Anglais bac oral form of power

Today I'm going to talk about the notion of places and forms of power. First of all, the notion of place could represent anything that holds power. Secondly, power is the ability to influence people's behavior, it can be related to law, money, media or education. For examples, the physical strength is a power who allows the law of the strongest, the power of money who generates corruption or a person dominating or having control over others, in all situations. Then to what extent is the debate over selective admission to university linked to the issue of power ? To understand the notion of “places and forms of power”, we are going to talk about the selective admission to university which is linked to the attractiveness power of the university, the power given to the individual through academic and non-academics skills and the power as a result of education.

First of all, universities are seen as elite institutions holding the power, which is granted by money and by knowledge. In that way, Universities have power over the society because of their right to increase the tuition fees, and because they have become very selective. We studied a document in class, about the rise of tuition fees. We mentioned that in October 2010, more than 300 teenagers debated the issue of tuition fees in London. In a document “for or against the rise of tuition fees”, Emilie Adams and James Bartle, members of the Youth Parliament talked about this document, but they have 2 different opinions : For Emily, the rise of the tuition fees will widen class division: only the students who afford to pay will be able to go to university. If people know the topics they want to study, but they don’t have enough money to go to universities, they have to work part-time or accept to have debts to « buy » their degrees. Besides that, the rich people will have the best degrees and the poorer will be left with the worst ones. So there is a discrimination towards disadvantaged students who are not able to study in the best universities. On the contrary, James is in favor of the rise of tuition fees. James Bartle defends the governmental project. From his point of view, the financial situation of the universities in the United Kingdom is at stake. Universities have to reduce their deficits. Also, James thinks Universities have to maintain a high level of quality, so they need funding. Students going to universities will get better and well-paid jobs so it will not be a problem for them to pay their debts back. These 2 opinions show the power of money because university degrees will be accessible only for students who can pay the tuition fees. The more you have money, the more you can go to the best universities, the more you will have power afterwards.

Secondly, we read a document about Jojo’s situation and this extract from the book « I am Charlotte Simons », written by Tom Wolfe. Jojo is a senior basketball star student at Dupont university, he seems to be clever but he doesn’t seem to be working very much. The text is from his perspective and his feelings. He explains to his basketball coach that he is not getting as much out of academics as out of athletics because US schools are so keen to have their sport stars pass their exams that they make sure that they get all the expected grades. This text shows the power given to an individual by Universities.

Thirdly, education in Universities is about

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