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  3. Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high u

Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high u

admin2010-02-20  49
问题    Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely.    But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to re- vive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work?
   The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future of work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
    Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
    Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In preindustrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to pay employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
   It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded -- a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to bye active lives.
   All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full times jobs.
The arrival of the industrial age in our historical evolution meant that _____.
选项 A、universal employment virtually guaranteed prosperity
B、economic freedom came within everyone’s grasp
C、patterns of work were fundamentally changed
D、people’s attitudes to work had to be reversed
答案C
解析 该题问：工业革命时期的到来意味着什么?文章第三段提到工业时代使人们的谋生手段采取了工作这一形式。而作者认为现在工业时代应该结束，从前由此带来的工作模式的变化应该再一次改变。所以这里根据题意，我们可以推断出C项“工业时代的到来改变了人们的工作方式”为正确选项。
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