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F
MO IBRAHIM PRIZE
ive million US dollars is a
lot of money. But will it
be enough of an incentive
to keep an African head
of state on the straight
and narrow? The annual
prize just announced by Africa’s most
successful businessman, the mobile
phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, will
offer a substantial pension to leaders
on that continent who provide good
government to their subjects ― and
then leave office when the constitution
says they should.
It is certainly a bold initiative. The
temptation for leaders in Africa has
been to line their pockets in
anticipation of the day when the
mansions, cars, banquets and fine
wines evaporate as they leave power.
The theory is that if a departing
president knows he is in the running to
get $500,000 a year for the next
decade, and $200,000 annually for the
rest of his life, he won’t need to nick it
from the national treasury. The trouble
is that many African politicians have
seized the chance to
purloin an awful lot
more than that in the
past.
But there are
other ways to create
incentives for
political leaders to
do the right thing.
Mo Ibrahim
Perhaps the best is to
promote debate among African
electorates ― and to create systems of
public accountability to make that
debate well-informed. Mo Ibrahim is
doing just that by setting up a rigorous
new index to measure good governance
in sub-Saharan Africa on a country-bycountry basis ― and ensuring its
independence by having it run by the
Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard.
Information like that will put real
power in the hands of African voters.
In the end, that is the only thing that
will improve standards of political
leadership on that unhappy continent.
The Washington Post
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Washington vanishes
NEW ORLEANS
(1) ALTHOUGH it ended more than a
century ago, slavery engendered a deep
anger that remains near the surface of
American life. In New Orleans, that anger
has found an unlikely target: no less than
George Washington, the country’s first
president.
(2) Last month, in keeping with a policy of
dropping slave-owners’ names from
public schools, the city’s school board
changed the name of George Washington
Elementary. The school was renamed
after Charles Drew, a pioneering black
doctor who urged the army to stop
segregating blood by race. No one
doubts that Drew deserves the honour.
The question is whether Washington
deserves the dishonour, just because he
owned slaves.
(3) Washington’s was the latest in a
string of school name-changes, 22 since
the policy took hold four years ago.
Although their names still appear on
statues and streets throughout the city,
Confederate leaders such as Robert E.
Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson
Davis are gone from school walls. Some
schools have been renamed after
accomplished blacks, others after white
civil-rights leaders.
(4) Those changes give the city’s young
blacks cause for pride, says Carl
Galmon, whose civil-rights group fought
for the name-changing policy. He points
out that the city’s public schools are
90.3% black; yet, out of 121 schools, 49
were originally named after slave-owners.
He thinks it is “a total insult to have our
students receiving diplomas, wearing
band uniforms … singing songs and
honouring people who enslaved our
ancestors.”
(5) Changing a school’s name still takes
work: a vote of parents, faculty and
students, and approval from the board.
But protesters say the Washington case
proves the policy is still too knee-jerk,
and favours simple politics over
complicated history. George Washington
has an impressive resumé, after all:
victory in the Revolutionary War, the
framing of government. Couldn’t the
board make an exception for the father of
the country?
(6) The board should also think a bit
about history, says William Gwyn, a
retired professor of political science at
Tulane University. In the 1790s,
Washington was far more enlightened
than most slave-owners. He freed his
slaves in his will and disapproved of
slavery. But he thought he could not
destroy the institution without
jeopardising the nation. “To judge the
man on this one aspect of his life alone, I
think, is grossly unfair,” Mr Gwyn said.
(7) But Mr Galmon says that, when it
comes to slavery, there are no mitigating
circumstances. “I’ve never heard of a
good slave-owner,” he says. He next
wants to purge the names of four mixedrace New Orleanians who owned slaves
despite being part-black themselves.
Theirs may not be a pretty legacy. But
one wonders whether the alternative is
much better: a past seen only as black or
white.
The Economist
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Archives expose Churchill’s true thoughts on
immigrants
He referred to those “living on
immoral earnings”. Of 62 people
convicted the previous year in the
Metropolitan police area, 24 were
“coloured”. He added: “All adminve.
measures to discourage have bn. taken.
Only further step wd. be immigrn.
control. Wd have to admit in Parlt. tht.
purpose of legislation was to control
admission of coloured. There is a case on
merits for excludg. riff-raff. But
politically it wd. be represented &
discussed on basis of a colour limitation.
That wd. offend the floating vote viz., the
old Liberals. We shd. be reversing agelong tradn. tht. B. [subjects] have right of
entry to mother-country of Empire. We
shd. offend Liberals, also
sentimentalists.”
But fearing public feeling, he said the
risk of introducing controls should not be
taken “today”. He warned: “The col.
popns. are resented in Lpl., Paddington &
other areas. By those who come into
contact with them. But those who don’t
are apt to take Liberal view.
Another cabinet member referred to
an “increasing evil” and said that
principles “laid down 200 yrs. ago are not
applicable to-day. See dangers of colour
discriminn. But other [Dominions]
control entry of B. subjects. Cd. we
present action as coming into line … &
securing uniformity?”
Churchill said the question was
whether it might be wise “to allow public
feeling to develop a little more ― before
takg. action… May be wise to wait… But it
wd. be fatal to let it develop too far.”
