Questões de Concurso

Text 2:

What makes a school good? (Part II)

Another reason the schools may be so successful is the teachers. Teachers in Finland are seen as very important. They are well respected and the field of education is considered to be a science, with its own methodology, theory and principles. Every teacher studies for five years before they can teach. This is in contrast with the status of education in many other countries. Perhaps this explains why it's actually rather difficult to get a job as a teacher in Finland, as well as the reason that it's such a popular job.

In order to get students' opinions about what makes a school 'good', I visited my local school playground to do a little informal research. The thirteen-year-olds I spoke to were interested to hear about the Finnish schools. I asked them if they thought British schools were too strict and whether they thought more students would go to university if things were changed. Fay, one of the best students in her year, said she didn't think British students would benefit from a school that was too easy-going. She felt her teachers weren't strict enough, and that was why few students in her school went on to higher education.

So it seems that the Finnish education system has come up with a 'formula' that works successfully in that country. Their example can serve as a model for other countries, but each country will have to work hard to put together an education system that will meet the needs of its people.

Taken from: Chapman, Joanne. Laser B1 +. Teacher's book. Macmillan, 2008.

Read the text below and answer the question that follow:

Text 1:

What makes a school good? (Part I)

Everyone is concerned about the quality of education a school offers, but how is quality measured? We often hear that schools in some countries are excellent, while schools in other countries are filled with problems. What factors should we be looking at to judge how 'good' schools are or aren't? I decided to do some research on the topic to see if I could come up with some answers.

One way of deciding if a school is good is by looking at how many students go on to university when they leave. If you look at all the schools in the world, the country which sends the highest numbers of its students to university is Finland. So, I looked at conditions in Finnish schools to see what made them so successful.

Often you will hear people say that the best schools are those that are strict. So, are the schools in Finland very strict? The answer is no, they aren't. They are usually very informal places with teachers and students sharing ideas. In fact, Finnish schools have a unique way of dealing with students and this could be the reason why they are so successful. While students in many countries spend long hours in school studying boring subjects, lucky students in Finland have short school days and ten weeks of summer holidays.Added to that, lunch is free and there are lots of lessons in sport, music and art.

Also, Finnish schools seem to have a different philosophy. They believe in equality and making school seem like a home away from home, so students feel comfortable and enjoy going there. The aim of the schools is not only to focus on 'good' students but also to provide extra help to students that need it. The result of this is that less able students do much better in Finland than they would in other countries.

Taken from: Chapman, Joanne. Laser B1 +. Teacher's book. Macmillan, 2008.

You know a nun when you see one. The uniform, known as a habit, is a dead giveaway. But the outfit you’re picturing in your head might look very different from the one worn by the sisters at your local convent. And yet, each ensemble’s meaning is immediately clear. That’s because nuns abide by a sartorial system that is at once endlessly adaptable and instantly recognizable.

That’s an impressive feat for any visual system. In the case of nuns’ habits, that system relies on a standardized combination of symbolic elements. “It’s really a kit of parts”, says Lucienne Roberts, cofounder of a British publishing house devoted to design’s more esoteric subjects. For their latest book, Looking Good: A Visual Guide to the Nun’s Habit, Roberts worked with her team to dissect the dress of nuns from some 40 Catholic orders. The result is a fascinating work of reference on a subject to which you've almost certainly never paid much mind.

The book begins by cataloguing the various components that typically comprise a nun's habit. These may include things like veils, rosaries, tunics, medals, coifs (the cap worn under the veil), and sandals. It's a collection from which each religious order draws some, but not all, of its impeccable elements. This section provides the reader with a visual framework which relies on simple cues to distinguish between religious families.

For instance, many orders of nuns wear some form of girdle, be it a belt, a cord, or a cincture. Each type and subtype of garment carries specific connotations. Franciscan nuns, for instance, favor a cord over a leather belt, to reflect their order's devotion to poverty. Its four knots, plainly visible in the book as an illustration of the Franciscan garb, represent the order's vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and enclosure.

These are the kinds of minutiae encoded in the book's pages, which the authors color code to differentiate between the various orders. Even the nuns' orientation on the page is significant; some face towards the reader, while others face away. This is to distinguish between sisterhoods that are active in their communities from ones that live cloistered lives, respectively. The book itself, like the habits it analyzes, is a form of information design.