive consequences for the host society and worry that diversity threatens the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote unfortunate educational policies that will make the ‘problem’ disappear. If students retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of identifying with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of the society.

The challenge for educators and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of national identity in such a way that the rights of all citizens (including school children) are respected, and the cultural, linguistic and economic resources of the nation are maximized. To waste the resources of the nation by discouraging children from developing their mother tongues is quite simply unintelligent from the point of view of national self-interest. A first step in providing an appropriate education for culturally and linguistically diverse children is to examine what the existing research says about the role of children’s mother tongues in their educational development.

In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout primary school, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both. More than 150 research studies conducted during the past 35 years strongly support what Goethe, the famous eighteenth-century German philosopher, once said: that the person who knows only one language does not truly know that language. Research suggests that bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in their thinking as a result of processing information through two different languages.

Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g. grandparents) are able to spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue, children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and succeed educationally. Children’s knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the school language. Transfer across languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the educational environment permits children access to both languages.

Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based teaching programs because they worry that they take time away from the majority language. For example, in a bilingual program where 50% of the time is spent teaching through children’s home language and 50% through the majority language, surely children won’t progress as far in the latter? One of the most strongly established findings of educational research, however, is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literacy and subject-matter knowledge in a minority language without any negative effects on children’s development in the majority language. Within Europe, the Foyer program in Belgium, which develops children’s speaking and literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and French), most clearly illustrates the benefits of bilingual and trilingual education (see Cummins, 2000).

It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning through a minority language, they are learning concepts and intellectual skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother tongue understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell time in the majority language they do not need to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at more advanced stages, there is transfer across languages in other skills, such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting details of a written passage or story, and distinguishing fact from opinion. Studies of secondary school pupils are providing interesting findings in this area, and it would be worth extending this research.

Many people marvel at how quickly bilingual children seem to ‘pick up’ conversational skills in the majority language at school (although it takes much longer for them to catch up with native speakers in academic language skills). However, educators are often much less aware of how quickly children can lose their ability to use their mother tongue, even in the home context. The extent and rapidity of language loss will vary according to the concentration of families from a particular linguistic group in the neighborhood. Where the mother tongue is used extensively in the community, then language loss among young children will be less. However, where language communities are not concentrated in particular neighborhoods, children can lose their ability to communicate in their mother tongue within two to three years of starting school. They may retain receptive skills in the language but they will use the majority language in speaking with their peers and siblings and in responding to their parents. By the time children become adolescents, the linguistic division between parents and children has become an emotional chasm. Pupils frequently become alienated from the cultures of both home and school, with predictable results.