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  3. Miserabilists’ fear of change; idealists’ hope for a better world; an all-purpose adult nostalgia for lost youth: all these thin

Miserabilists’ fear of change; idealists’ hope for a better world; an all-purpose adult nostalgia for lost youth: all these thin

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问题     Miserabilists’ fear of change; idealists’ hope for a better world; an all-purpose adult nostalgia for lost youth: all these things ensure a ready hearing for claims that childhood is in crisis. Britons are especially worried. They fear that the young today are sadder than previous generations— stressed, and turned off learning by too much testing. Children may be nastier as well: bullying is an "epidemic" in schools, according to one recent survey. They seem in danger like never before. No wonder a report published on February 2nd by the Children’s Society, entitled "A Good Childhood", claiming that far too few British children have one, has received widespread notice. Children suffer because adults put their own needs first, the panel concluded, and only a wholesale shift away from competitiveness and individualism can save them. Right-wing commentators agreed with its criticism of single parents and working mothers, left-wing ones with its call for more redistribution of income and less-advertising to children. Both overlooked one striking finding: that most children are doing just fine.
    Amid the statistics on teenage pregnancy rates (higher than elsewhere in Europe, lower than in America), mental illness (a tenth of 5-16-year-olds are sufferers) and drunkenness (a third of 13-15-year-olds have been drunk at least twice, a share three times higher than the European average), came some more heartening figures: 70％ of 11-16-year-olds say they are very, or completely, happy, and only 4％ say that they are at all unhappy. The report rolls the latter in with the 9％ of children who describe themselves as neither happy nor unhappy to claim that 13％ are "less than happy". But clearly, very few children agree with adults that they are in deep trouble.
    In "Reclaiming Childhood", Helene Guldberg, a child psychologist at the Open University, exa-mines the same facts and draws different conclusions. Rising rates of mental illness among the young, she argues, reflect readier diagnosis, and bullying has increased because the word is now used to mean the infliction of even the slightest emotional bruise. She thinks many attempts to improve children’s lives, such as anti-bullying campaigns, and the parenting lessons proposed by the Children’s Society, are likely to be counterproductive. "Suggesting that all parents need to be taught how to do their job risks creating a self-fulfilling belief in parents’ incompetence and children’s lack of resilience, " she says.
    Britain is no Utopia, of course. As in other rich countries, children find it too easy to sit indoors, staring at screens and overeating. They lack the protection afforded by the Nordic belief in the sacredness of outdoor play, or the shared family meals of Mediterranean countries. A large minority ape their elders’ drinking habits and a few, but still too many, become parents while still children themselves.
According to statistics, teenagers in Britain
选项 A、have a higher pregnancy rate than those in America.
B、agree with adults that childhood in Briton is in crisis.
C、describe themselves, in great numbers, as neither happy nor unhappy.
D、suffer more serious drinking problems than those in Europe.
答案D
解析 根据文章第三段第一句中“Amid the statistics on teenage pregnancy rates (higher than elsewhere in Europe, lower than in America) ，”可知，英国青少年的怀孕率低于美国，故排除A项。根据文章第三段第三句“But clearly, very few children agree with adults that they are in deep trouble. ”可知，几乎没有孩子同意成年人说他们陷入麻烦中的观点，故排除8项。根据文章第三段第二句中“the 9％of children who describe themselves as neither happy nor unhappy”可知，只有9％的孩子说他们既不开心也不痛苦，“9％”跟“in great numbers”不是一个概念，故排除C项。根据文章第三段第一句中“…drunkenness (a third of 13-15-year-olds have been drunk at least twice, a share three times higher than the European average)”可知，在英国的13岁至15岁的青少年中，每个年龄段的酗酒率都是高于欧洲国家平均水平的。故选D。
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