Passage 3
Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.
The public schools of the United States—elementary, secondary, and higher—have a history, and it is the social history of the United States: the decades before the Civil War, in which the elementary or “common schools” were reformed; the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, in which the secondary schools “welcomed” the “children of the plain people”; and the post-World War II decades, which found the public colleges and universities flooded non-traditional students—those traditionally excluded from higher education by sex, race, and class.
In each of these periods, the quantitative expansion of the student population was matched by a qualitative transformation of the enlarged institutions. The common schools of the mid-1800s were charged with reforming the moral character of the children of failed artisans (工匠) and farmers; the expanded high schools at the turn of the century with preparing their poor, working-class, and immigrant teenagers for future lives in city and factory; the “open-access” public institutions in the postwar period with moving their students off the unemployment lines and into lower-level white-collar positions.
The common schools, the high schools, the colleges and universities—all in their own times—were expanded and transformed so that they might better maintain social order and increase material productivity. But no matter how enlarged or reformed, they could not do the jobs expected of them: they could not solve the economic, social, and human problems brought about by uncontrolled urbanization and industrialization within the context of the private property system. The schooling reforms succeeded only in shifting the discussion and action from the social and productive system to the people who were now held responsible for not fitting into it.
11. American education in the post-World War II decades focused mostly on ______.
A. early childhood education B. elementary school education
C. secondary school education D. college education
12. The turn-of-the-century American education dealt partly with the problem of ______.
A. failed farmers B. unsuccessful artisans
C. immigrant teenagers D. lower-level white-collar workers
13. It is implied in the passage that women began to be educated in large numbers ______.
A. after the Civil War B. at the turn of the 20th century
C. before World War II D. after World War II
14. One of the purposes for public school reformation is ______.
A. to increase material productivity
B. to impose the quality of education
C. to urbanize rural areas in the United States
D. to promote industrialization in the United States
15. The author believes that public schools ______.
A. changed American political system
B. could not solve American problems
C. led to social problems in the United States
D. could not improve qualitatively in the United States
Passage 4
Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.
Historical periods are dominated by distinct sets of ideas which form the general spirit of a period in history. Greek philosophy, Christianity, Renaissance thought, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment are examples of sets of ideas that dominated their historical periods. The changes from one period to the next are usually rather gradual.; other changes—more abrupt—are often referred to as revolutions. The most far-reaching of all these intellectual changes was the Darwinian revolution. The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed before 1859. It is almost impossible for a modern person to project back to the early half of the nineteenth century and reconstruct the thinking of this pre-Darwinian period, for the impact of Darwinism on our views has been so great.
The intellectual revolution brought about by Darwin went far beyond the realm of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age. For example, Darwin rejected the belief in the individual creation of each species, establishing in its place the concept that all of life descended from a common ancestor. By extension, he introduced the idea that humans were not the special products of creation but evolved according to principles that operate everywhere else in the living world. Darwin upset current notions of a perfectly designed natural and gentle world and substituted in their place the concept of a struggle for survival. Victorian notions of progress and perfectibility were seriously weakened by Darwin's demonstration that evolution brings about change and adaptation, but it does not necessarily lead to progress, and it never leads to perfection.
Darwin would be remembered as an outstanding scientist even if he had never written a word about evolution. Indeed, some people believe that Darwin’s most original contribution to biology was not the theory of evolution but his series of books on experimental botany published near the end of his life. This achievement is little known among non-biologists, and the same is true for his equally outstanding work on the adaptation of flowers and on animal psychology, as well as his imaginative work on earthworms. Darwin also attacked important problems with extraordinary originality, thereby becoming the founder of several now well-recognized separate disciplines. Darwin was the first person to work out a sound theory of classification, which is still used by most experts today.
16. The author considers the change caused by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species ______.
A. gradual B. abrupt
C. religious D. philosophical
17. The influence of Darwinism has been so strong that it is difficult to ______.
A. know how people looked at the world before 1859
B. imagine people’s worldview after 1859
C. disregard the implications of his theory
D. know what Victorian society was like
18. Darwin believed that all species in the world ______.
A. were created individually B. sprang from the same origin
C. became increasingly better D. shared the same pace of progress
19. It can be concluded from the passage that Darwin was ______.
A. a modest scholar B. a born thinker
C. an original scientist D. a practical theorist
20. The author intends to say in the last paragraph that ______.
A. Darwin did outstanding work apart from his theory of evolution
B. non-biologists know very little about Darwin's theory of evolution
C. scholars failed to recognize Darwin’s contributions for a long time
D. Darwin's most outstanding contribution is his theory of classification
