Listening audioscript

6. WHAT IS CHUCK’S CONCERN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
DISCUSSION? 
7. HOW WILL CHUCK PRESENT THE THEMES OF THE PLAY TO HIS
CLASSMATES? 
8. WHAT THEMES OF THE PLAY ARE MENTIONED IN THE
CONVERSATION? 
9. WHAT DOES THE PROFESSOR SAY ABOUT CHUCK AND HIS CLASSMATES? 
10. HOW WILL CHUCK ORGANIZE HIS TIME? 

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LPREP IBT 3 E AudioScript 
16
PASSAGE THREE 
 
Page 161
[ mp3 025-026]
 
Questions 11 through 16. 
Listen to part of a lecture in an education class. 
(Professor) OK 
all of you are enrolled in this introductory education course because 
you want to become teachers. I think it’s important for you as aspiring 
teachers to understand how education has developed over the centuries, 
so today I’d like to address an issue that has come up again and again in 
our nation’s history, and one that, in fact, was taken for granted through 
most of our history. That issue is character education. And…uh that’s not 
to say that there had not also been a focus on basic academic subjects, 
of course, but uh since the founding of this country, public education has 
been responsible for instilling the nation’s youth with the values of our 
society. Now in the earliest New England schools, religious texts, 
specifically the Protestant Bible, were used to develop the moral 
character of the students. Now, this was acceptable at the time, because 
the students were all of the same faith. Through the nineteenth century, 
this dimension of character development continued. However, with the 
great influx of immigrants in the late uh nineteenth and early twentieth 
centuries from many societies and religious backgrounds, character 
education began to be formalized around the importance of societal 
values, such as uh discipline, hard work, fairness, kindness, and so on. 
Essentially, as the United States became more diverse, it became 
necessary to move away from any one religion’s views, and move toward 
an approach in which societal influences and universally held beliefs in 
good and evil became the moral focus of teaching. 
Now educators, then, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, 
were expected to be virtuous. Leaders in the development of public 
education all agreed that teachers should be shining examples of moral 
uh correctness and uh goodness. It was thought that only people with 
upstanding character could impart the proper values to the children, and 
that’s what teachers were supposed to do. 
Now, I’m going to tell you about some of the rules for teachers that were 
common in the early twentieth century, and you’ll get a clearer idea of 
what it meant to demonstrate upstanding moral character at that time.
Now the rules weren’t just about how a teacher could conduct herself in 
the classroom and on the school grounds. There were also numerous 
rules that governed just about everything a teacher did. 
Teachers had to follow, um, strict rules about their appearance; they 
were sometimes told not to wear colorful clothing, uh not to dye their hair 
or wear it loose, and not to wear their skirts above the ankle. Teachers’ 
whereabouts during after-school hours were also strictly regulated; there 
were rules forbidding teachers to go to bars and to ice-cream parlors; 
there were rules requiring teachers to be home after eight o’clock in the 
evening; and there were some rules forbidding them to leave town 
without permission. So just about any action a teacher wanted to take 
could be regulated. Teachers could be forbidden to smoke or to drink; 

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LPREP IBT 3 E AudioScript 
17
they were also sometimes forbidden to spend time with men or to marry 
if they wanted to remain teachers. 
However, after the middle of the twentieth century, things began to 
change. The race to the moon triggered a shift from an equal focus on 
moral training in schools to a much greater emphasis on academics, uh, 
especially science and math. Again, this doesn’t mean there was no 
focus on basic academic subjects before. Schools had always taught uh 
reading, writing, and math, but there was a dual focus on character 
education …uh what I mean is, the focus shifted more to the academic 
side. And this happened during a time of increasing diversity in the 
country. See educators recognized that it was becoming difficult or 
impossible to agree on specific morals for the classroom. So…schools 
backed away from trying to teach values to their students, leaving it 
instead to parents and students’ religious communities. 
But, now, anyone who has dealt with children knows that it’s impossible 
to take the teaching of morality and values out of a place where children 
spend so much of their time. Respect for other people and authority, uh 
self-discipline, conflict resolution, and such things are obviously full of 
value judgments. And it’ll be obvious to anyone who has dealt with 
children and teenagers that they need a lot of guidance on these 
questions. 
OK, so, as a result of this, beginning in the 1980s and 90s, character 
education came back into fashion. New initiatives have partnered the 
government with the school districts to develop and implement programs 
in conflict resolution, tolerance, and so on. 
So, this is the state of public education that you will face one day. I want 
you to consider this idea. I propose that teachers in the early twenty-first 
century are also held to a higher standard. Although there aren’t explicit 
rules about teachers’ behavior outside of class, they are being asked to 
help develop the character of their students … and uh this is being asked 
of teachers without there being any clear set of moral rules or 
expectations that all parents of schoolchildren agree on.