David Ward
Prime Minister Sir
Winston and his cabinet
colleagues, concerned at
the number of “coloured people” moving
to Britain, considered introducing
immigration controls more than 50 years
ago, according to records released
yesterday from the National Archives.
In hand-written notebooks, the
cabinet secretary, Sir Norman Brook,
noted that the then home secretary
thought there was a good case for
excluding “riff-raff”.
Brook stated that controls were
discussed at a cabinet meeting on
February 3 1954, six years after the ship
the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury
with 492 immigrants from Jamaica.
Churchill commented: “Wd lke also to
study possibility of ‘quota’ ― [number]
not to be exceeded.”
The prime minister began the
discussion, saying: “Problems wh. will
arise if many coloured people settle here.
Are we to saddle ourselves with colour
problems in UK? Attracted by Welfare
State. Public opinion in UK won’t tolerate
it once it gets beyond certain limits.”
Florence Horsbrugh, the minister of
education, added that the problem was
becoming “serious” in Manchester. David
Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary,
reported that the total of “coloured
people” in Britain had risen from 7,000
before the second world war to 40,000 at
the time of writing, with 3,666 of those
unemployed, and 1,870 on national
assistance, or benefits.
The Guardian
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De volgende tekst is het begin van hoofdstuk 1 uit de roman The Mission Song, van
John le Carré.
M
y name is Bruno Salvador. My friends call me Salvo, so do my enemies.
Contrary to what anybody may tell you, I am a citizen in good standing of the
United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and by profession a top interpreter of
Swahili and the lesser-known but widely spoken languages of the Eastern Congo,
formerly under Belgian rule, hence my mastery of French, a further arrow in my
professional quiver. I am a familiar face around the London law courts both civil and
criminal, and in regular demand at conferences on Third World matters, see my glowing
references from many of our nation’s finest corporate names. Due to my special skills I
have also been called upon to do my patriotic duty on a confidential basis by a
government department whose existence is routinely denied. I have never been in
trouble, I pay my taxes regularly, have a healthy credit rating and am the owner of a
well-conducted bank account. Those are cast-iron facts that no amount of bureaucratic
manipulation can alter, however hard they try.
In six years of honest labour in the world of commerce I have applied my services be it by way of cautiously phrased conference calls or discreet meetings in neutral cities
on the European continent - to the creative adjustment of oil, gold, diamond, mineral
and other commodity prices, not to mention the diversion of many millions of dollars
from the prying eyes of the world’s shareholders into slush funds as far removed as
Panama, Budapest and Singapore. Ask me whether, in facilitating these transactions, I
felt obliged to consult my conscience and you will receive the emphatic answer, ‘No.’ The
code of your top interpreter is sacrosanct. He is not hired to indulge his scruples. He is
pledged to his employer in the same manner as a soldier is pledged to the flag. In
deference to the world’s unfortunates, however, it is also my practice to make myself
available on a pro bono basis to London hospitals, prisons and the immigration
authorities despite the fact that the remuneration in such cases is peanuts.
I am on the voters’ list at number 17, Norfolk Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive,
Battersea, South London, a desirable freehold property of which I am the minority coowner together with my legal wife Penelope - never call her Penny - an upper-echelon
Oxbridge journalist four years my senior and, at the age of thirty-two, a rising star in the
firmament of a mass-market British tabloid capable of swaying millions. Penelope’s
father is the senior partner of a blue-chip City law firm and her mother a major force in
her local Conservative Party. We married five years ago on the strength of a mutual
physical attraction, plus the understanding that she would get pregnant as soon as her
career permitted, owing to my desire to create a stable nuclear family complete with
mother along conventional British lines. The convenient moment has not, however,
presented itself, due to her rapid rise within the paper and other factors.
Our union was not in all regards orthodox. Penelope was the elder daughter of an
all-white Surrey family in high professional standing, while Bruno Salvador, alias Salvo,
was the natural son of a bog Irish Roman Catholic missionary and a Congolese village
woman whose name has vanished for ever in the ravages of war and time. I was born, to
be precise, behind the locked doors of a Carmelite convent in the town of Kisangani, or
Stanleyville as was, being delivered by nuns who had vowed to keep their mouths shut,
which to anybody but me sounds funny, surreal or plain invented. But to me it’s a
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biological reality, as it would be for you if at the age of ten you had sat at your saintly
father’s bedside in a Mission house in the lush green highlands of South Kivu in the
Eastern Congo, listening to him sobbing his heart out half in Norman French and half in
Ulsterman’s English, with the equatorial rain pounding like elephant feet on the green
tin roof and the tears pouring down his fever-hollowed cheeks so fast you’d think the
whole of Nature had come indoors to join the fun. Ask a Westerner where Kivu is, he will
shake his head in ignorance and smile. Ask an African an he will tell you, ‘Paradise,’ for
such it is: a Central African land of misted lakes and volcanic mountains, emerald
pastureland, luscious fruit groves and similar.
In his seventieth and last year of life my father’s principal worry was whether he had
enslaved more souls than he had liberated. The Vatican’s African missionaries,
according to him, were caught in a perpetual cleft stick between what they owed to life
and what they owed to Rome, and I was part of what he owed to life, however much his
spiritual Brothers might resent me. We buried him in the Swahili language, which was
what he’d asked for, but when it fell to me to read ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ at his
graveside, I gave him my very own rendering in Shi, his favourite among all the
languages of the Eastern Congo for its vigour and flexibility.
