单选题The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politicians alike. Progress in both areas is undoubtedly necessary for the social, political and intellectual development of these and all other societies, however, the conventional view that education should be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic development in poor countries is wrong. We are fortunate that it is, because building new educational systems there and putting enough people through them to improve economic performance would require two or three generations. The findings of a research institution have consistently shown that workers in all countries can be trained on the job to achieve radical higher productivity and, as a result, radically higher standards of living. Ironically, the first evidence for this idea appeared in the United States. Not long ago, with the country entering a recession and Japan at its pre-bubble peak. The U.S. workforce was derided as poorly educated and one of primary cause of the poor U.S. economic performance. Japan was, and remains, the global leader in automotive-assembly productivity. Yet the research revealed that the U.S. factories of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota achieved about 95 percent of the productivity of their Japanese counterparts—a result of the training that U.S. workers received on the job. More recently, while examining housing construction, the researchers discovered that illiterate, non-English-speaking Mexican workers in Houston, Texas, consistently met best-practice labor productivity standards despite the complexity of the building industry's work. What is the real relationship between education and economic development? We have to suspect that continuing economic growth promotes the development of education even when governments don't force it. After all, that's how education got started. When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers 10,000 years ago, they didn't have time to wonder much about anything besides finding food. Only when humanity began to get its food in a more productive way was there time for other things. As education improved, humanity's productivity potential increased as well. When the competitive environment pushed our ancestors to achieve that potential, they could in turn afford more education. This increasingly high level of education is probably a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the complex political systems required by advanced economic performance. Thus poor countries might not be able to escape their poverty traps without political changes that may be possible only with broader formal education. A lack of formal education, however, doesn't constrain the ability of the developing world's workforce to substantially improve productivity to the forested future. On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn't developing more quickly there than it is.

单选题There are probably very few cases in which different races have lived in complete in a single country for long periods.

单选题When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $ 50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'm a good economic indicator," she says. "I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars. " So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too," she says. Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. But don't sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's longterm prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tight-ending. Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there's a new gold rush happening in the $ 4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses," says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three," says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job. Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan & Co. may still be worth toasting.

单选题The status of women in colonial North America has been well studied and described and can be briefly summarized. Throughout the colonial period there was a marked shortage of women, which varied with the regions and was always greatest in the frontier areas. This favorable ratio enhanced women"s status and position and allowed them to pursue different careers. The Puritans, the religious sect that dominated the early British colonies in North America, regarded idleness as a sin, and believed that life in an underdeveloped country made it absolutely necessary that each member of the community perform an economic function. Thus work for women, married or single, was not only approved, it was regarded as a civic duty. Puritan town councils expected widows and unattached women to be self-supporting and for a long time provided needy spinsters with parcels of land. There was no social sanction against married women working; on the contrary, wives were expected to help their husbands in their trade and won social approval for doing extra work in or out of the home. Needy children, girls as well as boys, were indentured or apprenticed and were expected to work for their keep. The vast majority of women worked within their homes, where their labor produced most articles needed for the family. The entire colonial production of cloth and clothing and partially that of shoes was in the hands of women. In addition to these occupations, women were found in many different kinds of employment. They were butchers, silversmiths, gunsmiths, upholsterers. They ran mills, plantations, tanyards, shipyards, and every kind of shop, tavern, and boardinghouse. They were gatekeepers, jail keepers, sextons, journalists, printers, apothecaries, midwives, nurses, and teachers.

单选题She turned down the well-paid job, ______ not able to pick up her four-year-old son from kindergarten.

单选题It rained all the time and so we did not Umake good time/U driving to New York.

