Abitur NRW Englisch 2021 · LK · Nachtermin · Weiterbildungskolleg

Klausurteil A

Robert Ford: The King of Spain

The novel takes place in the United Kingdom in the near future. Hal and his colleagues Rachel, Sam, Ted, Spike and Alan work and live at Edge Hill, a rural care home for affluent residents. Hal has so far looked after the residents' library, but the new director has just shut it down. The scene is set in the Rec, a staff lounge with a bar.

Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.

‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library – it’s bordering on an abuse of 5 the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’

‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.

Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care … but it’s not just that, it’s 10 not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it …’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.

15 ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but … would you think about leaving?’

It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.

‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’

20 There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.

‘Back to the city. Back to … real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.

All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to 25 materialise. Instead, he leaned forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.

‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse – an Australian.’

‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.

30 ‘Do you know what’s it’s like out there? Really – what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’

‘Not for a while, but …’

‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’

35 ‘The smell?’

‘The people.’

‘The people?’

‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, […]. There’s just no way.’

40 ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’

Blank looks about the table.

45 ‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way – that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The 50 appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.

‘And now … now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step 55 removed from morality – and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’

Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They 60 knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill – a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.

‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.

65 ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.

From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.

‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something … that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’

‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.

70 ‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest – well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’

Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable 75 backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.

Annotations

10 Daniels

– former director of Edge Hill

28 Australian

– Spike comes from Australia

1. Outline how Hal sees city life and society. (Comprehension) (12 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Robert Ford: The King of Spain

The novel takes place in the United Kingdom in the near future. Hal and his colleagues Rachel, Sam, Ted, Spike and Alan work and live at Edge Hill, a rural care home for affluent residents. Hal has so far looked after the residents' library, but the new director has just shut it down. The scene is set in the Rec, a staff lounge with a bar.

Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.

‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library – it’s bordering on an abuse of 5 the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’

‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.

Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care … but it’s not just that, it’s 10 not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it …’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.

15 ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but … would you think about leaving?’

It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.

‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’

20 There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.

‘Back to the city. Back to … real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.

All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to 25 materialise. Instead, he leaned forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.

‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse – an Australian.’

‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.

30 ‘Do you know what’s it’s like out there? Really – what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’

‘Not for a while, but …’

‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’

35 ‘The smell?’

‘The people.’

‘The people?’

‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, […]. There’s just no way.’

40 ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’

Blank looks about the table.

45 ‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way – that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The 50 appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.

‘And now … now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step 55 removed from morality – and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’

Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They 60 knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill – a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.

‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.

65 ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.

From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.

‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something … that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’

‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.

70 ‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest – well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’

Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable 75 backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.

Annotations

10 Daniels

– former director of Edge Hill

28 Australian

– Spike comes from Australia

2. Analyse the way in which Hal is portrayed, paying particular attention to narrative perspective, dialogue and language use. (Analysis) (16 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Robert Ford: The King of Spain

The novel takes place in the United Kingdom in the near future. Hal and his colleagues Rachel, Sam, Ted, Spike and Alan work and live at Edge Hill, a rural care home for affluent residents. Hal has so far looked after the residents' library, but the new director has just shut it down. The scene is set in the Rec, a staff lounge with a bar.

Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.

‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library – it’s bordering on an abuse of 5 the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’

‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.

Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care … but it’s not just that, it’s 10 not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it …’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.

15 ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but … would you think about leaving?’

It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.

‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’

20 There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.

‘Back to the city. Back to … real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.

All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to 25 materialise. Instead, he leaned forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.

‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse – an Australian.’

‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.

30 ‘Do you know what’s it’s like out there? Really – what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’

‘Not for a while, but …’

‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’

35 ‘The smell?’

‘The people.’

‘The people?’

‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, […]. There’s just no way.’

40 ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’

Blank looks about the table.

45 ‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way – that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The 50 appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.

‘And now … now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step 55 removed from morality – and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’

Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They 60 knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill – a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.

‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.

65 ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.

From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.

‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something … that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’

‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.

70 ‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest – well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’

Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable 75 backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.

Annotations

10 Daniels

– former director of Edge Hill

28 Australian

– Spike comes from Australia

3.1 Hal says that “[p]eople live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience” (ll. 51 – 54). Assess whether this statement offers a valid portrayal of life in today's globalised world. (Evaluation: comment) (14 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Robert Ford: The King of Spain

The novel takes place in the United Kingdom in the near future. Hal and his colleagues Rachel, Sam, Ted, Spike and Alan work and live at Edge Hill, a rural care home for affluent residents. Hal has so far looked after the residents' library, but the new director has just shut it down. The scene is set in the Rec, a staff lounge with a bar.

Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.

‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library – it’s bordering on an abuse of 5 the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’

‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.

Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care … but it’s not just that, it’s 10 not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it …’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.

15 ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but … would you think about leaving?’

It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.

‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’

20 There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.

‘Back to the city. Back to … real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.

All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to 25 materialise. Instead, he leaned forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.

‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse – an Australian.’

‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.

30 ‘Do you know what’s it’s like out there? Really – what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’

‘Not for a while, but …’

‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’

35 ‘The smell?’

‘The people.’

‘The people?’

‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, […]. There’s just no way.’

40 ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’

Blank looks about the table.

45 ‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way – that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The 50 appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.

‘And now … now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step 55 removed from morality – and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’

Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They 60 knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill – a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.

‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.

65 ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.

From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.

‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something … that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’

‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.

70 ‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest – well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’

Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable 75 backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.

Annotations

10 Daniels

– former director of Edge Hill

28 Australian

– Spike comes from Australia

3.2 Your English class has just finished a unit on utopia and dystopia and is about to hold a discussion on how relevant dystopian literature is to society today. While doing research, you came across a quote by the journalist Elizabeth Neoman: “Dystopian literature has the license to freely explore new modes of thinking about government, individual rights, oppression, liberty and language.” Write a debate statement that takes the quote as its starting point. Include references to what you have covered in class. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) (14 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Robert Ford: The King of Spain

The novel takes place in the United Kingdom in the near future. Hal and his colleagues Rachel, Sam, Ted, Spike and Alan work and live at Edge Hill, a rural care home for affluent residents. Hal has so far looked after the residents' library, but the new director has just shut it down. The scene is set in the Rec, a staff lounge with a bar.

Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.

‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library – it’s bordering on an abuse of 5 the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’

‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.

Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care … but it’s not just that, it’s 10 not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it …’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.

15 ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but … would you think about leaving?’

It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.

‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’

20 There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.

‘Back to the city. Back to … real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.

