Bayern Abitur Englisch GK 2005

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Abiturprüfung 2005

ENGLISCH

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Textaufgabe I

Pay up! Pay up! And play the game!

Class war is never far away in British education. It's sad but true that
most of the best schools are fee-paying ones, which help their pupils win the
excellent exam grades that lead on to a state-subsidised place at top
universities.

The government wants to change that: it bullies top universities to take
more state-school pupils, who are more likely to be from poor backgrounds.
This week it issued tough new benchmarks for the numbers of state-school
pupils that universities 'ought' to take. The result is pressure to admit as many
state-school pupils as possible.

Distorting the System like this increases the chance that people will try to
cheat it. Canny middle-class parents are now wondering if it's worth buying the
best education they can afford for their children, for fear that they will be
stigmatised when it comes to university entrance.

The game is to get the maximum quality of education for the minimum
outlay, while ensuring that your child is not fingered as a class enemy when it
comes to university entrance. How you manage this depends on money,
religious belief and mobility.

If you have lots of cash, a bright child and don't want too much hassle,
the best Option is to send your offspring to an independent school from the
start. It will be costly, but when your child is 16, you move him to the State
sector for two years. The government's bean counters1 will treat him as a
state-school product. Applications to universities such as Cambridge, however,
will list all his schools, showing what a well-trained chap he is. That should
maximise his chances.

To play safe, you can also move house to somewhere grotty.
Universities are paid extra for taking students from poor districts. You can

always move back to a more salubrious area as soon as your child's
application has been accepted.

If that's too expensive or disruptive, there are plenty of other options.
The simplest is to move to the catchment area for a good State primary school.
You can do the same thing later on, to get into a good (usually meaning solidly
middle-class) State comprehensive. In London, house prices may be up to
20% higher in the right catchment area - but you can regard that as an
investment: seil, the house once your child is safely enrolled, and you'll be
unlikely to lose money on the deal. Or you can rent.

Many of the best State schools are church-run. Your chances of getting
in are greatly strengthened if you can have a letter from your priest, saying that
you attend Sunday worship regularly. Luckily for parents with wobbly faith (or a
cynical lack of it) such schools are no longer allowed to interview.

The third option is to try for a place at a selective State school. This may
mean moving to Kent or Buckinghamshire, two solidly Conservative counties
that have preserved the 11 + exam2, which selects children for high-performing
schools. Your child will have her best shot at this exam at a private primary
school. This needn't cost much: Merton Court, for example, a Kent school with
stellar 11 + results, charges only £6,300 a year. Given what you save on school
fees later, that's a bargain.

Another Option is private tuition, used by one in four parents according to
a recent survey. It can be expensive: £30 a session, say five times a week. But
it has a big advantage: invisibility. Your child can arrive at university expertly
tutored, but with impeccably plebeian credentials.

The government is constantly trying to change the rules to prevent such
game-playing. One threat is to penalise university applicants on their parents'
educational background as well as their own. Getting round that will be tricky:
"Sophie, 17, seeks kind, preferably working-class, foster parents to see her

through university admission and help her shed the disadvantages of her
middle-class origins. No graduates need apply."

From: The Economist, October 9*2004

Annotations

1 bean counters: here: employees who care only about statistics

2 11+ exam: an exam that all children in Britain used to take at the age of eleven to decide which type of secondary
school they should go to; it is still taken in a few areas

Textaufgabe II

Breakfast was invariably unpleasant, possibly because it was the only meal
the Willard family always had together.

Mr. Willard was already at the head of the table when Jim came into the
dining room. Smail, thin, gray, Mr. Willard tried to appear tall and commanding.
It was the family's opinion that he would have had no trouble at all being
elected governor, but for one reason or another he had been forced to allow
lesser men to go to Richmond1 while he remained a Clerk at the courthouse, a
bitter fate.

Mrs. Willard cooked breakfast in the adjoining kitchen, looking from time to
time into the dining room to see if her three children were down.

Jim, the firstborn son, was first to appear. Since this was a special day, he
was cheerful.

"Morning, Father."

His father looked at him as though he could not quite place the face. Then
he said "Good morning" and distantly started to read the paper. He
discouraged conversation between himself and his sons, especially Jim, who
had made the error of being tall and handsome and not at all the sort of small,
potentially gray son Mr. Willard ought to have had.

"You're down early." Mrs. Willard brought him his breakfast.

"Beautiful day, that's why."

"I don't think a quarter to eight is such an early hour," said his father from
behind the Richmond Times. Mr. Willard had been brought up on a farm and
one of the reasons for his life's success had been rising "at the crack of dawn."

"Good morning." Carrie came into the room.

"Morning, Carrie." Mr. Willard looked at his daughter with wintry approbation.
Of his children, she alone gave him pleasure; she saw him great.

Finally, John entered. At fourteen, he was thin, nervous, potentially gray,
except for black eyes.

"Hi." He sat down with a crash.

"Glad to have you with us," said his father, continuing the war.

