Eindexamen Engels vwo 2019, tijdvak 2: vragen en antwoorden

Joint efforts

1 For some time, I had rather smugly assumed that the current vogue for young British women to favour jeans with artful tears around the kneecaps reflected a lamentable decline in honest-to-goodness skills such as darning, a subtle protest against the conformity imposed by male hegemony, or perhaps even a resourceful response to a shortage of materials.

2 But it may simply be a deliberate ploy to expose a tender and not especially attractive part of the anatomy as an inverted expression of solidarity with those members of the sisterhood affected by the ban on burqas and similar garments. If so, it merits wholehearted commendation.

by Glyn Haggett

New Statesman, 2016

Lovable lemons

T here's a lemon shortage. The cheerful canary- coloured fruits are still available in the market for ready money, but never has so much money chased so few lemons. The wrong kind of rains have fallen in Argentina and black spot is rife in South Africa. For Britain, this does not mean the loss of a staple, for the lemon's calling in life is as 3 . That has its importance. In Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey pretended that the ascetical Cardinal Manning was criticised for eating lobster salad in Lent. But lobster salad without lemon is lenten fare indeed. A Gin &Tonic too lacks zest without it, and smoked salmon cries out for a squeeze ‒ or it's like a boiled egg without salt, Pimm's without borage. Whoever invented the slang "lemon" for a disappointment sorely underestimated its mouthwatering attractions.

adapted from The Daily Telegraph, 2016

Twitter Twits Rosamund Urwin

1 There was no Twitter fury this time. No one launched into an offensive rant, calling for the culprits to lose their jobs. In fact, barely a whimper of protest met this week's revelation that University College London was discriminating against female staff on its Qatari campus; a married woman there receives a much lower housing allowance than her male peers. The muted reaction was in contrast to the outrage this summer when Sir Tim Hunt's foolish and sexist joke about female scientists spread online. After that, he says that same university asked him to resign his honorary professorship.

2 8-1 . Its sharpest pitchforks aren't aimed at the bigwigs ─ companies, institutions, our culture ─ they target the individual. It acts as though one person embodies a problem, creating a scapegoat on whose shoulders all sins are hung. An alien watching Sir Tim's hounding might assume he was the greatest misogynist alive but that our species believes the systematic sexism of unequal pay isn't worth worrying about. The raging throng is adept at spotting the speck in someone's eye but routinely overlooks the beam in society's sight.

3 Last week I made a similar argument on Newsnight, only about the outcry over Cecil the lion. His killing undoubtedly drew global attention to the horrors of hunting. But the Twitmob wasn't content being angry at Cecil's fate: they wanted blood. When the villain, Walter Palmer, was found he became that week's Public Enemy No 1. No matter that there are other trophy-hunters out there. PETA ─ People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ─ tweeted that they wanted Palmer hanged. 8-2 .The virtual wrath boiled over into reality, his holiday home graffitied.

4 I doubt there's much overlap between the mob who went for Palmer and the campaigners who are calling on the Government to make the import of hunting trophies illegal. Once the mob is done sticking someone in the virtual stocks there will be a new victim to castigate. The mentality seems to be that you prove your moral superiority by being the nastiest about ─ or at ─ that week's hate figure.

5 Palmer was, at least, attacked for an abominable act. 8-3

A comment ─ which once would have been quickly forgotten ─ is instead amplified, often spun or twisted.

6 Public shaming doesn't make sexism, racism or animal cruelty disappear. It just stigmatises an individual. No one goes back over their Twitter posts and checks if the issue they raised has now been adequately addressed with legislation. There's the whiff of Old Testament justice ─ an eye for an eye ─ about the Twitter mob. Shouldn't we instead learn to turn our virtual cheeks?

adapted from Evening Standard, 2015

Human organs in pigs by John Harris

T

1 ruly, you may think, we live in a Brave New World. The news that a combination of stem cell and gene editing technology may soon enable scientists to grow human organs in pigs is cause for serious reflection. Your reaction may boil down to "Yuck!" But there's more to digest. Those organs may actually be superior to human donor organs from either cadavers or from live donation. Double yuck!!

2 It's hardly surprising that the thought of crossing so called "species barriers" should prompt such a virulent combination of distaste and panic. Every fibre of our natural instinct proclaims it taboo. But the reality is that humans and animals have been exchanging bits of their biological matter, intentionally or by chance, naturally or artificially, since time immemorial.

