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  3. The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politi

The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politi

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问题     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 radically 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 causes 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 for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn’t developing more quickly there than it is.
The author quotes the example of our ancestors to show that education emerged________.
选项 A、when people had enough time
B、prior to better ways of finding food
C、when people no longer went hungry
D、as a result of pressure on government
答案A
解析 事实细节题。第四段第四句引用了祖先的事例，讲到除了寻找食物外，他们没有时间去想其他事情。接着第五句进一步讲到，只有当人类开始以更有效的方式获取食物时，才有时间做其他事情。教育属于其他事情，即人们有时间之后，才发展教育，故A项为答案。同时，B项表述与原文相反，故排除；根据第五句不挨饿是有时间的前提，与教育没有直接联系，故排除C项；第四段第二句指出，即使政府不强制推行教育，经济增长也会带动教育发展，即教育的产生并不仅是政府施加压力的结果，D项表述不准确，故排除。
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