Dear teachers,
Here is a extract of a text on differences of opinion about state and public schools:
Would you please help me understand the underlined parts?
Jean: I think kids have got to be faced with the real world. It’s like all these sort of high-falutin, hoity-toity alternative schools. I mean... they are not doing the kids any favour.
Alison: Well, that’s a load of rubbish, sorry, if you think about it really, because at ordinary State schools they’re going to be able to (1) learn to manipulate the system. I mean they are never going to be able to see how to change it.
...
Jean: In alternative schools you don’t get different types of children because all parents are (2) identikits.
...
John: (talking about a boy who was first in a State school) ...He was absolutely unhappy at that place. Well, he was unhappy with the people (the pupils ?) that were around him and what he was being taught (the curriculum ?). He was unhappy with (3) what was expected of him (= the kind of work he had to do? or the use he was going to make with what he was taught, the work he was asked to do in his working life?). He said now that he felt that he can do anything he wants with his life. He said “I know exactly what I want to be, or what exactly I want to do and I am going to be able to do just that.”
...
Jean: Well, it must be a very exceptional alternative school because all the (4) products (pupils ?) of any single alternative school that I know or whaterver description: public schools, (5) direct grant shcools... all the products of these schools had incredible difficulty in integrating back in normal life. No, I’m not saying that normal life is good, what I’m saying is that alternative schools don’t help kids.
John: That’s a sweeping generalisation. I mean, I know of exceptions. I know people who went to Summerhill and who are exceptional people now.
Jean: But no more than would have been exceptional people if they’d come out of a normal State system! But they’re not, you will admit, (6) the normal run-of-the-mill cross-section of society?
Alison: Well, what is normal?
Jean: (7) A cross-section of society where wohoever is around goes to that school.
Thank you very much for your help.
Hela