3 We do it in drugs and in vaccines. Diet is a good example. Except for vegetarians, for whom objections are usually rooted in moral issues concerning animal welfare rather than those of species mixing, there does not seem to be any preoccupation with the entry of animal genes, cells, tissue, muscle and other bodily products into our daily metabolism. And we know that diet profoundly influences our bodies at both genetic and epigenetic levels. So really, if one were consistent in maximising the purity of human matter, the diet of choice would be 12 .

4 Genetic hybrids have almost certainly always existed naturally. A report by the United Kingdom Academy of Medical Sciences back in 2007 (of which I was a co-author), noted "there are thousands of examples of transgenic animals, mostly mice, containing human DNA".

5 But those who think "yuck" are by no means irrational. For there is a very problematic issue, noted recently by the US National Institutes of Health. They fear that the presence of human cells in the modified animals might "humanise" the animals' brains to the extent that they possessed human sensibilities, cognition, and rationality. Such capabilities would not just merit moral and legal protections comparable with creatures like ourselves ─ they would demand them. 13 , such animals, becoming more human, would have rights analogous to human rights.

6 This, of course, would change our entire conception of our place in the animal kingdom ─ our entire relationship with the natural world ─ in ways that the prospect of so-called "full" Artificial Intelligence may change our

attitudes to machines (and theirs to us?). The best combination of evidence and informed scientific opinion so far does not support the idea that these attempts to grow human organs in pigs will result in any "humanisation" of pig brains. But, and here is the crucial point, unless this work continues we will never know the answer to this question for sure.

7 However controversial it may seem, we must pursue the current research to find out how and to what extent this fear of animals with humanised brains really is one we should take seriously. This we can do only by proceeding and carefully monitoring the effects on the brains of the developing animals. But we must also remember that there is a huge issue of human life and welfare engaged here.

8 Harvard's Professor George Church, who has led research on chimeras ─ as human/animal hybrids are known ─ suggests that "gene editing could ensure the organs are very clean, available on demand and healthy, so they could be superior to human donor organs". If he is right the prize is enormous in terms of human health and happiness. In the US, an average of 22 people die each day waiting for transplants that can't take place because of the shortage of donated organs. In the UK the figure is three people a day (a thousand people per year) who die waiting for a transplant. Globally, preventable deaths for want of donor organs and tissue run into hundreds of thousands. Therapy delayed is therapy denied and that denial costs human lives day after day.

9 Of course, pursuing this research will cost animal lives and this should not be taken lightly. But no society that permits the eating of meat can consistently object to animal research directed to human health and safety.

10 There is no good reason, either in the sense of "adequate" or "moral", for not pursuing the science to the point at which we are able to judge just how safe or unsafe using such techniques in animals, or their fruits in humans, will be.

11 In fact, in the end the ethical issues may not be the ones many now fear, with the creation of talking and thinking pigs ─ but one where limitless safe organs and tissue transplants allow humans to live healthy, fit and productive lives well into what is currently considered "old age". The question then will not be "when is a pig too human" but "when is a human too porcine"?

12 My bet is that the resulting creatures, if they are living long, fit and healthy lives, untrammelled by failing bodies, will not be worrying about the semantics.

Professor John Harris is a bioethicist at the University of Manchester and author of 'How to be Good'

adapted from The Daily Telegraph, 2016

Never Trust a Robot Laura Vanderkam

Humans Are Underrated by Geoff Colvin

G

1 enerations of parents have faced this dilemma: You want to give your kids career advice, but what, exactly, will be the in-demand and well-paid jobs of the future? In "The Graduate" (1967), the answer was "plastics"; more recently people have suggested professions that seemingly could not be automated, such as nursing or law. Yet if technology improves exponentially, "it's dangerous to claim there are any skills that computers cannot eventually acquire," according to Fortune editor-at-large Geoff Colvin. Computers can drive our cars, search legal documents, and probably write serviceable book reviews.

2 So are we doomed to uselessness? In Humans Are Underrated Mr. Colvin starts with a litany of our weaknesses, including his own defeat by IBM's Watson computer in a "Jeopardy!"-like showdown, before he inserts this twist: "In finding our value as technology advances, looking at ourselves is much more useful than the conventional approach, which is to ask what kind of work a computer will never be able to do."

3 Humans, it seems, are 19 . We want to work with people and have conversations with people. Even if computers can do things better, there are some actions that we "will simply insist be performed by other humans." And so "the most valuable people are increasingly relationship workers."

4 The rest of the book offers examples of how this relationship- orientation will preserve (or create) future jobs. Algorithms can predict criminal recidivism better than judges, but "it's a matter of the social necessity that individuals be accountable for important decisions" like sentencing.