"It's Saturday." John was a skilled domestic warrior, master of artillery.
"Everybody sleeps late."

"Naturally." Mr. Willard looked at John and returned to his paper.
"Hey, Jim, they're playing baseball today over at the school. You going to
play?" John Struck his fist against his palm with a satisfactory sound.
"No, l'm going down to the cabin. For the whole weekend."

Mr. Willard Struck again. "And who, if l'm not asking too much, are you going
with?"

"Bob Ford. Mother said it was all right."

"Is that so? It is amazing to me why you want to sleep away from your own
home which we have tried at such expense to make comfortable. . . ." His
father slowly unfurled the domestic banner, and charged. Jim refused to
defend himself, beyond promising himself that one day he would throw a plate
at this bitter old man he was forced to live with. Meanwhile, he simply stared at
his future weapon while his father explained to him how the family was a Unit
and how he owed all of them a Debt and how difficult a time Mr. Willard had
had making the Money to support them and though they were not rieh, they
were Respectable, and Jim's going around with the son of the town. drunk did
them no good.

During her husband's tirade Mrs. Willard joined them, a demurely pained
expression on her face. When Mr. Willard had finished, she said, "Well, I think
the Ford boy is nice and he does get good marks in school and his mother was

a friend of ours no matter what we think of the father. So I don't see anything
wrong with Jim seeing him."

"/ don't mind," said Mr. Willard. "I just thought you would mind having your
son exposed to that sort of a person. But if you don't, I have nothing more to
say." Mr. Willard, having embarrassed his son and disagreed with his wife, ate
fried eggs with unusual gusto.

Mrs. Willard murmured something soothing and Jim wished that his father
were like Bob's father, drunk and indifferent.

From: Gore Vidal, The City and the Pillar, 1948

Annotation

1 Richmond: capital of the U.S. State of Virginia

- Aufgabenteil -

Der Prüfling hat eine Textaufgabe seiner Wahl zu bearbeiten.

I. Questions on the text

Read all the questions first, then answer them in the given order.
Use your own words as far as is appropriate.

1. Explain why and how the government plans to influence
university entrance procedures. Why are middle-class parents
concemed?

2. Analyse the ways in which the area a family lives in can affect a
Childs educational prospects.

3. Apart from moving, how can middle-class parents ensure good
education and easy university access for their children? Outline
the different suggestions made in the text.

4. Examine how the ad (II. 54-56) illustrates the writer's attitude
towards his topic. Show how two other passages in the text
produce a similar effect.

II. Composition

Choose o n e of the following topics. Write about 150 to 200 words.

1. "Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself." Discuss.

2. Money makes the world go round. Or does it?

3. Comment on the cartoon.

III. Translation

Translate the following text into German:

One of the fairest and most efficient ways to move up in society is
through education. By providing a high quality university System, we ensure
that talent is nurtured and rewarded. Unfortunately, not all pupils who could
benefit from higher education get the opportunity. Some are not prepared
academically, others lack the confidence to apply and a few are unable to
demonstrate their intellectual capacity when traditional assessment methods
are used.

Why worry about who gets into university? First, students at university
learn not just from their teachers, but also from one another. Exposure to
students from different backgrounds is an important contribution to a student's
education. Second, students who artend university have better prospects in life
than those who don't. They are more likely to get good Jobs and make more
money. Because of these advantages, it is vital that all members of society
have a fair chance of reaping these benefits.

From: The Guardian, September 23, 2003

WORKSHEET: Vidal, The City and the Pillar

I. Questions on the text

Read all the questions first, then answer them in the given order.
Use your own words as far as is appropriate.

1. Characterise Mr. Willard. Take into account his career, his
attitude towards his family and the ideals and values he
propagates in this excerpt.

2. Analyse the relationship between Jim and his parents.

3. Describe John's way of dealing with his father and explain how
the author uses language to make the passage from line 27 to 32
entertaining.

4. What does the reader learn about Bob Ford and his family?

5. Explain the use of irony in the first paragraph (II. 1/2).

II. Composition

Choose o n e of the following topics. Write about 150 to 200 words.

1. "Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you
care about." Discuss.

2. To what extent do parents have the right or the duty to
participate in the decisions of their children who have reached
the age of majority?

3. Comment on the cartoon.

III. Translation

Translate the following text into German:

Some parents carry a tremendous amount of guilt with them about the
lack of time they spend with their children, so try to make up for it to them with
quality events like going to a restaurant as a family. Parents such as these
have a problem saying no to their children on virtually everything and any
thoughts of disciplining are avoided at all costs. As for taking responsibility for
their child's behaviour, that is impossible.

We tend to conceive of our children as some sort of reflection of
ourselves. Children are now something we choose to have rather than mass
produce to keep us going in our old age. So it's very important that they are
perfect - something we can almost brag about.

There is also a tendency of some parents to be 'friends' with their
children, and so they are afraid of setting consistent limits of behaviour.
Children don't need more friends, especially old ones: what they need is
parents.

From: The Guardian, October 19, 2004