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SECTION TEST - ACADEMIC READING
(Time: 60 minutes)

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Passage 1

WHY ARE FINLAND’S SCHOOLS SUCCESSFUL?

The country’s achievements in education have other nations doing their homework

A At Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a suburb west of Helsinki, Kari Louhivuori, the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a recent immigrant, was falling behind, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. So he decided to hold the boy back a year. Standards in the country have vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade, in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. ‘I took Besart on that year as my private student,' explains Louhivuori. When he was not studying science, geography and math, Besart was seated next to Louhivuori's desk, taking books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, he had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, learn.

B This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for Finland’s amazing record of education success. The transformation of its education system began some 40 years ago but teachers had little idea it had been so successful until 2000. In this year, the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best at reading in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of the 57 nations that participate in science. In the latest PISA scores, the nation came second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide.

C In the United States, government officials have attempted to improve standards by introducing marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, apparently thought competition was the answer. One policy invited states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not be welcome in Finland. ‘I think, in fact, teachers would tear off their shirts,’ said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience. ‘If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.’

D There are no compulsory standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There is no competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators rather than business people or politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a Finnish child has a good chance of getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.

E It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry to school. Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all five-year-olds, where the emphasis is on socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns 17. Schools provide food, counseling and taxi service if needed. Health care Is even free for students taking degree courses.

F Finland’s schools were not always a wonder. For the first half of the twentieth century, only the privileged got a quality education. But In 1963, the Finnish Parliament made the bold decision to choose public education as the best means of driving the economy forward and out of recession. Public schools were organized into one system of comprehensive schools for ages 7 through 16. Teachers from all over the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not prescriptions, for them to refer to. Besides Finnish and Swedish (the country’s second official language), children started learning a third language (English Is a favorite) usually beginning at age nine. The equal distribution of equipment was next, meaning that all teachers had their fair share of teaching resources to aid learning. As the comprehensive schools Improved, so did the upper secondary schools (grades 10 through 12). The second critical decision came In 1979, when it was required that every teacher gain a fifth-year Master’s degree In theory and practice, paid for by the state. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomous decision-making and respect made the job desirable. And as Louhivuori explains, ‘We have our own motivation to succeed because we love the work.’

Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM IN FINLAND

PISA tests

• In the most recent tests, Finland’s top subject was (1)………………

History

1963:

• A new school system was needed to improve Finland’s (2) ……………

• Schools followed (3) …………… that were created partly by teachers.

• Young pupils had to study an additional (4) ……………

• All teachers were given the same (5) ………… to use.

1979:

• Teachers had to get a (6) ………… but they did not have to pay for this.

• Applicants were attracted to the (7)…………… that teaching received.

guidelines economy Master's degree/ Masters degree science equipment/ resources language respect/ status

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)

Passage 2

Tickled pink

In 1973, the Australian fruit breeder John Cripps created a new variety of apple tree by crossing a red Australian Lady Williams variety with a palegreen American Golden Delicious. The offspring first fruited in 1979 and combined the best features of its parents in an apple that had an attractive pink hue on a yellow undertone. The new, improved apple was named the Cripps Pink after its inventor.

Today the Cripps Pink is one of the most popular varieties of apple and is grown extensively in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and in California and Washington in the USA. By switching from northern hemisphere fruit to southern hemisphere fruit the apple is available at its seasonal best all year round. The highestquality apples are marketed worldwide under the trademark Pink Lady™. To preserve the premium price and appeal of the Pink Lady, apples that fail to meet the highest standards are sold under the name Cripps Pink™. These standards are based on colour and flavour, in particular, the extent of the pink coverage and the sugar/acid balance. Consumers who buy a Pink Lady apple are ensured a product that is of consistently high quality.

To earn the name Pink Lady the skin of a Cripps Pink apple must be at least 40% pink. Strong sunlight increases the pink coloration and it may be necessary to remove the uppermost leaves of a tree to let the light through. The extra work required to cultivate Cripps Pink trees is offset by its advantages, which include: vigorous trees; fruit that has tolerance to sunburn; a thin skin that does not crack; flesh that is resistant to browning after being cut and exposed to air; a coldstorage life of up to six months and a retail shelflife of about four weeks. However, the main advantage for apple growers is the premium price that the Pink Lady brand is able to command.

