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Lesson 20: Pilgrims Face Competition in Thanksgiving Lessons
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
The fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. Tradition says early English settlers known as the Pilgrims held the first celebration in sixteen twenty-one in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They invited local Indians to a feast to thank them for help in surviving their first year in America.
Yet the Berkeley Plantation along the James River in Virginia calls itself the site of the first official Thanksgiving in America. In sixteen nineteen an English ship arrived with directions for the crew to observe their arrival date as a yearly day of thanksgiving to God.
But now comes a book called "America's REAL First Thanksgiving." A Florida schoolteacher, Robyn Gioia, tells the story of Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez who founded Saint Augustine, Florida. He celebrated with a thanksgiving feast with the native Timucua Indians. That was in fifteen sixty-five.
So what are schoolchildren learning these days about Thanksgiving?
Sharon Biros is a first-grade teacher in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Her students learn about the holiday as they discuss being good citizens. They read stories about the Indians and the Pilgrims. And the children tell what they are each thankful for.
Many of the families are poor. The school organizes a project in which students bring food and money to share with those in need.
Brook Levin heads a preschool in Broomall, Pennsylvania. She says the kids learn about native culture and the Pilgrims and how people at that time grew their own food. Thanksgiving, she says, is a good time to teach about the importance of sharing. The children make bread and other foods and invite their parents to school to enjoy them.
Cheryl Burrell is curriculum director for the public schools on the reservation of the Winnebago Indian tribe in Nebraska. She is not American Indian, and she says there is only one native teacher. But she says all the teachers are trained in native culture and history.
Students learn about the Pilgrims, she says, but not at Thanksgiving time. They learn about them when they study American history. Thanksgiving is used as a time to strengthen a sense of community.
She says most of the families in the tribe celebrate Thanksgiving just like other Americans do. But in addition the students take part in a traditional Indian harvest festival in October.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.
Lesson 21: Unscientific Poll: Calculators Subtract From Thinking Skills
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Recently we asked how you feel about calculators in school. We heard from about thirty people in twelve countries, including a large number of Chinese.
Turbo Zhang writes: "My brain is rusting. Why? Because I use calculators everywhere, on my mobile phone, on my computer, etc. New technology makes us use everything except our brain."
Joony Zhu says calculators can provide us with an answer, but we may not understand it completely. And a student at an architectural and engineering college in China, Zhao Jing-tao, calls using a calculator "a kind of laziness."
Critics of using calculators in school, at least until high school or university, outnumbered supporters two to one.
Khaled Hamza in Cairo says "calculators affect badly on the thinking ways of students." Jose Gudino from Mexico City says this is because "you don't need to make an effort to get a result."
Hemin, a math teacher in Kurdistan-Iraq, says good math skills help in life. So he believes in solving problems with a pencil until high school.
Randy Bin Lin, a Ph.D. candidate from China at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, writes: "You should work out problems with some kind of pain without computers. Then you may come to appreciate the power of these sophisticated machines."
Abbas from Iran, now living in Sweden, says it is good to use your brain because calculators are not always available. "Last week I met a university student who could not subtract six from forty and used a calculator," says Abbas.
But He Wenbo from China says calculators reduce careless mistakes. And Yang Linwei, an eleventh grader from China, says: "When I was young we couldn't use calculators. But when I entered high school we have to solve a lot of math problems. We have to use a calculator. It makes my homework easier."
From Burkina Faso, Compaore Tewende Michel writes: "I can say that the handheld calculator has been important in my studies and even in my life."
And Barnabas Nyaaba in Ghana advises that "as we enjoy the use of calculators, let's be careful so that it does not have any bad effects on us."
Finally, Thomas, a student in China, says he likes using electronic calculators in school. But he wanted to tell us about what he called a special calculator which he does not know how to use. He even sent us a picture of this special -- and, in fact, ancient -- calculator. In English we call it an abacus.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.
Lesson 22: Excuse Me, Professor, How Much Do You Earn?
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Today we answer a question from a listener who wants to become a Spanish professor. Orlando Carvajal asks how much professors earn in the United States.
We looked in the almanac published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. It shows that the average salary for full professors last year was ninety-nine thousand dollars. For associate professors it was seventy thousand. And for assistant professors it was fifty-nine thousand dollars.
Private, independent schools pay more than public colleges and universities. But how do professors compare with other professions? For that we turn to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Assistant professors earned about the same last year as workers in business and financial operations. But they earned about ten thousand dollars less than computer programmers, for example.
The highest paying group of jobs in the United States is in management. The average wage last year was ninety-two thousand dollars. Next came lawyers and other legal workers, at eighty-five thousand.
Orlando also asks about benefits, things like health insurance and retirement plans. Benefits differ from school to school just as salaries do.
The Chronicle Almanac shows that new assistant professors in foreign language earned forty-eight thousand dollars last year. That was a little more than the national average for all education jobs. But averages do not tell the whole story.
Sally Hadden is an associate professor of history and law at Florida State University in Tallahassee. She notes that language professors generally earn less than those in subjects like engineering, for example.
But these days, professors of some languages, including Arabic, can earn much more than Spanish professors. Universities are competing for them with government and industry.
Professor Hadden also notes that colleges in different areas of the country pay different salaries. Some states have strong unions that have negotiated set increases in salaries for professors.
And different schools value different skills in their professors. Community and liberal arts colleges generally value good teaching skills more than big research universities do.
Salaries can also be tied to something else -- tenure. More about that next week.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are online with transcripts and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.
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