Baccalauréat · Série C · Anglais — 2022

Text — The machine that was never switched on

The laboratory of the secondary school in Réo received a set of scientific equipment three years ago. It came from a foreign donor, in wooden crates, with instructions printed in a language nobody in the school could read.

The crates are still in the store room. Two of them have never been opened. The physics teacher explains, without bitterness, that he was never trained to use the equipment and that he is afraid of damaging something he could not replace.

Meanwhile, the same teacher runs excellent practical lessons with material he built himself: a pendulum made from a stone and a string, an electric circuit assembled from torch batteries, a lens taken from an old camera. His students perform better than those of neighbouring schools.

This story is not an argument against modern equipment. It is an argument against equipment sent without training. A microscope that nobody can use teaches nothing at all; a piece of string, in the right hands, teaches a great deal.