All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to 25 materialise. Instead, he leaned forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.

‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse – an Australian.’

‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.

30 ‘Do you know what’s it’s like out there? Really – what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’

‘Not for a while, but …’

‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’

35 ‘The smell?’

‘The people.’

‘The people?’

‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, […]. There’s just no way.’

40 ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’

Blank looks about the table.

45 ‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way – that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The 50 appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.

‘And now … now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step 55 removed from morality – and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’

Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They 60 knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill – a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.

‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.

65 ‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.

From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.

‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something … that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’

‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.

70 ‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest – well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’

Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable 75 backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.

Annotations

10 Daniels

– former director of Edge Hill

28 Australian

– Spike comes from Australia

Klausurteil B: Sprachmittlung isoliert

4. A British friend of yours is doing a school project about how politically engaged young people are throughout Europe. She/he would like to learn about the situation in Germany from you.

Using the article “Deutschlands Jugend – politisch wie nie?”, write an email to her/him in which you inform her/him about present developments in the political involvement of young people in Germany. (Mediation) [18 Punkte]

Materialgrundlage Klausurteil B:

Lisa Hänel: Deutschlands Jugend – politisch wie nie?

In Deutschland leben mehr als 19 Millionen Menschen unter 25 Jahren. Im Westen des Landes umfasst das rund 24 Prozent der Bevölkerung, im Osten 19 Prozent.

Nicht alle von ihnen dürfen schon wählen, aber die Bewegung „Fridays for Future“ hat es geschafft, viele zu mobilisieren. Mitte März rief die Umweltbewegung zum ersten weltweiten Klimastreik auf, Ende Mai folgte der zweite.

Über 300.000 Menschen, meist Schüler und Studenten, demonstrierten auch in Deutschland, viele zum ersten Mal. Eine stichprobenartige Befragung auf der ersten Klimademo Mitte März, durchgeführt vom Institut für Protest- und Bewegungsforschung, ergab, dass rund 31 Prozent der Schüler und Studierenden zuvor noch nie an einer Demonstration teilgenommen hatten. Greta Thunberg hat die Klimabewegung in Schweden begründet. Sie gilt vielen der jungen Klimaschützer als Vorbild. „Greta Thunberg hat einen Damm gebrochen. Sie wird in die Geschichte eingehen als der Mensch, der den Diskurs verändert hat. Mit Fridays for Future haben junge Menschen, die unter 18 sind und nicht wählen dürfen, das erste Mal gespürt, wie es ist, die Weltagenda mitzugestalten“, sagt Jugendforscher Simon Schnetzer. Er gibt die Jugendstudie „Junge Deutsche“ heraus.

Derzeit wirkt es in Deutschland so, als habe ein ganzes Land plötzlich seine Bürger unter 30 Jahren entdeckt. Studierende werden in die wichtigsten politischen Talkshows im Fernsehen eingeladen und zieren das Titelbild des renommierten Nachrichtenmagazins „Spiegel“. Dabei zeigt sich nur, was sich schon lange angebahnt hat. Schon die „Shell Jugendstudie“ hielt 2015 fest, dass im Vergleich zu 2002 statt 30 Prozent nun bereits 41 Prozent der Jugendlichen erklärten, politisch interessiert zu sein. […]

Die neue Protestkultur bewegt sich abseits von Institutionen. Schon 2016 gaben in einer Studie der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung nur 16 Prozent der politisch Engagierten an, im engeren Sinne politisch aktiv zu sein, also als Mitglied einer Partei oder Gewerkschaft. Anna Nell steht für diese neue Form des politischen Engagements.

Die 19-Jährige lebt in einer der jüngsten Städte Deutschlands, ganz im Süden des Landes: in Freiburg. Dort engagiert sie sich bei „Junges Freiburg“, einer Gruppe parteiloser junger Menschen, die sich für den Stadtrat bewerben. „Die Europawahl hat gezeigt, was für eine riesige Welle die Jugend gerade schafft. Wir müssen jetzt ernstgenommen werden“, sagt Nell. Sie meidet die großen Parteien, da es dort zu lange dauere, bis man gehört werde.

Sich Gehör zu verschaffen, geht mittlerweile anders. Die jungen Engagierten haben einen mächtigen Verbündeten: die sozialen Netzwerke. Kurz vor der Europawahl sorgte das Video des deutschen YouTubers Rezo für Aufregung. Darin kritisierte er die großen Volksparteien CDU und SPD vor allem für deren mangelhaften Klimaschutz. Das Video wurde über 14 Millionen Mal angeklickt. In einer Videobotschaft rieten anschließend über 70 bekannte deutsche YouTuber davon ab, CDU oder SPD zu wählen.

Zu den Unterstützern Rezos gehört auch die YouTuberin Diana zur Löwen. Mit ihren mehr als 600.000 Abonnenten ist sie eine echte YouTube-Größe. Vor allem für ihre Mode- und Beauty-Videos bekannt, setzt sie zunehmend auf politische Inhalte. Sie hat ein Video über Abtreibung gedreht und vor der Europawahl mit dem EU-Parlament zusammengearbeitet. […]

Für die Politikwissenschaftlerin und Gründerin des „Y-Politik“-Podcasts Tanja Hille ist gerade der Einfluss von Social Media Stars, die normalerweise keine politischen Inhalte kreieren, entscheidend. „In meiner Generation war es noch so, dass wir uns Informationen aktiv beschaffen mussten“, sagt die 27-Jährige. „Heute werden jungen Menschen durch YouTuber wie Diana zur Löwen die politischen Themen ins Haus getragen. Sie müssen sich damit beschäftigen. Auch deshalb war Rezos Video so erfolgreich.“ Auch Rezo war zuvor nicht für politische Inhalte, sondern für Unterhaltungsvideos bekannt.

In der Politik ist das Erstarken der jungen Stimmen noch nicht angekommen. In den Parteien im Bundestag finden sich nur wenige Abgeordnete jüngerer Jahrgänge.

Anmerkung:

Europawahl – Europawahl 2019, an der in Deutschland 5 Millionen Erstwähler teilgenommen haben

Klausurteil A

Philip Pullman

Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let's make Britain humane again

In: The Guardian, 11 December 2019

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this

country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we

pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

So the question of why decent men and women find themselves able to walk past people

5 begging in the street, or huddled up in doorways with only layers of cardboard to keep out

the cold, is all mixed up with the flagrant deficiencies of Britain’s democracy, and the

craven desire to suck up to the US that brought us the “war on drugs” among other idiocies,

and the extraordinary grip that the public schools seem to have on the levers of power.

