II. Make up a vocabulary of new words

Education in the United States

I. Read the text and define the main idea of it.

IV. Make up a brief summary of the text in a written form.

III. Discuss the content of the text in the form of a dialogue.

II. Look through the text again, find unknown words and write down them into your vocabulary.

TEXT 18

The interplay of local, state and national programs and policies is particularly evident in the field of education. Historically, education has been considered the province of the state and local governments. Of the more than 3,000 colleges and universities, the academies of the armed services are among the few federal institutions. (The federal government also administers, among others, the College of the Virgin Islands.) For years, however, the federal government has been involved in education at all levels, beginning in 1862 with the grant of public lands to the states for the purpose of establishing colleges of agricultural and mechanical arts, called land-grant colleges. Additionally, the federal government supports school lunch programs, administers Indian education, makes research grants to universities, underwrites loans to college students and finances education for veterans. Whether the government should also give assistance to private and parochial (religious) schools has been widely debated. The Supreme Court has ruled that direct assistance to parochial schools is barred by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’, although this has not been extended to the use of textbooks and so-called supplementary educational centres.

Although responsibility for elementary education still rests primarily with local government, it is increasingly affected by state and national policies. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, for example, required federal agencies to discontinue financial aid to school districts that are not racially integrated. For many school systems where blacks live in largely segregated enclaves, children must be transported long distances to achieve non-segregated schools.

Trends in education have been toward being more responsive to the needs of a complex society: preschool programs; classes in the community; summer and night schools; increased facilities for exceptional children; and educational programs geared to the culturally deprived and the disaffected student. Such programs, however, have been only partially successful.

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