The Cripps Red variety, also known as Cripps II, is related to the Pink Lady and was developed at the same time. The premium grade is marketed as the Sundowner™. Unlike the genuinely pink Pink Lady, the Sundowner™ is a classic bi coloured apple, with a skin that is 45% red from Lady Williams and 55% green from Golden Delicious. Apples that fall outside of this colour ratio are rejected at the packing station and used for juice, whilst the smaller apples are retained for the home market. The Sundowner is harvested after Cripps Pink in late May or early June, and a few weeks before Lady Williams. It has better coldstorage properties than Cripps Pink and it retains an excellent shelf life. Cripps Red apples have a coarser texture than Cripps Pink, are less sweet and have a stronger flavour. Both apples are sweeter than Lady Williams but neither is as sweet as Golden Delicious.

The advantage of the Pink Lady™ brand is that it is a trademark of a premium product, not just a Cripps Pink apple. This means that new and improved strains of the Cripps Pink can use the Pink Lady brand name as long as they meet the minimum quality requirement of being 40% pink. Three such strains are the Rosy Glow, The Ruby Pink and the Lady in Red. The Rosy Glow apple was discovered in an orchard of Cripps Pink trees that had been planted in South Australia in 1996. One limb of a Cripps Pink tree had redcoloured apples while the rest of the limbs bore mostly green fruit. A bud was taken from the mutated branch and grafted onto rootstock to produce the new variety. The fruit from the new Rosy Glow tree was the same colour over the entire tree and a patent for this unique apple was granted in 2003. The Rosy Glow apple benefits from a larger area of pink than the Pink Lady and it ripens earlier in the season in climates that have less hours of sunshine. As a consequence, the Cripps Pink is likely to be phased out in favour of the Rosy Glow, with the apples branded as Pink Lady™ if they have 40% or more pink coverage.

Ruby Pink and Lady in Red are two mutations of the Cripps Pink that were discovered in New Zealand. Like the Rosy Glow, these improved varieties develop a larger area of pink than the Cripps Pink, which allows more apples to meet the quality requirements of the Pink Lady™ brand. Planting of these trees may need to be controlled otherwise the supply of Pink Lady apples will exceed the demand, to then threaten the price premium. Overproduction apart, the future of what has become possibly the world’s bestknown modern apple and fruit brand, looks secure.

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWOWORDS from the passage for each answer.

New and improved strains

Ruby Pink pink area / pink colour Pink Lady ripens Rosy Glow

A bud taken from a mutated branch on a Cripps Pink tree was grafted onto rootstock to produce the new apple variety named . A feature of this improved apple is that it sooner than the Pink Lady with less sun. Another mutated strain is the tree from New Zealand. The chief advantage of new and improved strains is that the apples develop more
so more can use the name .

Passage 3

IS PHOTOGRAPHY ART?

This may seem a pointless question today. Surrounded as we are by thousands of photographs, most of us take for granted that, in addition to supplying information and seducing customers, camera images also serve as decoration, afford spiritual enrichment, and provide significant insights into the passing scene. But in the decades following the discovery of photography, this

question reflected the search for ways to fit the mechanical medium into the traditional schemes of artistic expression.

The much-publicized pronouncement by painter Paul Delaroche that the daguerreotype⁽*⁾ signalled the end of painting is perplexing because this clever artist also forecast the usefulness of the medium for graphic artists in a letter written in 1839. Nevertheless, it is symptomatic of the swing between the outright rejection and qualified acceptance of the medium that was fairly typical of the artistic establishment. Discussion of the role of photography in art was especially spirited in France, where the internal policies of the time had created a large pool of artists, but it was also taken up by important voices in England. In both countries, public interest in this topic was a reflection of the belief that national stature and achievement in the arts were related.

