UNIT 1 HIGHER EDUCATION
PART 1 DISCUSSION
Project 1 The Aims of Education
1.1 Group discussion.
a) Work in groups. Look at the list of the possible aims of education. In column A, put a number 0-5 according to the importance attached to these aims in your work group.
0- not important at all 5- vital
b) Work alone. In column B, put a number 0-5 according to the importance attached to these aims by you personally.
c) In column C, put a number 0-5 according to the importance attached to these aims by a teacher of your faculty.
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A
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B
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C
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Helping you to do as well as possible in exams
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Helping you to get as good a job as possible
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Helping you with things you will need to know when you graduate
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Showing you how to get on with other people
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Informing you on the current international trends in your field of education
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Teaching you how to get a necessary information for your jobs
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Keeping you occupied
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Helping you to develop your personality and character
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Helping you to set up a decent position in the society
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Mastering foreign languages
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When you have finished, compare your conclusions in class.
1.2 Act out a dialogue considering the probable aims of getting higher education based on the information given above. Before performing think of other arguments you might use to back up your opinion.
1.3 Read the extract from the interview. Discuss the reasons and stages of getting education by E. Donnall Thomas.
In a 1999 interview for Encarta Encyclopedia, Seattle Times reporter Carol M. Ostrom talked with cancer specialist E. Donnall Thomas about his decades-long quest to solve the mysteries of bone marrow transplantation. Thomas was the first to show that bone marrow could safely be transplanted from one human being to another and that marrow transplants could be used to treat acute leukemia patients. In 1990 Thomas shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for that work. In 1989 he stepped down after 15 years as director of oncology for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.
Interview with E. Donnall Thomas
Ostrom: Dr. Thomas, tell me about growing up in a little town in Texas.
Thomas: My father was a general practitioner, the only doctor in Prairie Hill, a town of about 800 people. He was born in 1870, and with his family migrated from Tennessee to Texas in a covered wagon in 1874. He went to medical school in Louisville, with virtually no training before that. He had three children by his first wife. She died of tuberculosis in 1917, and he married my mother. I was born in 1920. From the very earliest time I can remember, I had planned to be a doctor. I guess because my father was, and because I admired him so much. I never gave any thought to anything else. Except that things intervened. This was the Depression; there was no money. My father was killed in an automobile accident when I was a student at the University of Texas, and I did not see how I could have money to go to medical school. So I switched to chemical engineering.
Ostrom: It seems that something helped create a strong work ethic in you; you probably know that some people call you a workaholic.
Thomas: My father was. He was always on call. When I was growing up, we'd plan to go fishing or something, and some woman would go into labor, or someone would get a leg broken—he couldn't do major surgery, he couldn't in that environment—but if it were a trauma or obstetrics case, he'd cancel our trip. In the middle of the night, he'd get called. As I remember it, every night. I'm sure it wasn't every night, but that's the way I remember it. But later on, having grown up in this environment, and being in love with medicine, I decided that with my chemistry background I'd much prefer to be in the scientific end of medicine. I didn't want to be the only doctor in a small town.
Ostrom: You met your wife, Dottie, when she hit you with a snowball. How did you get from there to here, being not only husband and wife, but partners in research?