And then there are the facts that the ice caps are melting, and our utilities are now in the

10 hands of foreign corporations, and that teachers are treated with hostility and suspicion, and

that Russia interferes with our politics, and that libraries are closing, and the transport

system is an uncoordinated mess, and people are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors, and

that senior politicians see fit to deny that the government has anything to do with people

being poor, and claim that the victims of Grenfell Tower died because they had no common

15 sense. And universal credit. And the gig economy. And zero-hour contracts. And the

flagrantly biased media. And Brexit. And on and on and on. All part of the same thing.

Why do we tolerate it? Any of it.

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science

and medicine and sanitation in the past couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves

20 that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding.

These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics

having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a

kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

I think it may have been, once, for a generation or so, beginning with the Clement Attlee

25 government and the creation of the National Health Service. The idea that there was such a

thing as a postwar consensus has been defended by some historians and criticised by others,

but I remember it: it is embodied for me in the memory of Battersea park, where I wandered

as a boy and looked at sculptures by Henry Moore, and at the Pleasure Gardens created

during the Festival of Britain, and where the park keepers might have told us off for climbing

30 the trees but we somehow knew they were part of what kept the place safe and orderly.

There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a

thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.

And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to

dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools

35 and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our

politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor.

Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps

after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even

though Sikes is going to kill him.

40 Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil

of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only

to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. […] Why feel shame? Who needs shame?

Shame is for losers.

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under

45 crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past

– I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go

home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking

heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and

50 stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have

that it would start to untangle the rest?

The classical response to a Gordian knot like this would be to slash it through with a sword;

and yes, that would work, briefly. Violent revolution as an expression of rage and despair

does change the state of things for a while. The trouble is that it swiftly makes everything

55 even worse. The only person to benefit from cutting the Gordian knot is the one with the

sword.

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble

of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do? […]

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what

60 we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates

us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and

more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity,

something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human

65 impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%,

for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a

moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our

current leaders.

Annotations

14 · Grenfell Tower – high-rise building in London burning down in 2017 due to a lack of fire safety and serious negligence of the fire department (72 people died)

15 · universal credit – United Kingdom social security payment for working-age people who have a low household income

15 · gig economy – an employment concept in which people are only paid for specific short-term tasks without a permanent contract

15 · zero-hour contract – contract without fixed working hours that allows the employer to call the employee whenever needed

24 · Clement Attlee – British Prime Minister (1945 – 1951) whose government installed the National Health Service and free healthcare for all

27 · Battersea park – park in London

28 · Henry Moore – renowned British artist (1898 – 1986)

29 · Festival of Britain – nationwide exhibitions in 1951 to celebrate British inventiveness

38 · Oliver Twist – novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1838

52 · Gordian knot – ancient legend that gave its name to a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by bold action

1. Outline Philip Pullman's views on the state of British society. (Comprehension) [12 Punkte]

Klausurteil A

Philip Pullman

Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let's make Britain humane again

In: The Guardian, 11 December 2019

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this

country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we

pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

So the question of why decent men and women find themselves able to walk past people

5 begging in the street, or huddled up in doorways with only layers of cardboard to keep out

the cold, is all mixed up with the flagrant deficiencies of Britain’s democracy, and the

craven desire to suck up to the US that brought us the “war on drugs” among other idiocies,

and the extraordinary grip that the public schools seem to have on the levers of power.

And then there are the facts that the ice caps are melting, and our utilities are now in the

10 hands of foreign corporations, and that teachers are treated with hostility and suspicion, and

that Russia interferes with our politics, and that libraries are closing, and the transport

system is an uncoordinated mess, and people are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors, and

that senior politicians see fit to deny that the government has anything to do with people

being poor, and claim that the victims of Grenfell Tower died because they had no common

15 sense. And universal credit. And the gig economy. And zero-hour contracts. And the

flagrantly biased media. And Brexit. And on and on and on. All part of the same thing.

Why do we tolerate it? Any of it.

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science

and medicine and sanitation in the past couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves

20 that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding.

These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics

having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a

kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

I think it may have been, once, for a generation or so, beginning with the Clement Attlee

25 government and the creation of the National Health Service. The idea that there was such a

thing as a postwar consensus has been defended by some historians and criticised by others,

but I remember it: it is embodied for me in the memory of Battersea park, where I wandered

as a boy and looked at sculptures by Henry Moore, and at the Pleasure Gardens created

during the Festival of Britain, and where the park keepers might have told us off for climbing

30 the trees but we somehow knew they were part of what kept the place safe and orderly.

There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a

thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.

And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to

dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools

35 and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our

politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor.

Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps

after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even

though Sikes is going to kill him.

40 Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil

of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only

to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. […] Why feel shame? Who needs shame?

Shame is for losers.

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under

45 crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past

– I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go

home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking

heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and

50 stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have

that it would start to untangle the rest?

The classical response to a Gordian knot like this would be to slash it through with a sword;

and yes, that would work, briefly. Violent revolution as an expression of rage and despair

does change the state of things for a while. The trouble is that it swiftly makes everything

55 even worse. The only person to benefit from cutting the Gordian knot is the one with the

sword.

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble

of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do? […]

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what

60 we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates

us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and

more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity,

something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human

65 impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%,

for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a

moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our

current leaders.

Annotations

14 · Grenfell Tower – high-rise building in London burning down in 2017 due to a lack of fire safety and serious negligence of the fire department (72 people died)

15 · universal credit – United Kingdom social security payment for working-age people who have a low household income

15 · gig economy – an employment concept in which people are only paid for specific short-term tasks without a permanent contract

15 · zero-hour contract – contract without fixed working hours that allows the employer to call the employee whenever needed

24 · Clement Attlee – British Prime Minister (1945 – 1951) whose government installed the National Health Service and free healthcare for all

27 · Battersea park – park in London

28 · Henry Moore – renowned British artist (1898 – 1986)

29 · Festival of Britain – nationwide exhibitions in 1951 to celebrate British inventiveness

38 · Oliver Twist – novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1838

52 · Gordian knot – ancient legend that gave its name to a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by bold action

2. Analyse the way in which the author conveys his opinions, paying particular attention to his communicative strategies and his use of language. (Analysis) [16 Punkte]

Klausurteil A

Philip Pullman

Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let's make Britain humane again

In: The Guardian, 11 December 2019

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this

country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we

pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

So the question of why decent men and women find themselves able to walk past people

5 begging in the street, or huddled up in doorways with only layers of cardboard to keep out

the cold, is all mixed up with the flagrant deficiencies of Britain’s democracy, and the

craven desire to suck up to the US that brought us the “war on drugs” among other idiocies,

and the extraordinary grip that the public schools seem to have on the levers of power.