Illegitimate sons-in-law of mixed race do not merge naturally into the social fabric of
wealthy Surrey, and Penelope’s parents were no exception to this time-honoured truism.
In a favourable light, I used to tell myself when I was growing up, I look more suntanned
Irish than mid-brown Afro, plus my hair is straight not crinkly, which goes a long way if
you’re assimilating. But that never fooled Penelope’s mother or her fellow wives at the
golf club, her worst nightmare being that her daughter would produce an all-black
grandchild on her watch, which may have accounted for Penelope’s reluctance to put
matters to the test, although in retrospect I am not totally convinced of this, part of her
motive in marrying me being to shock her mother and upstage her younger sister.
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Faith is the greatest analgesic
Placebo: The Belief Effect
by Dylan Evans
Reviewed by Phil Whitaker
1
2
3
4
Dylan Evans begins his account of
the placebo effect with the
observations of a US anaesthetist
named Beecher during the later stages
of the second world war. With
morphine supplies exhausted and
battle casualties still being brought in,
Beecher found, to his astonishment,
that injections of salt water were
effective at relieving a severe pain. His
findings 9 people’s perception of
placebos and, more fundamentally, the
prevailing understanding of the
workings of the human body.
Placebos have a long tradition in
medicine: pills made of sugar; tonics
containing nothing more medicinal
than a dash of alcohol. Treatments in
short that should not work. Doctors
prescribed them when they wanted to
appear to be doing something. The
intention was sometimes honourable,
but often the motive was more to do
with invigorating the practitioner’s
income than pepping up the patient.
Until Beecher, though, no one
seriously thought that placebos might
actually affect physical disease.
From a current-day perspective
Beecher’s results are readily explained.
Pain is now understood as a subjective
phenomenon. Peripheral nerves
conduct information about bodily
injury, but translation by the brain into
the perception of pain depends on
many other factors. The wounded
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servicemen’s belief that they had been
given morphine, coupled with their
expectation that it would alleviate
pain, proved sufficient to do just that.
Evans discusses studies that show
placebo treatments to be capable of
diminishing objective manifestations
of inflammation such as swelling and
muscle spasm, as well as regulating
measurable immunological activity.
Other studies have defined
characteristics of placebos. For there to
be a response patients must believe the
therapy will be effective; and the
placebo must be administered by
another person, preferably someone
perceived as a healer. Elucidation of
the biological pathways that mediate
the placebo response offers tantalising
glimpses of intricate chemical
conversations going on between the
brain and the rest of the body.
The picture that emerges raises
many questions, not least why we
should be equipped to respond to the
ministrations of others in this way.
Has this capacity evolved as a result of
our propensity to care for others in our
social group? In probing these wider
issues Evans is discomfited by the lack
of hard evidence, and the putative
answers he advances are awkwardly
argued and somewhat limited in scope.
Evans is a disciple of the scientific
world view. The idea of the placebo
response as a stimulus for successful
social organisation is not considered,
and readers with a theological
perspective will divine alternative
meanings in the evidence he presents.
The most striking aspect of this
fascinating if blinkered book is the fact
that the placebo response can be
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healing abilities of their doctor. As
Evans gracefully acknowledges, it is
orthodox practitioners who have most
to learn from the intriguing findings he
presents.
evoked by any treatment, whether
biologically explicable or not. The
effectiveness of some surgical
operations and many pharmaceutical
preparations will be enhanced if the
recipient believes in them and in the
Guardian Weekly
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Multiple intelligence?
It’s a flaky theory
John White
1
2
‘How many of your intelligences have
you used today?’ This notice at the
entrance to an Australian school refers
to Howard Gardner’s multiple
intelligence (MI) theory, which is big
in school improvement in Britain and
across the world. Gardner claims that
there are eight or more intelligences ─
not just one ─ including musical,
spatial and bodily-kinaesthetic as well
as the linguistic and mathematical
sorts found in intelligence tests. There
is only one problem: the intelligences
have no substance.
This is not just of academic
interest. Across the world, pupils are
being taught that they are by nature
bodily or spatially or interpersonally
intelligent. They are becoming
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imprisoned in mythical selfperceptions which may well limit their
ideas about what they are capable of
learning. Granted, MI is a godsend to
teachers dealing with children weak on
the basics and hampered by thoughts
of themselves as “thick”.
There is an excellent example of
this in Channel 4’s recent series The
Unteachables. Teacher of the Year Phil
Beadle, faced with a group of
disruptive and low-attaining 13-yearolds, managed to get them sitting down
long enough to tick their way through
an inventory of their various abilities.
The verdict was, as he told them, that
most were strong in bodily and musical
intelligence. He tailored his pedagogy
accordingly, teaching punctuation
karate-fashion and the concept of the
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adjective via lyrics sung to the guitar.
It was a riveting piece of teaching,
but does the theory behind it hold
water? Human beings are intelligent
creatures in all sorts of ways, and
Gardner is right that there is no reason
to privilege abstract areas like
language, logic and mathematics.
