Reading Comprehension (30 points, 2 points for each)从下列每篇短文的问题后所给的四个选择题中选出一个最佳答案，并在答题卡上将相应的字母涂黑。

Passage One

　　Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

　　The term “flying saucer” refers to strange objects traveling through the earth’s atmosphere at very high speeds. Thousands of people all over the world claim to have seen them. Some believe them to be spaceships from other planets. Others insist that they are a secret type of aircraft being built on earth. Many people maintain that they are only natural phenomena happening under special temperature, light, or weather conditions. All reports, however, agree that the strange objects move at extremely high speeds and fail to follow the laws of motion by reversing (逆转) direction instantly without slowing down.

　　In the United States, the first flying saucers were reported on June 4, 1947, by a private plane pilot. He saw nine objects traveling in the sky. Each was disk-shaped and very bright. Because their movements were compared to those of a “saucer skimming across the water”, newspaper reporters called them “flying saucers”.

　　Some weeks after the first reported sighting, the United States Air Force was given the job of investigating all the reports of flying saucers. Because of the confusing variety of shapes, sizes, and colors reported, the Air Force adopted the term Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) to describe them.

　　Since the Air Force officials began their investigation of flying saucers, they have identified most of the objects as stars, planes, man-made satellites, experimental missiles (导弹), or weather phenomena. Some of the UFO reports, including photographs, were deliberate (蓄意) tricks made to cheat people.

　　All the research so far has failed to prove that UFOs are spaceships coming from outside the earth. Most investigators agree, however, that more study is needed before the question of whether or not flying saucers really exist can be answered.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.

　　The American educator Horace Mann once said:” as an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated.” Education is the process through which man attempts to pass on to his children his hard-won wisdom and his ideals of a better world. This process begins shortly after birth, as parents seek to train the infant to behave as his culture demands. Schooling, or formal education, consists of experiences that are carefully planned to help young people learn what adults consider important for them to know and how they should respond to choices.

　　While almost everyone accepts the goal of developing skills in the three R’s --- reading, writing and arithmetic --- it often seems impossible to reach agreement on any goal beyond that. In the broadest terms, the conflict over educational goals can be viewed as a conflict between two groups of people --- conservatives and liberals (自由派).

　　The conservatives tend to identify a desirable education with the transmission of the cultural knowledge, offering courses featuring the three R’s at the elementary level and academic (普通文化课的) studies or strong vocational (职业的) or business courses in the secondary school. They stress training of the mind and development of abilities.

　　The liberals tend to be interested in the development of the “whole child,” not merely in training his mind or in preparing him for adult life in a remote future. They emphasize rich, meaningful school living in the present, and they view subject matter as a resource for total human development rather than as a goal in itself. They believe that content should be acquired not for its own sake but as a means of encouraging thought and inquiry.

　　Passage Three

　　Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage.

　　It has been a wide-spread belief that the American family is dying. But a new study reveals that the American family is stronger than ever. This study affords surprising evidence of the persistence of American commitments to family life.

　　The American family is changing, not dying. It is becoming smaller, men and women are becoming more equal, and the divorce rate is higher. But despite the high divorce rate, marriage has never been more popular. The majority of divorced people remarry but only 2% marry more than twice. Most marriages last a long time, and a large proportion of divorces are from teenage marriages. Depending on the specific situation, there’s often good reason for teenage marriages to break up.

　　There is no evidence that children receive less attention from mothers who work outside the home than from mothers working inside the home. So far the amount of educational or development time hasn’t varied very much, whether or not the mother works outside the home. In fact, working mothers try to make up for it by setting aside time only for their children.

　　The study shows that television is by far the most significant new child-care arrangement of this century. The most important activity for children up to age 14 is watching television.

　　School is the second most time-consuming activity for children. They spend and average of about 19 hours a week in school. A larger proportion of children go to school now than ever before, and they stay in school longer. Another big change is that the proportion of very young children in day-care centers (日托站) has almost doubled in recent years. Compared with these two dramatic changes in child activity, the changes caused by mothers working outside the home appear very small.