And then there are the facts that the ice caps are melting, and our utilities are now in the

10 hands of foreign corporations, and that teachers are treated with hostility and suspicion, and

that Russia interferes with our politics, and that libraries are closing, and the transport

system is an uncoordinated mess, and people are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors, and

that senior politicians see fit to deny that the government has anything to do with people

being poor, and claim that the victims of Grenfell Tower died because they had no common

15 sense. And universal credit. And the gig economy. And zero-hour contracts. And the

flagrantly biased media. And Brexit. And on and on and on. All part of the same thing.

Why do we tolerate it? Any of it.

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science

and medicine and sanitation in the past couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves

20 that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding.

These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics

having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a

kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

I think it may have been, once, for a generation or so, beginning with the Clement Attlee

25 government and the creation of the National Health Service. The idea that there was such a

thing as a postwar consensus has been defended by some historians and criticised by others,

but I remember it: it is embodied for me in the memory of Battersea park, where I wandered

as a boy and looked at sculptures by Henry Moore, and at the Pleasure Gardens created

during the Festival of Britain, and where the park keepers might have told us off for climbing

30 the trees but we somehow knew they were part of what kept the place safe and orderly.

There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a

thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.

And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to

dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools

35 and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our

politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor.

Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps

after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even

though Sikes is going to kill him.

40 Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil

of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only

to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. […] Why feel shame? Who needs shame?

Shame is for losers.

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under

45 crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past

– I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go

home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking

heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and

50 stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have

that it would start to untangle the rest?

The classical response to a Gordian knot like this would be to slash it through with a sword;

and yes, that would work, briefly. Violent revolution as an expression of rage and despair

does change the state of things for a while. The trouble is that it swiftly makes everything

55 even worse. The only person to benefit from cutting the Gordian knot is the one with the

sword.

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble

of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do? […]

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what

60 we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates

us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and

more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity,

something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human

65 impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%,

for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a

moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our

current leaders.

Annotations

14 · Grenfell Tower – high-rise building in London burning down in 2017 due to a lack of fire safety and serious negligence of the fire department (72 people died)

15 · universal credit – United Kingdom social security payment for working-age people who have a low household income

15 · gig economy – an employment concept in which people are only paid for specific short-term tasks without a permanent contract

15 · zero-hour contract – contract without fixed working hours that allows the employer to call the employee whenever needed

24 · Clement Attlee – British Prime Minister (1945 – 1951) whose government installed the National Health Service and free healthcare for all

27 · Battersea park – park in London

28 · Henry Moore – renowned British artist (1898 – 1986)

29 · Festival of Britain – nationwide exhibitions in 1951 to celebrate British inventiveness

38 · Oliver Twist – novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1838

52 · Gordian knot – ancient legend that gave its name to a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by bold action

3.1 Discuss Pullman’s assertion that the UK requires “political change” and “a system that liberates us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone” (ll. 60 – 61). Draw on what you have studied in class about social and political realities in the United Kingdom. (Evaluation: comment) [14 Punkte]

Klausurteil A

Philip Pullman

Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let's make Britain humane again

In: The Guardian, 11 December 2019

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this

country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we

pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

So the question of why decent men and women find themselves able to walk past people

5 begging in the street, or huddled up in doorways with only layers of cardboard to keep out

the cold, is all mixed up with the flagrant deficiencies of Britain’s democracy, and the

craven desire to suck up to the US that brought us the “war on drugs” among other idiocies,

and the extraordinary grip that the public schools seem to have on the levers of power.

And then there are the facts that the ice caps are melting, and our utilities are now in the

10 hands of foreign corporations, and that teachers are treated with hostility and suspicion, and

that Russia interferes with our politics, and that libraries are closing, and the transport

system is an uncoordinated mess, and people are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors, and

that senior politicians see fit to deny that the government has anything to do with people

being poor, and claim that the victims of Grenfell Tower died because they had no common

15 sense. And universal credit. And the gig economy. And zero-hour contracts. And the

flagrantly biased media. And Brexit. And on and on and on. All part of the same thing.

Why do we tolerate it? Any of it.

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science

and medicine and sanitation in the past couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves

20 that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding.

These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics

having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a

kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

I think it may have been, once, for a generation or so, beginning with the Clement Attlee

25 government and the creation of the National Health Service. The idea that there was such a

thing as a postwar consensus has been defended by some historians and criticised by others,

but I remember it: it is embodied for me in the memory of Battersea park, where I wandered

as a boy and looked at sculptures by Henry Moore, and at the Pleasure Gardens created

during the Festival of Britain, and where the park keepers might have told us off for climbing

30 the trees but we somehow knew they were part of what kept the place safe and orderly.

There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a

thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.

And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to

dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools

35 and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our

politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor.

Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps

after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even

though Sikes is going to kill him.

40 Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil

of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only

to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. […] Why feel shame? Who needs shame?

Shame is for losers.

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under

45 crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past

– I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go

home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking

heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and

50 stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have

that it would start to untangle the rest?

The classical response to a Gordian knot like this would be to slash it through with a sword;

and yes, that would work, briefly. Violent revolution as an expression of rage and despair

does change the state of things for a while. The trouble is that it swiftly makes everything

55 even worse. The only person to benefit from cutting the Gordian knot is the one with the

sword.

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble

of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do? […]

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what

60 we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates

us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and

more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity,

something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human

65 impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%,

for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a

moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our

current leaders.