5 20 , even high-tech-oriented companies such as Google, Mr. Colvin notes, now hire for empathy and people skills. The author details the U.S. Army's research on the "human domain" ─ how to get troops to trust each other and their commanders, and how to understand and defuse situations in hostile territory. "To look into someone's eyes ─ that turns out to be, metaphorically and quite often literally, the key to high-value work in the coming economy," writes Mr. Colvin.

6 As big idea business books go, this one is pretty good. Mr. Colvin weaves original reporting and humor into an intelligent narrative. Of course, as with all such books, it's easy to overstate the big idea.

7 Think about IBM's Watson again. Mr. Colvin asks us to assume that a "perfect mechanical imitation of a human being does not exist in our or our grandchildren's lifetimes." But that's a dangerous assumption, especially as we are still learning what happens on a mechanical level when humans interact. One major finding Mr. Colvin covers: We read nonverbal emotional cues that show up in pupil dilation. What if some inventor can produce a robot whose pupils dilate appropriately as it gazes into a human's eyes? Then, as humans do, we will anthropomorphize like crazy. We will believe the machine can read our souls.

8 Then there's this common business-book foible: The author's big idea leads, conveniently enough, to currently trendy management advice. Teams are great; collaboration is the future (though Mr. Colvin seems to have written his book without six co-authors). We need more humanities majors for their empathy and storytelling abilities (though employers peskily keep preferring math and science majors).

9 Mr. Colvin deems Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end work- from-home arrangements to be an innovative choice, even though research finds that working from home can be more productive. That companies need both innovation and productivity gets ignored when overeager leaders assume workers can invent brilliant new products while standing next to one another at the ladies' room sinks. And yes, I mean the ladies' room, as Mr. Colvin devotes a whole chapter to how women score higher than men on measures of social sensitivity. The best- performing teams, he assures us, will be those with the most women. How could companies attract and keep more women? Well, they could let people telecommute but ... hmmm. Maybe Watson can sort that out.

10 Nonetheless, Mr. Colvin is a shrewd student of human nature. He freely admits that for us underrated humans, "rationality is not our strong suit." In other words, for those smart enough to understand that our brains don't change as quickly as technology, there will be many economically valuable niches still to be exploited. In the future a lawyer may not make money by scanning documents, but by "understanding an irrational client," and "forming the emotional bonds needed to persuade that client to act rationally." There may even be jobs for corporate poets. Mr. Colvin thinks this is "wonderful news" because what we're being asked to do in this brave new world is "become more essentially human" ‒ telling tales around the campfire, or the boardroom table, as the case may be, while the machines are still out in the cold.

adapted from Wall Street Journal, 2015

The following text is part of the first chapter of the novel The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton.

1 The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met. From the variety of their comportment and dress ─ frock coats, tailcoats, Norfolk jackets with buttons of horn, yellow moleskin, cambric, and twill ─ they might have been twelve strangers on a railway car, each bound for a separate quarter of a city that possessed fog and tides enough to divide them; indeed, the studied isolation of each man as he pored over his paper, or leaned forward to tap his ashes into the grate, or placed the splay of his hand upon the baize to take his shot at billiards, conspired to form the very type of bodily silence that occurs, late in the evening, on a public railway ─ deadened here not by the slur and clunk of the coaches, but by the fat clatter of the rain.

2 Such was the perception of Mr. Walter Moody, from where he stood in the doorway with his hand upon the frame. He was innocent of having disturbed any kind of private conference, for the speakers had ceased when they heard his tread in the passage; by the time he opened the door, each of the twelve men had resumed his occupation (rather haphazardly, on the part of the billiard players, for they had forgotten their places) with such a careful show of absorption that no one even glanced up when he stepped into the room.

3 The strictness and uniformity with which the men ignored him might have aroused Mr. Moody's interest, had he been himself in body and temperament. As it was, he was queasy and disturbed. He had known the voyage to West Canterbury would be fatal at worst, an endless rolling trough of white water and spume that ended on the shattered graveyard of the Hokitika bar, but he had not been prepared for the particular horrors of the journey, of which he was still incapable of speaking, even to himself. Moody was by nature impatient of any deficiencies in his own person ─ fear and illness both turned him inward ─ and it was for this reason that he very uncharacteristically failed to assess the tenor of the room he had just entered.