Intelligent behaviour is about
flexibility in the ways one reaches one’s
goals and there are as many types of
intelligence as there are types of goal.
Whether we take boxing, biology, or
bringing up children, each activity
brings its own kind of practical
judgment.
Gardner has corralled this variety
into eight categories, not by
painstakingly examining how people
behave, but through his own value
judgments about what intellectual
competences are important. He is
looking for “a reasonably complete
gamut of the kinds of abilities valued
by human cultures” ─ and the multiple
intelligences are what fit the bill. As he
admits, he might well have decided not
to call them “intelligences” at all, but
“forms of knowledge”. This is not
psychology at all.
The further one looks into the
theory, the more unsubstantiated it
appears. There are eight criteria by
which an intelligence is identified, but
no reason is given for selecting them.
Gardner stirs into his own flaky theory
another 18 one about symbols,
taken from aesthetics. He also holds
that each intelligence unfolds from
birth to maturity on the pattern of
biological development in plants and
animal bodies.
This is assumed, not argued, and it
is also false. As they grow up, children
usually become better at
understanding other people, but this is
not because some seed of interpersonal
intelligence has been genetically
implanted in their brains and gradually
develops to its full potential. It is
because of what they learn through
experience, from those around them
and the writers they may read.
8
Back to Phil Beadle and the
thousands of other British teachers
sold on MI. Why do they think it true?
Do they go along with it because so
much of today’s teaching world says it
delivers the goods? Because it
emanates from a Harvard professor
who must have done the proper
research?
9
We don’t know. What we do know
is that for many of them it is a lifeline.
They use it to change pupils’ beliefs
about themselves, to coax them to
learn in non-traditional ways. Does it
matter, then, if MI theory leaks like a
sieve as long as it works in practice? In
other words, does truth matter?
10
It should do, to teachers of all
people. That aside, is it really the case
that MI yields results? Zaak and Grace
and the other young “unteachables”
may now think of themselves not as
thick but as bodily or musically
intelligent. That is the sort of person
they are. They are made that way, so
how could they be expected to be
anything else? The danger of this kind
of thinking should be obvious ─
especially to teachers sceptical about
the traditional idea of intelligence and
its assumptions about mental
limitations. MI shares with this idea its
determinist orientation, its belief that
nature calls most of the shots. In its
pluralistic way, it is as constraining as
IQ.
The writer is Emeritus Professor of
Philosophy of Education
The Independent
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Why Hemingway Is Chick-Lit
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
“When women stop reading, the novel will be dead,” declared Ian McEwan in The
Guardian last year. The British novelist reached this rather dire conclusion after
venturing into a nearby park in an attempt to give away free novels. The result?
Only one “sensitive male soul” took up his offer, while every woman he approached
was “eager and grateful” to do the same.
Unscientific as McEwan’s experiment may be, its 23 is borne out by a number of
surveys conducted in Britain, the United States and Canada, where men account for a
paltry 20 percent of the market for fiction. Unlike the gods of the literary establishment
who remain predominantly male ― both as writers and critics ― their humble readers
are overwhelmingly female.
In recent years, various pundits have used this so-called “fiction gap” as an
opportunity to trot out their pet theories on what makes men and women tick. The most
recent is New York Times columnist David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise, who
jumped at the chance to peddle his special brand of gender essentialism. His June 11
column arbitrarily divided all books into neat categories ― “In the men’s sections of the
bookstore, there are books describing masterly men conquering evil. In the women’s
sections there are novels about … well, I guess feelings and stuff.” His sweeping
assertion 24 publishing industry research, which shows that if “chick-lit” were
defined as what women read, the term would have to include most novels, including
those considered macho territory.
Brooks’ real agenda, however, is not to deride women’s fiction, but to 25 the
latest conservative talking point: blaming politically correct liberals for a “feminized”
school curriculum that turns young boys “into high school and college dropouts who
hate reading.” According to Brooks, we have burdened little boys with “new-wave”
novels about “introspectively morose young women,” when they would be better served
by suitably masculine writers like Ernest Hemingway. “It could be, in short, that
biological factors influence reading tastes, even after accounting for culture,” Brooks
claims. “The problem is that even after the recent flurry of attention about why boys are
falling behind, there is still intense social pressure 26 biological differences between
boys and girls (ask Larry Summers, who was denounced for bringing them up).”
It takes a bizarre leap of logic to connect current school curricula to the reading
habits of adult men. Moreover, there is no indication that men “hate reading” ― women
just read more fiction. Men out-read women by at least ten percentage points when it
comes to non-fiction books ― surely good news for the bestselling author of Bobos in
Paradise.
27 , conservatives like Brooks are not the only talking-heads to resort to
biological determinism in explaining the “fiction gap.” Psychologist Dorothy Rowe told
The Observer that women like fiction because they have richer and more complex
imaginations. “Women have always had to try to understand what 28 because
women have always had to negotiate their way through the family,” she said. “They have
always had to get their power by having a pretty good idea of what’s going on inside a
person and using that knowledge to get him or her to do things.” Quite apart from the
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unintended implication that feminism is likely to fulfill McEwan’s worst fears ― i.e., kill
the novel ― such arguments reproduce the worst kind of gender stereotypes: Women as
sensitive, emotionally intelligent creatures; men as unreflective dolts.