Annotations

14 · Grenfell Tower – high-rise building in London burning down in 2017 due to a lack of fire safety and serious negligence of the fire department (72 people died)

15 · universal credit – United Kingdom social security payment for working-age people who have a low household income

15 · gig economy – an employment concept in which people are only paid for specific short-term tasks without a permanent contract

15 · zero-hour contract – contract without fixed working hours that allows the employer to call the employee whenever needed

24 · Clement Attlee – British Prime Minister (1945 – 1951) whose government installed the National Health Service and free healthcare for all

27 · Battersea park – park in London

28 · Henry Moore – renowned British artist (1898 – 1986)

29 · Festival of Britain – nationwide exhibitions in 1951 to celebrate British inventiveness

38 · Oliver Twist – novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1838

52 · Gordian knot – ancient legend that gave its name to a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by bold action

3.2 According to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “the inequality that has reached crisis proportions around the world in recent decades [...] poses a growing threat to our future”. Your school takes part in an international online project on the topic Globalisation in the 21st Century. Write an article for the project’s website in which you outline the risks of an increasing worldwide social divide. Use Guterres’s statement as your starting point and draw on what you have covered in class about the economic, political and ecological aspects of globalisation. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) [14 Punkte]

Klausurteil A

Philip Pullman

Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let's make Britain humane again

In: The Guardian, 11 December 2019

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this

country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we

pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

So the question of why decent men and women find themselves able to walk past people

5 begging in the street, or huddled up in doorways with only layers of cardboard to keep out

the cold, is all mixed up with the flagrant deficiencies of Britain’s democracy, and the

craven desire to suck up to the US that brought us the “war on drugs” among other idiocies,

and the extraordinary grip that the public schools seem to have on the levers of power.

And then there are the facts that the ice caps are melting, and our utilities are now in the

10 hands of foreign corporations, and that teachers are treated with hostility and suspicion, and

that Russia interferes with our politics, and that libraries are closing, and the transport

system is an uncoordinated mess, and people are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors, and

that senior politicians see fit to deny that the government has anything to do with people

being poor, and claim that the victims of Grenfell Tower died because they had no common

15 sense. And universal credit. And the gig economy. And zero-hour contracts. And the

flagrantly biased media. And Brexit. And on and on and on. All part of the same thing.

Why do we tolerate it? Any of it.

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science

and medicine and sanitation in the past couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves

20 that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding.

These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics

having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a

kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

I think it may have been, once, for a generation or so, beginning with the Clement Attlee

25 government and the creation of the National Health Service. The idea that there was such a

thing as a postwar consensus has been defended by some historians and criticised by others,

but I remember it: it is embodied for me in the memory of Battersea park, where I wandered

as a boy and looked at sculptures by Henry Moore, and at the Pleasure Gardens created

during the Festival of Britain, and where the park keepers might have told us off for climbing

30 the trees but we somehow knew they were part of what kept the place safe and orderly.

There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a

thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.

And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to

dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools

35 and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our

politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor.

Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps

after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even

though Sikes is going to kill him.

40 Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil

of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only

to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. […] Why feel shame? Who needs shame?

Shame is for losers.

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under

45 crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past

– I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go

home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking

heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and

50 stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have

that it would start to untangle the rest?

The classical response to a Gordian knot like this would be to slash it through with a sword;

and yes, that would work, briefly. Violent revolution as an expression of rage and despair

does change the state of things for a while. The trouble is that it swiftly makes everything

55 even worse. The only person to benefit from cutting the Gordian knot is the one with the

sword.

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble

of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do? […]

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what

60 we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates

us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and

more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity,

something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human

65 impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%,

for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a

moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our

current leaders.

Annotations

14 · Grenfell Tower – high-rise building in London burning down in 2017 due to a lack of fire safety and serious negligence of the fire department (72 people died)

15 · universal credit – United Kingdom social security payment for working-age people who have a low household income

15 · gig economy – an employment concept in which people are only paid for specific short-term tasks without a permanent contract

15 · zero-hour contract – contract without fixed working hours that allows the employer to call the employee whenever needed

24 · Clement Attlee – British Prime Minister (1945 – 1951) whose government installed the National Health Service and free healthcare for all

27 · Battersea park – park in London

28 · Henry Moore – renowned British artist (1898 – 1986)

29 · Festival of Britain – nationwide exhibitions in 1951 to celebrate British inventiveness

38 · Oliver Twist – novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1838

52 · Gordian knot – ancient legend that gave its name to a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by bold action

Klausurteil B: Sprachmittlung isoliert

In the eTwinning project of your social science class, you and your British partner are looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected various groups in society, and you share views from your two countries.

Write an email to your partner in which you describe what Holger Schwesinger's article states about how the Covid-19 pandemic affects homeless people in Germany and which first measures are being taken to support them.

Article: Holger Schwesinger, „Corona-Folgen für Obdachlose: Wenn schon Händewaschen schwierig ist", in: tagesschau.de, 24 March 2020

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

Klausurteil A

Rose Eveleth

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us

Imagine you’re taking an online business class – the kind where you watch video lectures

and then answer questions at the end. But this isn’t a normal class, and you’re not just watching

the lectures: They’re watching you back. Every time the facial recognition system decides

that you look bored, distracted, or tuned out, it makes a note. And after each lecture, it only

5 asks you about content from those moments.

This isn’t a hypothetical system; it’s a real one deployed by a company called Nestor. And

if you don’t like the sound of it, you’re not alone. Neither do the actual students.

When I asked the man behind the system, French inventor Marcel Saucet, how the students

in these classes feel about being watched, he admitted that they didn’t like it. They felt violated

10 and surveilled, he said, but he shrugged off any implication that it was his fault. “Everybody

is doing this,” he told me. “It’s really early and shocking, but we cannot go against natural

laws of evolution.”

As a reporter who covers technology and the future, I constantly hear variations of this line

as technologists attempt to apply the theory Charles Darwin made famous in biology to their

15 own work. I’m told that there is a progression of technology, a movement that is bigger than

any individual inventor or CEO. They say they are simply caught in a tide, swept along in a

current they cannot fight. They say it inevitably leads them to facial recognition (now even

being deployed on children), smart speakers that record your intimate conversations, and

doorbells that narc on your neighbors. They say we can’t blame these companies for the

20 erosion of privacy or democracy or trust in public institutions. […]

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation.

Evolution is driven by random mutation – mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions

may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market

those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment,

25 the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t

spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

In some situations, even if we can’t literally put a technological genie back in a bottle, we

can artificially intervene to make sure the genie plays by specific rules.

There are clear laws about what companies can and can’t do in the realm of biological weapons.

30 The FDA ensures drugs are tested for efficacy and safety before they can be sold. The USDA

ensures new food research is done with care. We don’t let anybody frack or drill for oil or

build nuclear power plants wherever they like. We don’t let just anybody make and sell cars

or airplanes or guns.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the

35 public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other

industry. They’re not.

In many ways, the American tech mogul blaming some invisible arc of innovation for his

choices is simply an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. The

men and women who colonized America largely saw progress as a march, a continual straight

40 path, forward at all times, never to be questioned or slowed. Benjamin Franklin (himself an

inventor) once wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting

sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.”

