directions: there are four reading passages in this part. each passage is followed by some questions. for each question there are four suggested answers marked a, b, c and d. you should choose the one best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the answer sheet with a pencil.
children are a relatively modern invention. until a few hundred years ago they
look like adult, wearing grown-up clothes and grown-up expressions, performing grown-up tasks. children did not exist because the family as we know it had not evolved.
children today not only exist; they have taken over, in no place more than in america, and at on time more than now. it is always kids' country here. our civilization is child-centered, child-obsessed. a kid's body is our physical ideal. in kids' country we do not permit middle-aged. thirty is promoted over 50, but 30 knows that soon his time to be overtaken will come.
we are the first society in which parents expect to learn from their children. such a topsy-turvy situation has come to abort at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, ours is an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids. in the old country, that is, europe, hope was in the father, and how much wealth he could accumulate and pass along to his children. in the growth pattern of america and its ever-expanding frontier, the young man was ever advised to go west; the father was ever inheriting from his son. kid's country may be the inevitable result.
kid's country is not all bad. america is the greatest country in the world to grow up in because it is kid's country. we not only wear kids' clothes and eat kids' food; we dream kids' dreams and make them come true. it was, after all, a boys' game to go to the moon.
if in the old days children did not exist, it seems equally true today that adults, as a class, have begun to disappear, condemning all of us to remain boys and girls forever, jogging and doing push-ups against eternity.
21. the author uses the example of the renaissance painting to show that.
a. adults showed less concern for children than we do now
b. adults were smaller and thinner at that time, but they still had lots of work to do
c. children looked and acted like adults at that time
d. children were not permitted to appear in family paintings at that time
children are a relatively modern invention. until a few hundred years ago they
look like adult, wearing grown-up clothes and grown-up expressions, performing grown-up tasks. children did not exist because the family as we know it had not evolved.
children today not only exist; they have taken over, in no place more than in america, and at on time more than now. it is always kids' country here. our civilization is child-centered, child-obsessed. a kid's body is our physical ideal. in kids' country we do not permit middle-aged. thirty is promoted over 50, but 30 knows that soon his time to be overtaken will come.
we are the first society in which parents expect to learn from their children. such a topsy-turvy situation has come to abort at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, ours is an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids. in the old country, that is, europe, hope was in the father, and how much wealth he could accumulate and pass along to his children. in the growth pattern of america and its ever-expanding frontier, the young man was ever advised to go west; the father was ever inheriting from his son. kid's country may be the inevitable result.
kid's country is not all bad. america is the greatest country in the world to grow up in because it is kid's country. we not only wear kids' clothes and eat kids' food; we dream kids' dreams and make them come true. it was, after all, a boys' game to go to the moon.
if in the old days children did not exist, it seems equally true today that adults, as a class, have begun to disappear, condemning all of us to remain boys and girls forever, jogging and doing push-ups against eternity.
21. the author uses the example of the renaissance painting to show that.
a. adults showed less concern for children than we do now
b. adults were smaller and thinner at that time, but they still had lots of work to do
c. children looked and acted like adults at that time
d. children were not permitted to appear in family paintings at that time