Cognitive literary critic Lisa Zunshine, whose multidisciplinary field integrates the
insights offered by cognitive science to better understand fiction, offers 29
hypothesis. Her book, Why We Read Fiction, argues that fiction as a literary form offers
us pleasure because it engages our ability to mind-read, “a term used by cognitive
psychologists, interchangeably with ‘Theory of Mind’, to describe our ability to explain
people’s behavior in terms of their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires.” Fiction,
therefore, “lets us try on different mental states.”
Women are more likely than men to enjoy reading fiction, period (as opposed to just
reading about “feelings and stuff”), because “they generally want more input for their
Theory-of-Mind adaptations,” says Zunshine. “They want to experience other ‘minds in
action’ ― which is another way of defining ‘empathy’ ― much more than men do.”
Zunshine underscores the fact that such cognitive research is based on “average
statistical scores,” and offers no guidance as to what individual men or women may read.
30 , the biological difference between male and female Theory-of-Mind is small, and
likely only accounts for a “somewhat greater” predilection for fiction among women.
But in a culture infused with polarizing messages about gender, such small
differences can be magnified into vast disparities. If reading novels today is considered
more “girly” ― because of female-dominated book clubs or a publishing industry
increasingly geared toward its most loyal customers, i.e., women ― then men are 31 .
Desperate efforts to “macho” up the novel include Penguin’s “Good Booking”
campaign, which sent out ― who else? ― beautiful models to award prizes of £1,000
each month to any British man under 25 caught in flagrante with one of its
testosterone-friendly titles. The advertising tag line? “What women really want is a man
with a Penguin.”
Apart from sex with beautiful models, men are also socialized to seek out activities
that 32 ― which, these days, sadly doesn’t include reading novels. According to
novelist Walter Kirn, “If novelists have become culturally invisible ― at least to today’s
men ― it’s partly because the life of a novelist offers few rewards to the traditional male
ego. It’s not about power, glory and money,” unlike the adulation our culture reserves
for rap stars, athletes and movie actors.
Don’t look now, but we may be headed back to the 19th century, when the novel was
considered a low-status, frivolous, pastime of ladies of leisure, unfit for real men.
It’s a good thing, then, that the great male novelists can still rely on us girls to
finance their literary careers.
www.inthesetimes.com
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Vegetarianism
A History
by Colin Spencer
Reviewed by Ellen Ruppel Shell
1
2
3
The British radiologist and
irrepressible wit Sir Robert Hutchison
once famously remarked that
“vegetarianism is harmless enough,
although it is apt to fill a man with
wind and self-righteousness”. In
Vegetarianism: A History, British
novelist and cookbook author Colin
Spencer seems hellbent on making
Hutchison’s case.
Spencer begins auspiciously in a
chapter entitled “In the Beginning,”
reminding us that Adam and Eve were
herbivores, and then posing a big
question: “What is food?” He addresses
this puzzle in a lengthy discourse on
evolution, stretching back millions of
years to the early Miocene, during
which hominoids subsisted on roots,
berries and grubs, through the birth of
omnivorous humans roughly 100,000
years ago, whose penchant for raw
meat he disputes, to the domestication
of plants and animals 10,000 years
ago. Along the way, he delivers insights
on the mating habits of whales, the
nutrient content of sea water, the
relative penis size of primates, and
assorted other arcana of such mindboggling specificity that one marvels at
the dexterity of the author’s web search
engine.
Spencer traces many of our
contemporary qualms over meat-eating
– environmental, medical, ethical –
back some 25 centuries, to Pythagoras,
the Greek theoretician and philosopher
best remembered for his theorem on
right triangles. Pythagoras regarded
the soul, as he did numbers, as an
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4
5
abstract concept that was not tied to
any particular material entity. He
naturally advised against meat-eating,
for, as Spencer writes, “To kill and eat
any living creatures, whether they be
bird, reptile or fish, was to murder
one’s cousins and eat their flesh.” The
followers of Pythagoras, the
Pythagoreans, abstained from eating
not only meat, but also most other
foods: One Pythagorean equated eating
beans with “eating the heads of one’s
parents.” Spencer applauds this
asceticism, as he does that of a long list
of other vegetarian heretical sects, the
Stoics, the Essenes and what appears
to be his personal favorite, the
Manicheans.
The Manicheans surfaced in the
second century in Persian Babylonia
(modern-day Iraq) and over the next
several centuries spread widely
through northern Africa, India and
China. They believed that the world
was sharply divided between good and
evil, light and darkness; all matter was
at its heart dark, but plants contained
illuminating “light particles” and were
therefore okay to eat, while flesh
36 and was therefore taboo.
Manicheans were discouraged from
having sex, so as not to create more
flesh, and were forbidden to drink wine
or to plant or pluck vegetation.
This did not prevent the Manichean
elite from enslaving less “enlightened”
souls to till their soil and harvest their
produce, a practice that could hardly
have endeared them to the local
peasantry. They were also rumored to
gorge on sweets and mead, and to take
a rather damning view of human life
other than their own. All this, rather
than their refusal to eat meat, may
have caused the Manicheans to be
reviled in some quarters. But Spencer
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6
7
does not belabor this possibility, for
his book is essentially an extended
argument that portrays vegetarians
through the ages as a persecuted
minority driven to the fringe or, in
some cases, extinction, chiefly by their
saintly refusal to eat animals.