So to suggest a slowing – or perhaps even (god forbid) a reverse – seems antithetical to the

45 fabric of America. When former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski says, “What already

happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they

made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow,” he is echoing the sentiments of our

nation’s founders.

“These arguments for corporate supremacy and technological progress are so deeply connected

50 in the American mind,” says Luke Stark, a researcher who studies behavior and computing

at Microsoft Research Montreal. “It’s really tied to the whole American manifest destiny and

the broader history of American settler colonialism.” The attitude is that we must march on,

forward, westward, no matter what stands in our way. Going back is simply not an option.

Even those afraid of all-seeing corporations argue that instead of pressing pause, we, the

55 consumers, must simply move forward more quickly. “What I try to focus on is not to try to

stop the march of technological progress,” Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of

Sapiens, told Time magazine. “Instead, I try to run faster.”

This endless, punishing race in the name of “progress” is often what drives consumer

behavior, too. Despite the “American dream” – security, safety, prosperity – being more

60 and more out of reach for everyday Americans, the idea that it’s just around the corner drives

people to purchase these products.

If you have the newest app, people think their lives will be easier, you’ll have more free time,

more quality time. Commercials promise more backyard barbecues under sparklers and

birthday surprise parties facilitated by internet-connected light bulbs.

65 And when we buy the products, tech companies take that as a green light to continue on

their “inevitable” path. […]

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those

decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm

between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies

70 decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind.

We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the

“natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question

what “progress” actually means.

Annotations

6 Nestor – French tech company

19 to narc on – informal: to spy on someone

25 to do focus groups – to interview a select group of people on a product before it is launched

30 FDA – Food and Drug Administration

30 USDA – U.S. Department of Agriculture

45 Uber – American tech company

57 Sapiens – Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind: non-fiction book published in 2014

Rose Eveleth, “The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us”, in: Vox, 8 October 2019

1.

Outline the two contrasting positions on how technological progress develops that the text presents. (Comprehension) [12 Punkte]

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

Klausurteil A

Rose Eveleth

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us

Imagine you’re taking an online business class – the kind where you watch video lectures

and then answer questions at the end. But this isn’t a normal class, and you’re not just watching

the lectures: They’re watching you back. Every time the facial recognition system decides

that you look bored, distracted, or tuned out, it makes a note. And after each lecture, it only

5 asks you about content from those moments.

This isn’t a hypothetical system; it’s a real one deployed by a company called Nestor. And

if you don’t like the sound of it, you’re not alone. Neither do the actual students.

When I asked the man behind the system, French inventor Marcel Saucet, how the students

in these classes feel about being watched, he admitted that they didn’t like it. They felt violated

10 and surveilled, he said, but he shrugged off any implication that it was his fault. “Everybody

is doing this,” he told me. “It’s really early and shocking, but we cannot go against natural

laws of evolution.”

As a reporter who covers technology and the future, I constantly hear variations of this line

as technologists attempt to apply the theory Charles Darwin made famous in biology to their

15 own work. I’m told that there is a progression of technology, a movement that is bigger than

any individual inventor or CEO. They say they are simply caught in a tide, swept along in a

current they cannot fight. They say it inevitably leads them to facial recognition (now even

being deployed on children), smart speakers that record your intimate conversations, and

doorbells that narc on your neighbors. They say we can’t blame these companies for the

20 erosion of privacy or democracy or trust in public institutions. […]

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation.

Evolution is driven by random mutation – mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions

may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market

those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment,

25 the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t

spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

In some situations, even if we can’t literally put a technological genie back in a bottle, we

can artificially intervene to make sure the genie plays by specific rules.

There are clear laws about what companies can and can’t do in the realm of biological weapons.

30 The FDA ensures drugs are tested for efficacy and safety before they can be sold. The USDA

ensures new food research is done with care. We don’t let anybody frack or drill for oil or

build nuclear power plants wherever they like. We don’t let just anybody make and sell cars

or airplanes or guns.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the

35 public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other

industry. They’re not.

In many ways, the American tech mogul blaming some invisible arc of innovation for his

choices is simply an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. The

men and women who colonized America largely saw progress as a march, a continual straight

40 path, forward at all times, never to be questioned or slowed. Benjamin Franklin (himself an

inventor) once wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting

sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.”

So to suggest a slowing – or perhaps even (god forbid) a reverse – seems antithetical to the

45 fabric of America. When former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski says, “What already

happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they

made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow,” he is echoing the sentiments of our

nation’s founders.

“These arguments for corporate supremacy and technological progress are so deeply connected

50 in the American mind,” says Luke Stark, a researcher who studies behavior and computing

at Microsoft Research Montreal. “It’s really tied to the whole American manifest destiny and

the broader history of American settler colonialism.” The attitude is that we must march on,

forward, westward, no matter what stands in our way. Going back is simply not an option.

Even those afraid of all-seeing corporations argue that instead of pressing pause, we, the

55 consumers, must simply move forward more quickly. “What I try to focus on is not to try to

stop the march of technological progress,” Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of

Sapiens, told Time magazine. “Instead, I try to run faster.”

This endless, punishing race in the name of “progress” is often what drives consumer

behavior, too. Despite the “American dream” – security, safety, prosperity – being more

60 and more out of reach for everyday Americans, the idea that it’s just around the corner drives

people to purchase these products.

If you have the newest app, people think their lives will be easier, you’ll have more free time,

more quality time. Commercials promise more backyard barbecues under sparklers and

birthday surprise parties facilitated by internet-connected light bulbs.

65 And when we buy the products, tech companies take that as a green light to continue on

their “inevitable” path. […]

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those

decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm

between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies

70 decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind.

We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the

“natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question

what “progress” actually means.

Annotations

6 Nestor – French tech company

19 to narc on – informal: to spy on someone

25 to do focus groups – to interview a select group of people on a product before it is launched

30 FDA – Food and Drug Administration

30 USDA – U.S. Department of Agriculture

45 Uber – American tech company

57 Sapiens – Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind: non-fiction book published in 2014

Rose Eveleth, “The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us”, in: Vox, 8 October 2019

2.

Analyse in what way the author conveys her opinion on the “natural evolution of technology” (l. 72). Concentrate on her communicative strategies and her language. (Analysis) [16 Punkte]

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

Klausurteil A

Rose Eveleth

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us

Imagine you’re taking an online business class – the kind where you watch video lectures

and then answer questions at the end. But this isn’t a normal class, and you’re not just watching

the lectures: They’re watching you back. Every time the facial recognition system decides

that you look bored, distracted, or tuned out, it makes a note. And after each lecture, it only

5 asks you about content from those moments.