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} The World Health Organization (WHO) is in trouble. Its leader is accused of failing to lead, and as the organization drifts, other bodies, particularly the World Bank, are setting the global health agenda. Western governments want the WHO to set realistic targets and focus its energy on tackling major killers such as childhood diseases and tobacco. The WHO clearly needs to set priorities. Its total budget of $0.9 billion--around 10 percent for each man, woman and child in the world--cannot solve all the world's health problems. Yet its senior management does not seem willing to narrow the organization's focus. Instead it is trying to be all things to all people and losing dependability. Unfortunately, the argument for priority setting is being seriously undermined by the US, one of the chief advocators of change. The US is trying to reduce its contribution to the WHO's regular budget from a quarter of the total to a fifth. That would leave the organization $ 20 million short this year, on top of the substantial debts the US already owes. The WHO may need priorities, but it certainly doesn't need budget cuts. Thanks to the US' failure to pay its bills, many of the poorer nations see priority-setting as merely a cover for cost-cutting that would hit their health programs hard. The WHO would not serve poorer countries any worse if it sharpened its focus. It would probably serve them better, in any case, a sharper focus should not mean that less money is needed. When the US demands cuts, it simply fuels disputes between the richer and poorer countries and gives the WHO's senior management more time to postpone. The American action is not confined to the WHO. It wants eventually to cut its contributions to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the international Labor Organization too. But it knows' that dissatisfaction with the WHO and its leadership has made the organization vulnerable. If it wins against the WHO, the rest will lose out in their turn. America's share of the budget is already a concession. Each nation's contribution to the UN agencies is calculated according to its wealth, and by that measure the US should be paying about 28 percent of the WHO budget. But over the past three decades the US has gradually reduced what it pays the organization. The US should not ask for further cuts. Until it pays its full share of money, it will hold hack the organization's much needed reforms. The world needs the WHO. The World Bank may have a bigger budget, but it sees improved health as just one part of economic and social development. The WHO remains the only organization committed to health for all, regardless of wealth.

单选题Many readers are convinced that the compelling mysteries of each plot conceal elaboratestructures of allusion and fierce, though shadowy, moral ambitions that seem to indicate metaphysical intentions, ______.

单选题The coming of automation is ______ to have important social consequences.(2002年春季上海交通大学考博试题)

单选题In particular, the rectors' call for universities to abandon Habilitation, a post-doctoral qualification traditionally required to join professorial ranks, was greeted with a ______silence.

单选题The true reason why Jane went fishing is as______ as glass—she didn't want to clean the house.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} There are 15 questions in this part of the test. Read the passage through. Then, go back and choose one suitable word or phrase marked A, B, C or D for each blank in the passage. Mark the corresponding letter of the word or phrase you have chosen with a single bar across the square brackets on your Machine-scoring Answer Sheet. The process by means of which human beings arbitrarily make certain things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Everywhere we turn, we see the symbolic process at work. There are{{U}} (21) {{/U}}things men do or want to do, possess or want to possess, that have not a symbolic value. Almost all fashionable clothes are{{U}} (22) {{/U}}symbolic, so is food. We{{U}} (23) {{/U}}our furniture to serve{{U}} (24) {{/U}}visible symbols of our taste, wealth, and social position. We often choose our houses{{U}} (25) {{/U}}the basis of a feeling that it "looks well" to have a "good address". We trade perfectly good cars in for{{U}} (26) {{/U}}models not always to get better transportation, but to give{{U}} (27) {{/U}}to the community that we can{{U}} (28) {{/U}}it. Such complicated and apparently{{U}} (29) {{/U}}behavior leads philosophers to ask over and over again, "why can't human beings{{U}} (30) {{/U}}simply and naturally?" Often the complexity of human life makes us look enviously at the relative{{U}} (31) {{/U}}of such lives as dogs and cats. Simply, the fact that symbolic process makes complexity possible is no{{U}} (32) {{/U}}for wanting to{{U}} (33) {{/U}}to a cat-and-dog existence. A better solution is to understand the symbolic process{{U}} (34) {{/U}}instead of being its slaves we become, to some degree at least, its{{U}} (35) {{/U}}.

单选题The media's response to ALA's "State of the Air 2002" can best be described as ______.

单选题Let"s not ______ over such a trifle!

单选题My boss has always attended to the ______ of important business himself.

单选题The phrase "back off" in boldface in this contest probably means ______.

单选题Simone de Beauvoir's work greatly influenced Betty Friedan's--indeed, made it possible. Why, then, was it Friedan who became the prophet of women's emancipation in the United States? Political conditions, as well as a certain anti-intellectual bias, prepared Americans and the American media to better receive Friedan's deradicalized and highly pragmatic The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, than Beauvoir's theoretical reading of women's situation in The Second Sex. In I953 when The Second Sex first appeared in translation in the United States, the country had entered the silent, fearful fortress of the anticommunist McCarthy years (1950--1954), and Beauvoir was suspected of Marxist sympathies. Even The Nation, a generally liberal magazine, warned its readers against "certain political leanings" of the author. Open acknowledgement of the existence of women's oppression was too radical for the United States in the fifties, and Beauvoir's conclusion, that change in women's economic condition, though insufficient by itself, "remains time basic factor" in improving women's situation, was particularly unacceptable.

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单选题Anyone who has spent time with children is aware of the difference in the way boys and girls respond to ______ situation. A. similar B. alike C. same D. likely