Spencer reminds us that the
Cartesian view of animals as soulless
machines led to some horrifying
practices. Descartes, the father of
modern philosophy, did experiments
with his wife’s dog that we would find
disgusting. Butchers of the period
whipped calves and pigs to death to
tenderize the flesh, and bled turkeys
and other birds to death by hanging
them upside down with a small
incision in the vein of their mouth.
What we think of as modern factory
farming flourished in Elizabethan
times, with pigs confined to cells so
tiny they could not move, and poultry
piled in great heaps in their cages.
That Elizabethans not infrequently
treated humans with similar
unkindness is perhaps beside the
8
point, for this is a book about the
struggle to come to grips with our
palates, not our humanity. Still, one
can’t help but question Spencer’s
priorities – and to wonder by the end
of this long and weighty book whether
he might not be nearly as obsessive as
some of the vegetarian sects he so
sympathetically portrays. The final
section is a no-holds-barred rant,
riddled with errors and
misconceptions. He makes the
ominous and entirely false charge that
“no research has ever been conducted
on the effect of BST milk on humans”.
He cites as if it were made yesterday a
14-year-old prediction that “a large
segment of the UK population may be
at considerable risk” of CreutzfeldtJacob disease from eating infected
meat.
Spencer is a lively writer. But in this
idiosyncratic history his senses of
humor, proportion and ultimately,
reality, appear to have been betrayed
by a furious sense of purpose.
The Washington Post
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Lees bij de volgende tekst eerst de vraag voordat je de tekst zelf raadpleegt.
Tekst 9
Why castrati were pop stars of their time
The special quality of the castrato voice
By Louise Jury
Arts Correspondent
Many were great artists, some were great
lovers, and scandal seemed to follow
them everywhere when they were at the
peak of their fame. But the very thought
of the operatic castrati today is enough to
make a grown man wince.
A new exhibition, however, is hoping
to overcome the
public’s squeamishness
on the subject by telling
the stories of the band
of castrati singers who
worked for the
composer George
Frideric Handel.
It will show that for
all the pain caused in
the 17th and 18th
centuries, when up to
4,000 boys a year were
castrated in the service
of art, the rewards
could be immense.
They earned fortunes
far in excess of what
Handel himself earned Alessandro Moreschi
(top), was the last
and more than other
known castrato, whose
singers of the time.
emotional impact has
One castrato, Caffarelli, been likened to pop
singers such as Chris
a notoriously difficult
Martin of Coldplay
man to work with,
(bottom)
accumulated sufficient
wealth to buy himself an Italian dukedom
on retirement.
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They were like the pop stars of today,
according to Sarah Bardwell, director of
the Handel House Museum in London,
which is mounting the show next March.
“The best castrati were superstars,
admired by audiences, appreciated by
composers and adored by female fans,”
she said. “Their voices had a tremendous
emotional impact on the audiences of the
day. In some ways, pop singers like Chris
Martin of Coldplay or Tom Chaplin of
Keane are the castrati of today. They, too,
have legions of fans and can use the
highest register of their voices to deliver
songs that go straight to the heart.”
So famous were the castrati of
Handel’s time that while there were some
cartoons which mocked them, many more
engravings, paintings and accounts of
their performances survive as testimony
to their hero status.
The legendary Italian lover Casanova
famously fell in love with a castrato,
although the object of his attentions
actually proved to be a woman in
disguise.
The seven who worked regularly for
Handel were Senesino, Nicolini,
Bernacchi, Carestini, Caffarelli, Conti and
Guadagni.
Guilio Cesare, which is being
performed at Glyndebourne, was written
for Senesino, whose likeness was
captured in an oil painting which will be
on show at the exhibition.
The original scores of pieces they
sang will be among the items at the
museum in Mayfair, alongside surgical
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effects of puberty. As a consequence, the
boys retained the vocal range of prepubescence and developed into adulthood
in a unique way.
The result was a quality of voice
unknown today when the parts are
normally sung by women or by
countertenors. Clues to the castrati sound
survive in a single recording, dating from
1902, of Moreschi, which visitors will be
able to listen to during the exhibition.
instruments used to perform the
castrations.
Nicholas Clapton, the show’s curator
and author of a biography of the last
known castrato, Alessandro Moreschi,
said castration usually took place when
boys were placed in a warm bath and
drugged with drink and opium.
Performed before puberty, it
prevented a boy’s larynx from being fully
transformed by the normal physiological
The Independent
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Let op: beantwoord een open vraag altijd in het Nederlands, behalve als het
anders is aangegeven. Als je in het Engels antwoordt, levert dat 0 punten op.
Tekst 1 Mo Ibrahim Prize
1p
1
Which of the following reflects the writer’s comment on the initiatives of Mo
Ibrahim?
A Mo Ibrahim’s definition of political leadership will raise consciousness among
Africans about how they should be governed.
B Political leaders in Africa are too corrupt to be possible candidates for
winning the Mo Ibrahim Prize.
C The Mo Ibrahim Prize is likely to keep African presidents from appropriating
state funds.