This isn’t a hypothetical system; it’s a real one deployed by a company called Nestor. And

if you don’t like the sound of it, you’re not alone. Neither do the actual students.

When I asked the man behind the system, French inventor Marcel Saucet, how the students

in these classes feel about being watched, he admitted that they didn’t like it. They felt violated

10 and surveilled, he said, but he shrugged off any implication that it was his fault. “Everybody

is doing this,” he told me. “It’s really early and shocking, but we cannot go against natural

laws of evolution.”

As a reporter who covers technology and the future, I constantly hear variations of this line

as technologists attempt to apply the theory Charles Darwin made famous in biology to their

15 own work. I’m told that there is a progression of technology, a movement that is bigger than

any individual inventor or CEO. They say they are simply caught in a tide, swept along in a

current they cannot fight. They say it inevitably leads them to facial recognition (now even

being deployed on children), smart speakers that record your intimate conversations, and

doorbells that narc on your neighbors. They say we can’t blame these companies for the

20 erosion of privacy or democracy or trust in public institutions. […]

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation.

Evolution is driven by random mutation – mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions

may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market

those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment,

25 the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t

spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

In some situations, even if we can’t literally put a technological genie back in a bottle, we

can artificially intervene to make sure the genie plays by specific rules.

There are clear laws about what companies can and can’t do in the realm of biological weapons.

30 The FDA ensures drugs are tested for efficacy and safety before they can be sold. The USDA

ensures new food research is done with care. We don’t let anybody frack or drill for oil or

build nuclear power plants wherever they like. We don’t let just anybody make and sell cars

or airplanes or guns.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the

35 public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other

industry. They’re not.

In many ways, the American tech mogul blaming some invisible arc of innovation for his

choices is simply an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. The

men and women who colonized America largely saw progress as a march, a continual straight

40 path, forward at all times, never to be questioned or slowed. Benjamin Franklin (himself an

inventor) once wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting

sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.”

So to suggest a slowing – or perhaps even (god forbid) a reverse – seems antithetical to the

45 fabric of America. When former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski says, “What already

happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they

made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow,” he is echoing the sentiments of our

nation’s founders.

“These arguments for corporate supremacy and technological progress are so deeply connected

50 in the American mind,” says Luke Stark, a researcher who studies behavior and computing

at Microsoft Research Montreal. “It’s really tied to the whole American manifest destiny and

the broader history of American settler colonialism.” The attitude is that we must march on,

forward, westward, no matter what stands in our way. Going back is simply not an option.

Even those afraid of all-seeing corporations argue that instead of pressing pause, we, the

55 consumers, must simply move forward more quickly. “What I try to focus on is not to try to

stop the march of technological progress,” Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of

Sapiens, told Time magazine. “Instead, I try to run faster.”

This endless, punishing race in the name of “progress” is often what drives consumer

behavior, too. Despite the “American dream” – security, safety, prosperity – being more

60 and more out of reach for everyday Americans, the idea that it’s just around the corner drives

people to purchase these products.

If you have the newest app, people think their lives will be easier, you’ll have more free time,

more quality time. Commercials promise more backyard barbecues under sparklers and

birthday surprise parties facilitated by internet-connected light bulbs.

65 And when we buy the products, tech companies take that as a green light to continue on

their “inevitable” path. […]

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those

decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm

between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies

70 decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind.

We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the

“natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question

what “progress” actually means.

Annotations

6 Nestor – French tech company

19 to narc on – informal: to spy on someone

25 to do focus groups – to interview a select group of people on a product before it is launched

30 FDA – Food and Drug Administration

30 USDA – U.S. Department of Agriculture

45 Uber – American tech company

57 Sapiens – Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind: non-fiction book published in 2014

Rose Eveleth, “The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us”, in: Vox, 8 October 2019

3.1

Discuss Rose Eveleth’s claim that “the ‘American Dream’ – security, safety, prosperity – [is] more and more out of reach for everyday Americans” (ll. 59 – 60). Refer to work done in class on American myths and realities. (Evaluation: comment) [14 Punkte]

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

Klausurteil A

Rose Eveleth

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us

Imagine you’re taking an online business class – the kind where you watch video lectures

and then answer questions at the end. But this isn’t a normal class, and you’re not just watching

the lectures: They’re watching you back. Every time the facial recognition system decides

that you look bored, distracted, or tuned out, it makes a note. And after each lecture, it only

5 asks you about content from those moments.

This isn’t a hypothetical system; it’s a real one deployed by a company called Nestor. And

if you don’t like the sound of it, you’re not alone. Neither do the actual students.

When I asked the man behind the system, French inventor Marcel Saucet, how the students

in these classes feel about being watched, he admitted that they didn’t like it. They felt violated

10 and surveilled, he said, but he shrugged off any implication that it was his fault. “Everybody

is doing this,” he told me. “It’s really early and shocking, but we cannot go against natural

laws of evolution.”

As a reporter who covers technology and the future, I constantly hear variations of this line

as technologists attempt to apply the theory Charles Darwin made famous in biology to their

15 own work. I’m told that there is a progression of technology, a movement that is bigger than

any individual inventor or CEO. They say they are simply caught in a tide, swept along in a

current they cannot fight. They say it inevitably leads them to facial recognition (now even

being deployed on children), smart speakers that record your intimate conversations, and

doorbells that narc on your neighbors. They say we can’t blame these companies for the

20 erosion of privacy or democracy or trust in public institutions. […]

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation.

Evolution is driven by random mutation – mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions

may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market

those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment,

25 the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t

spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

In some situations, even if we can’t literally put a technological genie back in a bottle, we

can artificially intervene to make sure the genie plays by specific rules.

There are clear laws about what companies can and can’t do in the realm of biological weapons.

30 The FDA ensures drugs are tested for efficacy and safety before they can be sold. The USDA

ensures new food research is done with care. We don’t let anybody frack or drill for oil or

build nuclear power plants wherever they like. We don’t let just anybody make and sell cars

or airplanes or guns.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the

35 public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other

industry. They’re not.

In many ways, the American tech mogul blaming some invisible arc of innovation for his

choices is simply an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. The

men and women who colonized America largely saw progress as a march, a continual straight

40 path, forward at all times, never to be questioned or slowed. Benjamin Franklin (himself an

inventor) once wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting

sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.”

So to suggest a slowing – or perhaps even (god forbid) a reverse – seems antithetical to the

45 fabric of America. When former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski says, “What already

happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they

made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow,” he is echoing the sentiments of our

nation’s founders.