From the maze of conflicting statements and heated articles on the subject, three main positions about the potential of camera art emerged. The simplest, entertained by many painters and a section of the public, was that photographs should not be considered ‘art’ because they were made with a mechanical device and by physical and chemical phenomena instead of by human hand and spirit; to some, camera images seemed to have more in common with fabric produced by machinery in a mill than with handmade creations fired by inspiration. The second widely held view, shared by painters, some photographers, and some critics, was that photographs would be useful to art but should not be considered equal in creativeness to drawing and painting. Lastly, by assuming that the process was comparable to other techniques such as etching and lithography, a fair number of individuals realized that camera images were or could be as significant as handmade works of art and that they might have a positive influence on the arts and on culture in general.

Artists reacted to photography in various ways. Many portrait painters - miniaturists in particular - who realized that photography represented the ‘handwriting on the wall’ became involved with daguerreotyping or paper photography in an effort to save their careers; some incorporated it with painting, while others renounced painting altogether. Still other painters, the most prominent among them the French painter, Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres, began almost immediately to use photography to make a record of their own output and also to provide themselves with source material for poses and backgrounds, vigorously denying at the same time its influence on their vision or its claims as art.

The view that photographs might be worthwhile to artists was enunciated in considerable detail by Lacan and Francis Wey. The latter, an art and literary critic, who eventually recognised that camera images could be inspired as well as informative, suggested that they would lead to greater naturalness in the graphic depiction of anatomy, clothing, likeness, expression, and landscape. By studying photographs, true artists, he claimed, would be relieved of menial tasks and become free to devote themselves to the more important spiritual aspects of their work.

Wey left unstated what the incompetent artist might do as an alternative, but according to the influential French critic and poet Charles Baudelaire, writing in response to an exhibition of photography in 1859, lazy and untalented painters would become photographers. Fired by a belief in art as an imaginative embodiment of cultivated ideas and dreams, Baudelaire regarded photography as ‘a very humble servant of art and science’; a medium largely unable to transcend ‘external reality’. For this critic, photography was linked with ‘the great industrial madness’ of the time, which in his eyes exercised disastrous consequences on the spiritual qualities of life and art.

Eugene Delacroix was the most prominent of the French artists who welcomed photography as help-mate but recognized its limitations. Regretting that ‘such a wonderful invention’ had arrived so late in his lifetime, he still took lessons in daguerreotyping, and both commissioned and collected photographs. Delacroix’s enthusiasm for the medium can be sensed in a journal entry noting that if photographs were used as they should be, an artist might ‘raise himself to heights that we do not yet know’.

The question of whether the photograph was document or art aroused interest in England also. The most important statement on this matter was an unsigned article that concluded that while photography had a role to play, it should not be ‘constrained’ into ‘competition’ with art; a more stringent viewpoint led critic Philip Gilbert Hamerton to dismiss camera images as ‘narrow in range, emphatic in assertion, telling one truth for ten falsehoods’.

These writers reflected the opposition of a section of the cultural elite in England and France to the ‘cheapening of art’ which the growing acceptance and purchase of camera pictures by the middle class represented. Technology made photographic images a common sight in the shop windows of Regent Street and Piccadilly in London and the commercial boulevards of Paris. In London, for example, there were at the time some 130 commercial establishments where portraits, landscapes, and photographic reproductions of works of art could be bought. This appeal to the middle class convinced the elite that photographs would foster a desire for realism instead of idealism, even though some critics recognized that the work of individual photographers might display an uplifting style and substance that was consistent with the defining characteristics of art.

(*) the name given to the first commercially successful photographic images

Complete the summary of Paragraph 3 using the list of words below.

inventive	beneficial	mixed	inferior
similar	next	justified

inferior inventive mixed beneficial

Camera art

In the early days of photography, opinions on its future were , but three clear views emerged. A large number of artists and ordinary people saw photographs as to paintings because of the way they were produced. Another popular view was that photographs could have a role to play in the art world, despite the photographer being less . Finally, a smaller number of people suspected that the impact of photography on art and society could be .

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