4 Moody's natural expression was one of readiness and attention. His grey eyes were large and unblinking, and his supple, boyish mouth was usually poised in an expression of polite concern. His hair inclined to a tight curl; it had fallen in ringlets to his shoulders in his youth, but now he wore it close against his skull, parted on the side and combed flat with a sweet-smelling pomade that darkened its golden hue to an oily brown. His brow and cheeks were square, his nose straight, and his complexion smooth. He was not quite eight-and-twenty, still swift and exact in his motions, and possessed of the kind of roguish, unsullied vigour that conveys neither gullibility nor guile. He presented himself in the manner of

a discreet and quick-minded butler, and as a consequence was often drawn into the confidence of the least voluble of men, or invited to broker relations between people he had only lately met. He had, in short, an appearance that betrayed very little about his own character, and an appearance that others were immediately inclined to trust.

Bill the Conqueror by Matthew Engel

E

1 very time I hear the name Bill Bryson, I remember the story of the Athenian who announced his hatred of the great statesman Aristides the Just. Asked whether Aristides had wronged him in any way, he said not. "I don't even know him. I'm just sick of him always being called 'the Just'."

2 Literary life being suffused with mutual jealousies, imagine how much worse it is for those of us who have ever attempted to write vaguely humorous books about Britain in Bryson's wake. His new travel book was only published on Thursday and it has probably already overtaken everyone else's sales on the subject put together. I have personal evidence that Bill is not merely the Just but also the Generous and Thoughtful. That doesn't make it any easier to cope.

3 On this occasion, however, there are already some signs of a backlash. The Daily Mail, an often grumpy newspaper, commissioned a grumpy writer to write a grumpy column complaining that Bryson's new book on Britain was grumpy. Which is weird as well as being rather Brysonesque: good-natured grumpiness has always been central to the Bryson shtick.

4 Travel-writing was once dominated by the adventurous and/or erudite. Bryson did more than anyone to reinvigorate and democratise the genre. He would potter around, get diverted by quirky stories, and make sharp observations and very funny jokes. It was his original British book, Notes from a Small Island, that propelled him to superstardom in the late 1990s.

5 In his non-travel books he has been a brilliant explainer of science, history and language, an extension of his travel-writing persona as the knowing outsider. As an uprooted inhabitant of Iowa living in England, he was matchless at pointing up the little differences between here and there, explaining each side of the pond to the other. He was impish and often rude, but always affectionate.

6 The years have passed. He is older, of course, and has added to his repertoire regular jokes about his own dottiness: getting bashed on the head by a car park barrier makes a dramatic starting point. He is also now officially British: his description of the citizenship test forms is one of the funniest passages in Little Dribbling.

7 And time has brought him much honour: president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England; chancellor of Durham University. Brilliant at both, apparently. Now he is British, the deserved knighthood cannot be far away. This may not, however, be compatible with life as a subversive humorist. (I commend to him Alan Bennett turning down life as Sir Alan: "It would be like wearing a suit every

day.") Subversion has already become more difficult. He can no longer react with delighted astonishment to the little oddities of British life: he knows them too well.

8 His journey is slightly confusing. He is not heading to Little Dribbling, which sounds like it might exist ─ probably in Norfolk, close to Great Snoring ─ but doesn't, even in his text. Instead he sets out along the Bryson Line, his reckoning of the longest straight line possible on the map of Britain, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north.

9 But then he mostly ignores his own line, and indeed he races through the top third of the map, known as Scotland, in just 13 pages. (Well, you know the Scots, they won't mind; very easy-going at the moment, no sense of self-importance or anything.) A pity: I would have liked much more of Bryson's take on modern Scottishness.

10 In truth, though, the joy of his book comes less from his excursions than his discursions: his potted stories and his reminiscences. It is at its best as the history of a love affair, the very special relationship between Bryson and Britain. We remain lucky to have him.

Matthew Engel is author of 'Engel's England: Thirty-nine Counties, One Capital and One Man' (Profile Books)

adapted from Financial Times, 2015

I'm happy to be a Tigress

• as long as there's some fun too

by Anne McElvoy

1 TRULY, Dave1), I try to be the Tiger Mum you want us all to be. I have wagged fingers about messy handwriting, imposed Louisa May Alcott and the book chap known to our youngest as "Charles Chickens". I may be the last parent in north London to hold out against the use of "Me and John" and my 10pm cry to zombie-eyed teens is "Get OFF those devices!"

2 The Prime Minister thinks parenting classes might help us have higher expectations of our young. If there is one for how to instil urgency into a chap preparing for mock GCSEs by sleeping or a younger sister who gamely tries music exams without remembering to practise scales until the day before, then they are most welcome in my life.

3 Like most ideas teetering on the brink of parody, this one has a nub of good sense. The Prime Minister is really addressing his comments to teachers who need to aim upwards for children from poorer homes and parents who, having been failed by the education system themselves, find it hard to instil discipline and aspiration into their own children, perpetuating low social mobility.