Thomas: I was a senior at the University of Texas when she was a freshman. I was waiting tables at the girl's dormitory, which is how I got my food. It snowed in Texas, which is very unusual—January 20, 1940. And I came out of the dormitory after we'd finished serving breakfast, and there was about six inches of snow. This girl whacked me in the face with a snowball. She still claims she was throwing it at another fellow and hit me by mistake. One thing led to another, and we seemed to hit it off. She's a workaholic, too, and was then. We were married in December of 1942, and I had mentioned, I always wanted to be a doctor. After finishing my master's degree in chemistry, I got a job at the medical school in Galveston as an instructor in pharmacology. I didn't know anything about pharmacology, but I spent three weeks reading a pharmacology book, and I knew enough to be a lab assistant. I went to Galveston and did my first semester as a medical student there. I had a half-time job so I could go to medical school. And in January of 1943, when the war was really getting going, it was announced that the Army and Navy were taking over the medical schools to accelerate the training of doctors for wartime purposes. Since I already had a reserve commission in the Army, I decided that as long as the Army was going to be paying my way to medical school, I might as well apply to some of the famous medical schools. And so I applied to Harvard and Johns Hopkins and Columbia, I think it was. On February 20, 1943, I got a telegram from Harvard, saying if I would get my credentials in for the class starting in March, they would consider me along with the other 1,200 applicants, because there had been one vacancy that appeared at the last minute. And about the first of March, I got a telegram from Harvard saying I'd been admitted.
Ostrom: Tell me about how you became interested in bone marrow. Was it something about bone marrow in particular, leukemia, or the challenge?
Thomas: It was all of those. As a medical student, I had some very stimulating teachers, and a couple of them were hematologists. Because Dottie was a hematology technician, we used to look at smears and bone marrow together when we were students. I found the bone marrow to be a fascinating organ. I can't think of any particular time when I decided to make that my specialty, but by the time I was a senior in medical school, I knew that's what I would do.
Ostrom: Were there a lot of unknowns about bone marrow then?
Thomas: There had been a lot of studies, but in retrospect, it seems we didn't know much at that time. There were people who had been studying bone marrow for 50 years, but a lot of its functions were still a mystery, and its diseases were poorly characterized. It used to be thought that pernicious anemia was a form of leukemia. Going back to my father, I can remember as a kid, his being so excited when [George] Minot and [William] Murphy got the Nobel Prize [in physiology or medicine] in 1934 for their earlier work on pernicious anemia. His enthusiasm was catching. Little did either one of us know at that time that I would later be personally acquainted with both Minot and Murphy.
Ostrom: You were inspired by some studies involving mice and radiation. Would you explain why these studies were so important to you?
Thomas: By the time I had graduated medical school and was a fellow, I spent my first year in hematology with Dr. Clement Finch. He was then in Boston, but he moved to Seattle in 1949 to establish a division of hematology at the then-newborn School of Medicine at the University of Washington. His interest was in iron metabolism. And of course, red blood cells are made in the bone marrow. Also about that time, it was realized that radiation kills animals and people primarily by damage to the bone marrow. It's the most sensitive organ in the body as far as radiation damage is concerned. And of course, in the late '40s, after the atomic bomb explosions, everybody was interested in this. And I became very interested in what governed the bone marrow's production of white cells and red cells and its other functions. At that time, there were some early experiments that suggested there were some growth hormones for bone marrow. Specifically, a little was beginning to be known about erythropoietin, which stimulates bone marrow production of red cells. I took a year off from my clinical work and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], and worked in the biology department there, with Dr. John Loofbourow whose interest was in wound-healing substances that stimulate cells to proliferate. I worked on substances that are released from irradiated yeast that stimulate yeast cell growth. And my real interest was in transferring this to bone marrow.
1.4 Open the group discussion by describing your reasons and inspirations to get the particular kind of higher education you are getting now. Try to use the pattern phrases and sentences.
decades -long quest to solve the mysteries of…
stepped down after 15 years as a …
with virtually no training before that
from the very earliest time I can remember, I had planned to be
I never gave any thought to anything else
I did not see how I could have money to go to ...
so I switched to …
create a strong work ethic in you
some people call you a workaholic.
having grown up in this environment, and being in love with languages
I'd much prefer to be in the [scientific] end
to accelerate the training of translators for contemporary purposes
I had some very stimulating teachers, and a couple of them were philologists
I can't think of any particular time when I decided to make that my specialty
by the time I was a senior in school, I knew that's what I would do
you were inspired by some studies involving ...
Would you explain why these studies were so important to you?
his enthusiasm was catching
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