Education and Mass Production (Irenée SAWADOGO)

If the dreams of the educationists were realised, and the majority of human beings began to take an exclusive interest in the things of the mind, the whole industrial system would collapse.
Given modern machinery, there can be no industrial prosperity without mass production. Mass production is impossible without mass consumption. Consumption varies inversely with the intensity of mental life. A man who is exclusively interested in the things of the mind will be quite happy sitting quietly in a room. A man who has no interest in the things of the mind will be bored to death if he has to sit quietly in a room. Lacking thoughts with which to distract himself, he must acquire things to take their place ; incapable of mental travel, he must move about in the body. In a word, he is the ideal consumer, the mass consumer of objects and transport.
Now it is obviously in the interest of industrial producers to encourage the good consumer and to discourage the bad. Those who sit quietly in rooms with nothing but their thoughts and perhaps a book to amuse them are represented as miserable, ridiculous and even rather immoral. Happiness is a product of noise, company, motion and the possession of objects. The more noise you listen to, the more people you have round you ; the faster you move and the more objects you possess, the happier you will be the happier and also the more normal and virtuous.

Aldous HUXLEY Music At Night

I / COMPREHENSION

1) Give one condition for mass production according to the text.
2) What kind of person is the ideal consumer?
3) How can producers encourage people to consume their goods?
4) Can you think of other conditions for mass production?
5) What are the advantages and disadvantages of mass production?

II/ LANGUAGE PRACTICE

Put the words between brackets into the right form

1) The more you work, the......your boss will be. (happy)
2) If you open a deposit account, your money.......interests. (yield)
3) When you finish your studies, you.......your own business. (set up)
4) Adama......second hand cars from Togo for three years. (import)