Неутешительные прогнозы

Рекордная жара и сильней­шая засуха в США – это предвестник гораздо более серьезных проблем, выз­ванных начавшимся глобаль­ным потеплением земной атмос­феры. С таким предупреждени­ем выступил институт «Уорлд-уотч». «Фактически под угрозой находятся условия, необходи­мые для существования жизни в том виде, как мы ее знаем, – указывается в вестнике инсти­тута журнал «Уорлдуотч». – Потенциальный ущерб от «пар­никового аффекта» сравним с последствиями ядерной войны». По данным министерства сель­ского хозяйства США, в 2002 году собран урожай в 191 млн. тонн (обычно он превышает 300 млн. тонн), а потребят американ­цы – 202 млн. тонн зерна. Уже повторение засухи а будущем году может привести и мирово­му дефициту зерна, поскольку США и Канада являются круп­нейшими мировыми экспорте-рами зерна. «Уорлдуотч» кон­статирует, что, по данным уче­ных, повышение температуры атмосферы всего на несколько градусов будет иметь катастро­фические последствия для Зем­ли, поскольку это приведет к смещению климатических зон на сотни километров в течение всего нескольких десятилетий. «Вопрос сейчас не в том, что­бы остановить глобальное по­тепление: при жизни нынешне­го поколения это невозможно. Необходимо немедленно замед­лить производство газов, вызы­вающих парниковый эффект, чтобы избежать наиболее вне­запных и катастрофических из­менений климата», – указывают ученые «Уорлдуотч». А это, по их мнению, вполне осуществи­мая задача, которая, однако, требует международных усилий. В первую очередь необходимо резко сократить потребление горючих ископаемых, переходя на альтернативные виды топ­лива – энергию солнца, ветра, термальных вод, атома и повы­шая эффективность использования энергии. Кроме того, необходимы самые срочные меры по прекращению вырубки лесов, в особенности тропических, и по их восстановлению.

UNIT 5

EDUCATION

Text 1

UST Experiment in Progress

Thanks to a unified state test, a regulated education services market has emerged in Russia

An experiment to replace high school finals and college entrance exams with a unified state test (UST) is into its sec­ond year in Russia. While there are still plenty of outstanding problems, oppo­sition to the UST is gradually weaken­ing. Why?

Little Tricks of the Trade. Regional government officials have stopped brooding: The innovation is not fraught with extra spending for the lo­cal budgets — quite the contrary, the fed­eral center has taken on a part of the financial burden. Furthermore, there is now hope that the money currently cir­culating in the shadow coaching sector (in the RF Education Ministry estimate, approximately $1 billion a year) will be funneled by parents into something more worthwhile. Yet another concern has been addressed: It seems that there is not going to be. a fall in the number of those wishing to study in the prov­inces. Enrollments could even grow when senior college and university en­trants, having accessed the federal UST data bank (such a bank, ac­cording to RF Edu­cation Minister Vladimir Filippov, will be established in 2004-05), see that the number of points they have scored falls short of what is required by 5 prestigious higher educational establishments based in Moscow and St. Pe­tersburg.

Regional education authorities are also happy with UST results. They are longing for a clearcut yardstick for as­sessing the performance of educational establishments — what with innovation schools, personality development schools, and what have you. Meanwhile, 2001 showed that the UST, which grades the school-leaver on a 100-point scale using unified standards through­out Russia, can clearly demonstrate which high school provides a better education and which university is a suc­cess. This 100-point grading tool can help effectively regulate the education market. Some senior college and uni­versity training courses can be started and some closed (not being in demand), and some secondary schools can be supported (those that better prepare students for the UST) while others de­nied support.

In the summer of 2002, regional offi­cials went out of their way to show how popular the UST was in each particular region. Reports to the RF Education Ministry on the number of school stu­dents who had taken the UST differed greatly from the figures provided by the Ministry and the Test Center (an orga­nization in charge of the UST program): 414,000 Russian schoolchildren were apparently entered for the June round with subsequent reports confirming par­ticipation by only 372,000, but toward the fall it transpired that fewer than 300,000 high-school students had ac­tually sat for the UST.

In some instances, school students took two days to do the UST, thus ille­gally improving on their performance, whereas the second was the reserve day, when the UST was only to be taken by those who had been sick on the set date.

"Teachers and students should know that the Test Center computer is bound to catch them out if they take the UST twice," Viktor Bololov, first deputy ed­ucation minister in charge of the UST program, publicly warned regional ed­ucation authorities.

"It will take several years to train a generation of qualified organizers and executors," Vladimir Khlebnikov, direc­tor of the Test Center, commented.

What is to be done with the elite? The key question is, can the UST change for the better the life of gifted college and university entrants? Thus far not all straight-A school-leavers in the provinces, assured that they will be able to compete on a par with their peers in the capital cities, have benefited from die UST. A large number of prestigious establishments of higher learning have opted out of the experiment. They hope that by 2004-05 (when the experiment is extended across Russia), the Educa­tion Ministry will have designated a group of so-called leading higher educational establishments that will have the right to admit school-leavers who have passed the UST plus an addition­al exam, at their own discretion. The latter is sometimes referred to as the "Cambridge exam." True, what is over­looked is that in Cambridge itself (as well as in other major educational es­tablishments in the U.K. - the London School of Economics, Oxford Universi­ty, etc.) this exclusive exam was abol­ished several years ago. Now British high-school students only take an A-Level exam and submit its results to Ox­ford or Cambridge before the end of Sep­tember.

In an interview with this reporter, Vladimir Filippov spoke out strongly against the "Cambridge exam" in Rus­sia and generally against the idea of granting a group of privileged educa­tional establishments of higher learning a "leading" status:

"This status may be granted — not until the summer of 2005 (when full-scale re­form will begin) – to particular special­ties, not senior colleges and universities. To enroll in a particular training pro­gram, an entrant will need to pass an additional exam on top of the UST. Thus far this is still on the drawing boards."

To date, only a few higher education­al establishments in Moscow have embraced the project. According to Alex­ander Komaritsky, vice rector of the RF Government Finance Academy, Acade­my selection commissions picked 17 aspirants from the provinces. The Mos­cow Higher School of Economics (its chiefs are the masterminds behind the UST program) have this year selected 95 people with UST certificates (eight percent of the total intake).

Yet not all whizzkids have been so lucky. Eighty points on the UST being equivalent to the five-plus, or A-plus, grade (the highest mark in secondary school), 110 school-leavers who took the UST in 2002 scored a unique 100 points in mathematics and 31 in Russian. Some of them live in the Orenburg region. According to the re­gion's public education officials, no one in Moscow took any interest in the 100-pointers.

Yaroslav Kuzminov, rector of the Higher School of Economics, says he is ready to enroll entrants who have scored 100 points on the UST, above the quota. "Some banks would be interested to help," he added. This is, basically, a new ap­proach. In and of itself, the UTS will not bring Russians either an equal right to education or social justice. What is needed is not only new examination technology, but also new state and pri­vate initiatives to support gifted stu­dents. Pending 2005, while the UST project is still being "road-tested," heads of regional administrations and rectors should think about student dor­mitories, low-cost cafeteria, subsidized public transport passes, and so forth. Otherwise the UST will fail to become a springboard for talented students.

Text 2

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