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68 Roads to education
Reading and vocabulary
A hard lesson
Roads to education
1
SPEAKING
Look at the photo. Where are the
people? Is it a safe or a dangerous place? Read the
article and compare your ideas.
2
Match sentences A–F to gaps 1–5 in the article. There
is one sentence that you do not need.
A
Police officers are not going to leave schools anytime
soon.
B
If they don’t pay, their children will go to prison when
they are seventeen.
C
It’s got a big sports hall, a nice canteen, a good library
and well-equipped classrooms.
D
The officer took out his gun and threatened a girl
because she did not show respect.
E
What happened there shocked people all over the
country.
F
The boy had learning difficulties and didn’t
understand what the police were saying.
3
SPEAKING
Work in groups. Do you think having
police officers in school is a good idea? Think of
two reasons supporting the idea and two reasons
against it. Use examples in the article to help you.
v
Collocations: crime
insight
4
Find the verbs in the article and write the nouns that
go with them. Which phrases describe something
the police do?
1
get into (line 24)
2
arrest (line 25)
3
punish (line 29)
4
pay (line 31)
5
appear (line 31)
6
commit (line 47)
7
charge (line 54)
8
spend time (line 55)
5
Complete the extract from a newspaper article with
the correct form of the verbs in exercise 4.
Can you remember the last time you
1
trouble
at school? What happened? Did your teacher talk to
you about it? Perhaps they
2
you or sent you to
the head teacher? That’s not unusual, but for students
in some parts of America, it’s a very different story.
If you do something wrong, the police can
3
you and put you in prison. Last year in California,
a girl
4
in court because she dropped food
on the floor in the school canteen. In Texas, a boy
5
in prison because he wasn’t wearing his
school identification tag. Was he just forgetful or
did he
6
a crime? Police officers in schools
sometimes
7
students for very small offences.
In some schools, the students have to
8
a fine
for arriving late or not wearing their school uniform.
Fulmore Middle School in Texas is an
ordinary school that teaches the usual
subjects.
1
When the bell rings at break time,
children walk out of the classrooms past
teachers, monitors … and police officers.
‘Yes, there are police in our school,’ says
one fourteen-year-old student. ‘They’ve
got pepper spray and they’ve got guns
and they will use them.’
Police officers in American schools are nothing new.
In the 1990s, there was a rise in juvenile and gang-
related crime and newspapers started to report
on a ‘lost generation’. They talked about unhappy,
out-of-control children, irresponsible parents and
schools which were like war zones. Then, in 1999, the
unthinkable happened. Two students from Colorado
shot twelve other students and a teacher at school.
2
Everyone wanted
protection for their children, and police officers in
schools were the answer.
Nowadays, police still protect schools, and in many
schools, there is a zero tolerance policy*. This means
that you can get into trouble for even small offences.
Police officers arrest people for violence and bringing
illegal drugs or weapons into school, but they can
also arrest them for throwing paper planes or being
5
10
15
20
25
War Zones