填空题 Text 1
Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely.
But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regularities still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded — a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may not have to change, the time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the Utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.

填空题 Research carried out in recent opinion polls shows that ______.
A. available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population
B. new jobs should be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures
C. available employment must be more widely distributed among the unemployed
D. the present high unemployment figures are a fact of life

填空题 The enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries meant that people were ______.
A. no longer legally entitled to own land
B. forced to look elsewhere for means of supporting themselves
C. not adequately compensated for the loss of their land
D. badly paid for the work they managed to find

填空题 The effects of almost universal employment were overwhelming in that ______.
A. the household and village community disappeared
B. men now traveled enormous distances to their places of work
C. young and old people became superfluous components of society
D. the work status of those not in paid employment suffered

填空题 The article concludes that ______.
A. the creation of jobs for all is an impossibility
B. our efforts and resources in terms of tackling unemployment are insufficient
C. people should start to support themselves by learning a practical skill
D. we should help those whose jobs are only part time

填空题 The purpose of this article is to suggest that we should ______.
A. be prepped to admit that being employed is not the only kind of work
B. create more factories in order to increase our productivity
C. set up smaller private enterprises so that we in turn can employ others
D. be prepared to fill in time at home by taking up bobbies and leisure activities