Tekst 2 Washington vanishes
2p
2
1p
3
Tekst 2 heeft tot onderwerp “dropping slave-owners’ names from public schools”
(alinea 2).
In de alinea’s 5 en 6 worden twee uiteenlopende argumenten genoemd om voor
George Washington een uitzondering te maken.
Geef van elk argument aan waarop dit neerkomt.
Noteer de eerste twee woorden van de zin waarin de schrijver zijn mening met
betrekking tot de “name-changing policy” toelicht.
Tekst 3 Archives expose…
1p
4
2p
5
1p
6
“Prime Minister … Britain” (eerste alinea).
Met welke woorden verklaarde Churchill de toevloed van gekleurde
immigranten?
Citeer deze woorden.
Welke twee bezwaren zouden volgens David Maxwell-Fyfe tegen het invoeren
van immigratiewetgeving aangevoerd kunnen worden?
“Archives expose Churchill’s true thoughts on immigrants” (headline).
Which of the following expresses “Churchill’s true thoughts”?
A Britain should allow only self-supporting coloured immigrants to take up
residence.
B Coloured immigrants should only be admitted to Britain after a thorough
selection procedure.
C In due course Britain would have to take discriminatory measures in order to
prevent trouble.
D Subjects from British colonies should only be permitted temporary residence.
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1p
7
Uit wiens pen zijn de afgekorte woorden uit de tekst oorspronkelijk afkomstig?
Noteer de naam van de betreffende persoon.
Tekst 4 De volgende tekst…
4p
8
Geef van elk van de volgende beweringen aan of deze wel of niet in
overeenstemming is met de inhoud van de passage.
1 Bruno heeft vijanden gemaakt doordat hij als tolk met kop en schouders
boven de anderen uitsteekt.
2 Bruno is zich ervan bewust dat hij als tolk bij dubieuze zaken wordt
betrokken.
3 Bruno heeft zich onrechtmatig verrijkt aan internationale transacties waarbij
hij als tolk betrokken was.
4 Bruno doet aan liefdadige activiteiten als tegenwicht voor zijn professionele
activiteiten.
5 Bruno heeft ondanks voortdurende conflicten met zijn snobistische
schoonfamilie nog steeds vertrouwen in zijn huwelijk.
6 Bruno heeft traumatische herinneringen aan zijn vroege jaren in een
nonnenklooster in Afrika.
7 Bruno’s vader had gemengde gevoelens ten opzichte van zijn zoon.
8 Penelope kon haar moeder er niet van overtuigen dat Bruno voor een
westerling kon doorgaan.
Noteer het nummer van elke bewering, gevolgd door “wel” of “niet”.
Tekst 5 Faith is the greatest analgesic
1p
9
1p
10
Which of the following does paragraph 2 focus on?
1 The negative effects that placebos had in the past.
2 The reasons why placebos were administered in the past.
A Only 1.
B Only 2.
C Both 1 and 2.
D Neither 1 nor 2.
1p
11
What becomes clear about pain from paragraph 3?
A Pain can only be relieved when the patient trusts the medicine.
B The intensity of the experience of pain is regulated by the brain.
C The more serious the injury, the stronger the pain signals from the brain.
Which of the following fits the gap in paragraph 1?
A challenged
B confirmed
C ignored
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1p
12
Which of the following is true of the last sentence of paragraph 4
(“Elucidation … body.”)?
A It criticises the way in which Evans discusses the placebo response.
B It elaborates on the way placebos can sometimes unbalance the body’s
internal system.
C It states that a study of the placebo effect throws light on the complex
interaction between the mental and the physical.
D It suggests the impossibility of proving the placebo response.
1p
13
Which of the following statements agrees with the content of paragraph 5?
In trying to explain the placebo effect
A Evans does not convincingly address the possible role of societal factors.
B Evans makes too much of the scientific evidence of the effect.
C Evans underestimates the influence of religion on science.
1p
14
Welke combinatie van twee van de onderstaande kwalificaties vormt een
beschrijving van de laatste alinea?
1 De alinea bevat een kritische noot.
2 De alinea doet een verbetersuggestie voor het boek.
3 De alinea is neutraal van toon.
4 De alinea is overwegend negatief van toon.
5 De alinea is overwegend positief van toon.
Noteer de nummers van de twee juiste kwalificaties.
Tekst 6 Multiple intelligence?
1p
15
Which of the following can be concluded about Howard Gardner’s MI theory from
paragraph 1?
A It demands a great deal from schools that try to put it into practice.
B It improves pupils’ overall school performance.
C It is widespread but it lacks foundation.
D Its principal strength lies in intelligence testing.
1p
16
What is the example of Phil Beadle’s teaching (paragraph 3) meant to make
clear?
A How abstract concepts should be made concrete for young learners.
B How Gardner’s theory is used to help motivate difficult pupils.
C That gifted teachers need a theory to deal with a challenging educational
setting.
D That learning difficulties decrease when pupils are set manageable and
meaningful tasks.
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1p
17
Which of the following can be concluded from paragraph 4?
1 More than ever, we need intelligence in non-abstract domains.
2 Intelligence is the ability to respond adequately to various tasks.
A Only 1.
B Only 2.
C Both 1 and 2.
D Neither 1 nor 2.