“These arguments for corporate supremacy and technological progress are so deeply connected

50 in the American mind,” says Luke Stark, a researcher who studies behavior and computing

at Microsoft Research Montreal. “It’s really tied to the whole American manifest destiny and

the broader history of American settler colonialism.” The attitude is that we must march on,

forward, westward, no matter what stands in our way. Going back is simply not an option.

Even those afraid of all-seeing corporations argue that instead of pressing pause, we, the

55 consumers, must simply move forward more quickly. “What I try to focus on is not to try to

stop the march of technological progress,” Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of

Sapiens, told Time magazine. “Instead, I try to run faster.”

This endless, punishing race in the name of “progress” is often what drives consumer

behavior, too. Despite the “American dream” – security, safety, prosperity – being more

60 and more out of reach for everyday Americans, the idea that it’s just around the corner drives

people to purchase these products.

If you have the newest app, people think their lives will be easier, you’ll have more free time,

more quality time. Commercials promise more backyard barbecues under sparklers and

birthday surprise parties facilitated by internet-connected light bulbs.

65 And when we buy the products, tech companies take that as a green light to continue on

their “inevitable” path. […]

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those

decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm

between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies

70 decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind.

We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the

“natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question

what “progress” actually means.

Annotations

6 Nestor – French tech company

19 to narc on – informal: to spy on someone

25 to do focus groups – to interview a select group of people on a product before it is launched

30 FDA – Food and Drug Administration

30 USDA – U.S. Department of Agriculture

45 Uber – American tech company

57 Sapiens – Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind: non-fiction book published in 2014

Rose Eveleth, “The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us”, in: Vox, 8 October 2019

3.2

Rose Eveleth’s article has prompted you to consider what progress actually means and what part technology plays in it. Write a letter to the editor in which you reflect on her point of view and also put forward your own thoughts. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) [14 Punkte]

Klausurteil B: Sprachmittlung isoliert

Your former American exchange student, who has grown weary of his job at a tech company in California, intends to spend time in Germany getting to know alternative ways of living, and he has asked you for information. While researching, you have found an article by Ines Maria Eckermann.

Write an email to your friend in which you present the Laakenhof project.

(18 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Rose Eveleth

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us

Imagine you’re taking an online business class – the kind where you watch video lectures

and then answer questions at the end. But this isn’t a normal class, and you’re not just watching

the lectures: They’re watching you back. Every time the facial recognition system decides

that you look bored, distracted, or tuned out, it makes a note. And after each lecture, it only

5 asks you about content from those moments.

This isn’t a hypothetical system; it’s a real one deployed by a company called Nestor. And

if you don’t like the sound of it, you’re not alone. Neither do the actual students.

When I asked the man behind the system, French inventor Marcel Saucet, how the students

in these classes feel about being watched, he admitted that they didn’t like it. They felt violated

10 and surveilled, he said, but he shrugged off any implication that it was his fault. “Everybody

is doing this,” he told me. “It’s really early and shocking, but we cannot go against natural

laws of evolution.”

As a reporter who covers technology and the future, I constantly hear variations of this line

as technologists attempt to apply the theory Charles Darwin made famous in biology to their

15 own work. I’m told that there is a progression of technology, a movement that is bigger than

any individual inventor or CEO. They say they are simply caught in a tide, swept along in a

current they cannot fight. They say it inevitably leads them to facial recognition (now even

being deployed on children), smart speakers that record your intimate conversations, and

doorbells that narc on your neighbors. They say we can’t blame these companies for the

20 erosion of privacy or democracy or trust in public institutions. […]

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation.

Evolution is driven by random mutation – mistakes, not plans. (And while some inventions

may indeed be the result of mishaps, the decision of a company to patent, produce, and market

those inventions is not.) Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment,

25 the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t

spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

In some situations, even if we can’t literally put a technological genie back in a bottle, we

can artificially intervene to make sure the genie plays by specific rules.

There are clear laws about what companies can and can’t do in the realm of biological weapons.

30 The FDA ensures drugs are tested for efficacy and safety before they can be sold. The USDA

ensures new food research is done with care. We don’t let anybody frack or drill for oil or

build nuclear power plants wherever they like. We don’t let just anybody make and sell cars

or airplanes or guns.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the

35 public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other

industry. They’re not.

In many ways, the American tech mogul blaming some invisible arc of innovation for his

choices is simply an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. The

men and women who colonized America largely saw progress as a march, a continual straight

40 path, forward at all times, never to be questioned or slowed. Benjamin Franklin (himself an

inventor) once wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting

sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be

carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter.”

So to suggest a slowing – or perhaps even (god forbid) a reverse – seems antithetical to the

45 fabric of America. When former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski says, “What already

happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they

made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow,” he is echoing the sentiments of our

nation’s founders.

“These arguments for corporate supremacy and technological progress are so deeply connected

50 in the American mind,” says Luke Stark, a researcher who studies behavior and computing

at Microsoft Research Montreal. “It’s really tied to the whole American manifest destiny and

the broader history of American settler colonialism.” The attitude is that we must march on,

forward, westward, no matter what stands in our way. Going back is simply not an option.

Even those afraid of all-seeing corporations argue that instead of pressing pause, we, the

55 consumers, must simply move forward more quickly. “What I try to focus on is not to try to

stop the march of technological progress,” Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of

Sapiens, told Time magazine. “Instead, I try to run faster.”

This endless, punishing race in the name of “progress” is often what drives consumer

behavior, too. Despite the “American dream” – security, safety, prosperity – being more

60 and more out of reach for everyday Americans, the idea that it’s just around the corner drives

people to purchase these products.

If you have the newest app, people think their lives will be easier, you’ll have more free time,

more quality time. Commercials promise more backyard barbecues under sparklers and

birthday surprise parties facilitated by internet-connected light bulbs.

65 And when we buy the products, tech companies take that as a green light to continue on

their “inevitable” path. […]

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those

decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm

between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies

70 decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind.

We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the

“natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question

what “progress” actually means.

Annotations

6 Nestor – French tech company

19 to narc on – informal: to spy on someone

25 to do focus groups – to interview a select group of people on a product before it is launched

30 FDA – Food and Drug Administration

30 USDA – U.S. Department of Agriculture

45 Uber – American tech company

57 Sapiens – Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind: non-fiction book published in 2014

Rose Eveleth, “The biggest lie tech people tell themselves – and the rest of us”, in: Vox, 8 October 2019