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  3. When the island of Singapore became an independent country in 1965, it had few friends and even fewer natural resources. How did

When the island of Singapore became an independent country in 1965, it had few friends and even fewer natural resources. How did

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问题     When the island of Singapore became an independent country in 1965, it had few friends and even fewer natural resources. How did it become one of the world’s great trading and financial centres? The strategy, explained Lee Kuan Yew, its first prime minister, was "to develop Singapore’s only available natural resource; its people".
    Today Singapore’s education system is considered the best in the world. The country consistently ranks at the top of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial test of 15-year-olds in dozens of countries, in the main three categories of maths, reading and science. Singaporean pupils are roughly three years ahead of their American peers in maths. Singapore does similarly well in exams of younger children, and the graduates of its best schools can be found scattered around the world’s finest universities. Not content with its achievements, Singapore is now introducing reforms to improve creativity and reduce stress. This is not a sign of failure, but rather of a gradual, evidence-led approach to education reform—the first of three lessons that Singapore offers the rest of the world.
    Where other countries often enact uncoordinated reforms, Singapore tries to look at the system as a whole. It invests heavily in education research. All reforms are tested, with the outcomes diligently monitored, before being rolled out. The second lesson is to embrace Singapore’s distinctive approach to teaching, notably of mathematics—as America and England are already doing to some extent. It emphasizes a narrower but deeper curriculum, and seeks to ensure that a whole class progresses through the syllabus. The third and most important lesson is to focus on developing excellent teachers. In Singapore, they get 100 hours of training a year to keep up to date with the latest techniques. The government pays them well, too. It accepts the need for larger classes (the average is 36 pupils, compared with 24 across the OECD). Better, so the thinking goes, to have big classes taught by excellent teachers than smaller ones taught by mediocre ones. Teachers who want more reputation but not the bureaucratic burden of running schools can become "master teachers," with responsibility for training their peers. The best teachers get postings to the ministry of education and considerable bonuses: overall, teachers are paid about the same as their peers in private-sector professions. Teachers are also subject to rigorous annual performance assessments.
    The system is hardly faultless. Other countries might wish to avoid Singapore’s dividing of high- and low-achievers into separate schools from the age of 12. The benefits of doing so are unproven, and it contributes to stress about exams.
What does the word "mediocre" (Line 10, Para. 3) mean?
选项 A、Ordinary.
B、Excellent.
C、Superior.
D、Elite.
答案A
解析 本题是词汇题。根据相关的句子，可以判断mediocre与excellent是对立的，故答案选 A。B项“优秀的”；C项“优越的”和D项“精英的”均排除。
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