4 But criticizing parents is fraught with perils. A young teacher I know tells the delightful story of trying to raise interest among parents in a deprived area in their children's homework. One single mum proudly told of how rigorous she was about homework, sleep times and reading. "That's wonderful," cried my friend, supportively. "I wish you were the mother of all my children."

5 Even when the words come out the right way, the flaw in the PM's approach is that it tries to be all things to all families. Because David Cameron is conscious of his privileged background, he falls into the "me too" trap of suggesting that everyone needs the same thing. But today's middle-class parents are already vastly ambitious for their children. When you have "got" 11-plus exams, GCSEs or university entrance in the family, a pall falls on everyone else.

6 Wanting a touch of Tiger syndrome in our approach to education is no bad thing in a world that will get more focused on competition and innovation. 36 I see Asia's best education thinkers worrying as much over how to encourage and bring enthusiasm and surprise into their rigid systems.

7 A London headmaster whose name I shall protect from the health and safety police started the recent exam-heavy term by abseiling down into the assembly hall dressed as Superman. How mad, wonderful and memorable. Our schooldays need a twist of that, to offset the Tiger toil.

adapted from Evening Standard, 2016

noot 1 Dave = David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016

Cruel trade in rhino horns

1 Sir, The article "Rhino poaching: inside the brutal trade" refers to solutions to rhino poaching (FT Weekend, October 3). It was suggested that demand could be removed but only about 1 million Chinese use rhino horn at present and there are some 1 billion traditional Chinese medicine users who may well want to buy horn at lower prices. Removing enough demand seems unlikely.

2 South Africa spends about $80m a year on rhino anti-poaching ($4,000 per rhino). If we spend more, the chances are that the horn price to poachers will rise so as to compensate the poachers for the increased risk.

3 "Flooding the market" makes no sense. But if you can restrict supplies to sustainable levels and also limit demand by controlling the price, you have most of the answer to the problem. A monopoly of supply selling to a cartel of retailers in the Far East would do that.

4 If East Asian governments are invested in the legal trade, they will close down (most of) the illegal trade. That is the rest of the answer.

5 South Africa can easily and sustainably satisfy current levels of demand (from stocks, natural deaths and farmed horn) without the need to kill one rhino.

6 At the wholesale price of $30,000 per kg, African conservation would benefit from a legal trade by $180m a year ─ money that is needed but is currently going to criminals.

Michael Eustace Director of Bangweulu Wetlands, Zambia, and Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi Johannesburg, South Africa

adapted from an article from Financial Times, 2015

Taxonomists? Who needs them? Tim Entwistle

1 Taxonomists ─ people who earn their living from naming and classifying life ─ might seem dispensable. With 9m of the 11m or so living organisms on Earth yet to be catalogued they still have some work to do, but in an economically rationalised world this may not be seen as a huge priority.

2 39 , having someone who can distinguish between the different mites that infect honeybees has already saved $66m through better targeted biosecurity and management. Similarly, being able to detect early and accurately potential weed and pest species is worth many millions of dollars to farmers and park managers.

3 There is a clear and urgent need for taxonomy, and the taxonomists who do it. Which is why we should all be interested in a debate raging in the scientific arena around whether worldwide our taxonomic effort is increasing or decreasing. In Australia, we know we are losing taxonomists at the rate of two to three per year, and the workforce is definitely ageing. Worldwide, we are inarguably well shy of the effort needed to catalogue Earth.

4 It's been estimated that to discover and describe all species would take 300,000 taxonomists some 1,200 years, at a cost of more than $350bn. And this is a conservative estimate.

5 If we are to direct our limited resources into conserving the most important parts of our biological diversity, how do we know which species and systems are the most important? Taxonomy.

6 As a community, we need to support taxonomy and its practitioners ─ if not to make our life better, then because our life depends on it.

Guardian Weekly, 2015

Selective preschools

Can someone please tell Anika Jackson ─ and other parents who complain about competitive private preschool admissions ─ that the problem is the self-absorbed, yuppie parents, not the schools. The types of schools "Rejected by Ivy League kindergarten" (Oct. 9) discusses are simply feeding a demand from those who will happily shell out $20,000 or more so their little geniuses can get every perceived advantage. When Jackson writes that "preschool shouldn't determine a child's success in life," the irony is inescapable. Preschool, of course, does not determine success in life, yet by participating in such a myth, Jackson ─ and other parents ─ actually fuel the problem they are complaining about.

William Choslovsky, Chicago

chicagotribune.com, 2014

►►► ν