B.Keywords

snob value, a piece of paper, promotion, ability, rejected.

Vocabulary

snob, craftsman, decent, promotion, humble, reject, oblige.
B1. Listen to a passage talking about modern education. Complete the statements with the information you hear.
Education has acquired a kind of snob value in modern times.
We are no longer content to be honest craftsmen skilled at our work through years of patient practice.
Nowadays, if we want to get a decent job, we have to have a piece of paper.
If you want to get a promotion in even a humblest job, we have to obtain a certificate or a diploma first.
We may know that we will be better at the job that the man with the paper qualifications, but our experience and practical skills are regarded as relatively unimportant.
Johnson would have been manager by now, if he had taken the trouble to get a degree. his colleagues say. He's a clever man, he could have done anything if he'd had a proper education.
I wonder if as time goes on, we should discover that many people whose practical experience and ability would have been enormously useful to their employers have been rejected on the ground that they are insufficiently qualified.
Would it not be better to allow people to become expert in a way most suited to them rather than oblige them to follow a set course of instruction, which may offer no opportunity for them to develop skills in which they would've become expert if left to themselves?