GK Englisch ABI 2008 I

Questions on the text

3. The problem of widening social divisions should be dealt with a change of the education system in the USA. Nowadays only the rich people of upper income-class families have got the opportunity and the money to get to higher education. A lot of students have not enough money to pay for university and so they have no chance to get a better qualification. So the solution for this problem is, that even the poorest Americans shall get the opportunity for getting a high-qualification. There may not be any financial reason not to go to an university. If this happens, the gap between the good qualification of upper income-glass students and the lacking education of students with less money can get smaller and smaller. But there are three big problems which have to solved before this improvement of educational system can happen: One of the problems is the quality of the schools the poorer Americans attend to. In most cases, this is a problem of the financial resources, but it is a problem of bad ideas, too. Another problem is the politics of education reform: Reforms cannot be made by the Democrats because they are bound to the teachers´ unions. Testing and school choice need some reforms the unions do not agree to. For them, getting more money is the only solution for their problems. But the most important reason, why the gap between good and bad qualification cannot be minimized, is that most people transmit and consolidate their privileges to their children, so that they cannot reach a higher class in their future.

4. The “gap” means the growing disparity between lower and higher social classes of the people of America. In the past, the Americans ignored this problem because they thought there were no different social classes. But nowadays the Americans are very interested in this question and they want to be informed about it. Therefore America´s leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal started series which matters to this subject. Their result was, that social class does count in modern times.

5. The text is an extract from the newspaper “The Economist”. Hence it is a non-fictional text, more precise it is a newspaper article. Possibly the text is intended for intellectual and educated people, because there are used a lot of complicated terms. Perhaps the writer wants to address people who can make a change and can try to solve the problems of different social classes.

Translation

Eine Männerwelt ?

Nur wenige Dinge lassen sich so sicher sagen, wie die Tatsache, dass Frauen in armen Ländern ein schweres Leben führen. Sie tragen die Bürde der Kindererziehung und einer unverhältnismäßigen Aufteilung der Hausarbeit, und genießen nur selten echte Gleichstellung vor dem Gesetz.