Questões de Vestibular UEPB 2009 para Vestibular, LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA, LITERATURA BRASILEIRA E LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA (INGLÊS)

TEXT D

PARAGRAPH 1: The payment of fees by students is widely seen as a novelty. In fact this ‘innovation’ marks a return to the medieval origins of universities. At that time student money meant student power on a huge scale. Medieval student power was focused on the University of Bologna. […] This power was based on their economic grip over their teachers.[…] Most university lecturers depended for their academic incomes on teaching fees collected from their students. […] The power which students derived from paying fees at Bologna led to extensive control over the lecturing system. […]

PARAGRAPH 2: For what was a lecturer punished? He was fined if he started the lectures a minute late or if he went beyond the approved time. […] The lecturer was also fined if he failed to cover the syllabus according to an agreed timetable. […]

PARAGRAPH 3: All students were encouraged to denounce lecturers who were absent without leave or who contravened the statutes in any other way. In addition, there was also an organized system of secret denunciations. Four students were elected in secret to spy on the lecturers. […]

PARAGRAPH 4: Student power at Bologna lasted a little over one hundred years […] As __ its rise, its demise is linked directly __ the subject __ student fees. By 1350 almost all the lecturers were appointed and paid __ the local commune. With changes in the payment of lecturers, control of the university passed __ the students to the commune and there it would remain.

PARAGRAPH 5: What does the situation in medieval Bologna have to say to us? Hopefully the return of student fees will not be accompanied by the return of student spies, secret denunciations and fines on lecturers. But, as ever greater emphasis is placed on research, the Bolognese case may be a timely reminder of the demands of students and of the importance of high quality teaching.

Anna Smajdor, an ethicist at the University of East Anglia, claims that people’s control over their reproductive choices will be dramatically altered if sperm and eggs can be created from stray skin cells. A woman could, for example, pick up a bit of bodily detritus from a prominent man, take it to a laboratory and give birth to his genetic child. Smajdor says that what has been termed ‘reprogrammable biology’ gives us the capacity to make cells act in new ways, blurring what we mean by an egg or sperm or even embryo. She points out that the boundaries between these categories have become very fluid, with the development of techniques that allow us to alter their genetic make-up or prompt them to behave in new ways. This raises very perplexing questions about ethics, law and regulation.

    Most religions would welcome ways of giving infertile men and women a possibility to produce sperm and eggs, although they might object if making gametes involved destroying human embryos. Research into the reproductive process has triggered debates among scientists about how far human reproduction should be altered. All agree that men should be capable of producing eggs: the fact that men have an X chromosome, like women, should make it possible. Thus, male gay couples could, with the help of a surrogate mother, have their own biological baby. But things are more complicated when it comes to women becoming fathers: some scientists believe that the Y (male) chromosome is so important to sperm that attempts to use female cells will be doomed. But on one point, everyone can agree: for women to father children and men to make eggs would be as significant a breakthrough as the birth of the first test tube baby 30 years ago.

Adapted from The Daily Telegraph, February 12th, 2008