1p
18
Which of the following fits the gap in paragraph 6?
A equally questionable
B rather more credible
C surprisingly innovative
1p
19
What does the writer argue in paragraph 7?
A Children will learn regardless of the environment in which they grow up.
B Emotional development is just as important as intellectual development.
C How children develop depends largely on environmental factors.
D Interpersonal intelligence is the key to the development of all other forms of
intelligence.
1p
20
By which of the following could “delivers the goods” (paragraph 8) be replaced?
A creates better chances for highly intelligent pupils
B leads to better school results
C opens up new ways of making teaching attractive
1p
21
What might be the dangerous effect of the application of the MI theory,
according to the last paragraph?
A That educational theories will no longer be taken seriously by teachers.
B That education will be focused exclusively on creative skills.
C That pupils will not be stimulated to develop to their full potential.
1p
22
“… mythical self-perceptions …” (paragraph 2).
In view of the article as a whole, which of the following dictionary definitions of
“mythical” fits the context?
A “based on a traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to
explain a practice or belief”
B “being of a size that exceeds reality as it can be perceived by the senses”
C “embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society”
D “having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence”
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Tekst 7 Why Hemingway is chick-lit
Kies bij iedere open plek in de tekst het juiste antwoord uit de gegeven
mogelijkheden.
1p
1p
1p
1p
1p
1p
1p
23
A
B
C
D
desperation
impact
success
thesis
A
B
C
D
firmly endorses
flies in the face of
invalidates
obviously ridicules
A
B
C
analyse
promote
scoff at
A
B
C
D
not to exaggerate
not to talk about
to do research on
to respond to
A
B
C
D
As a consequence
In short
Nevertheless
To be fair
A
B
C
D
a fiction writer means
is in their own interest
other people are doing
their role should be
A
B
C
D
a more nuanced
an equally unfounded
an even more radical
a roughly similar
24
25
26
27
28
29
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1p
1p
1p
30
A
B
C
D
Consequently
For example
Moreover
Nevertheless
A
B
C
D
hardly aware of this
less likely to read fiction
right to protest
still a substantial market
A
B
C
D
are leisure-oriented
confer status
generate money
tend to be physical
31
32
Tekst 8 Vegetarianism
1p
33
Which of the following can be concluded from paragraph 1?
Colin Spencer’s book
A contains enough arguments to convert opponents of vegetarianism.
B derives its ideas from Sir Robert Hutchison.
C is a good illustration of Sir Robert Hutchison’s point.
1p
34
Which pair of statements about Colin Spencer’s book agrees with Ellen Ruppel
Shell’s view in paragraph 2?
1 The book draws conclusions based on unreliable sources.
2 The book contains numerous sidetracks.
3 The book treats its subject matter in chronological order.
4 The book overestimates the importance of herbs and plants in man’s diet.
A 1 and 2
B 1 and 3
C 2 and 3
D 2 and 4
E 3 and 4
1p
35
Which of the following agrees with what is said in paragraph 3?
A Pythagoras considered killing animals as wrongful as killing humans.
B Pythagoras’ ideas on food were watered down by his followers.
C Pythagoras started from the assumption that numbers and the soul were
interdependent.
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1p
36
1p
37
Which of the following fits the gap in paragraph 4?
A derived from darkness
B led to sinfulness
C necessitated slaughter
Which of the following is suggested in paragraph 5?
The Manicheans’ beliefs were too difficult to put into practice.
The Manicheans were brutally oppressed because of their vegetarianism.
The Manicheans were despised for reasons other than their vegetarianism.
The Manicheans were vegetarian only when it suited them.
A
B
C
D
1p
38
Which of the following series, consisting of words quoted from paragraph 5,
suggests that the writer is being sarcastic?
A damning, quarters, driven to the fringe
B enslaving, gorge, belabor
C hardly, endeared, saintly
1p
39
Welke opvatting leidde volgens Spencer tot de in alinea 6 beschreven
wreedheden?
1p
40
1p
41
“one can’t help but question Spencer’s priorities” (paragraph 7)
What is meant by this?
A For Spencer human welfare seems to come second place to animal welfare.
B For Spencer vegetarianism appears to be more important than brutal
treatment of animals.
C For Spencer what we eat might be more important than why we eat.
The following quotes have been taken from other reviews of Spencer’s book.
With which of the following could Ellen Ruppel Shell be expected to disagree
absolutely?
1 “A fascinating study … This unusual social and cultural history is meticulous
in its research and refreshing in its insights into a little-studied subject.”
NAPRA Review
2 “Spencer makes you think . . . a very readable volume.” Toronto Globe &
Mail
3 “Spencer’s history is both fair-minded and balanced. There’s a lot to chew
over in these -- dare one say it? -- meaty pages.” Parade
A Only 1 and 2.
B Only 1 and 3.
C Only 2 and 3.
D 1, 2 and 3.
E None.
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Lees bij de volgende opgave eerst de vraag voordat je de bijbehorende tekst
raadpleegt.
Tekst 9 Why castrati were pop stars of their time
1p
42
“The special quality of the castrato voice” (onderkop)
In welke alinea wordt de uitleg gegeven voor het bijzondere karakter van de
stem van een castraat?
Noteer de eerste twee woorden van deze alinea.
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