Despite a cooling of the economy, high technology companies are still crying out for skilled workers. The Information Technology

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问题     Despite a cooling of the economy, high technology companies are still crying out for skilled workers. The Information Technology Association of America projects that more than 800 000 technology jobs will go unfilled next year. The lack of qualified workers poses a huge threat to the U. S. economy.
    The most commonly cited reason for this state of affairs is that the country’s agrarian-age education system, separated from the needs of the business world, fails to prepare students in the primary and secondary grades for twenty-first-century work. Yet an inadequate and outmoded education system is only part of the problem. A less tangible but equally powerful cause is an antique classification system that divides the workforce into two camps: white-collar knowledge workers and blue-collar manual laborers.
    Blue-collar workers emerged in the United States during the Industrial Age as work migrated from farms to factories. White-collar office workers became a significant class in the twentieth century, outnumbering their blue-collar brethren by mid-century. But the white or blue paradigm has clearly outlived its utility. Corporations increasingly require a new layer of knowledge workers a highly skilled multi-disciplinarian who combines the mind of the white-collar worker with the hands of the blue-collar employee. Armed with a solid grounding in mathematics and science (physics, chemistry and biology), these "gold-collar" workers—so named for their contributions to their companies and to the economy, as well as for their personal earning ability—apply that knowledge to technology. Of course, the gold-collar worker already exists in a wide range of jobs across a wide range of businesses; think of the maintenance technician who tests and repairs aircraft systems at American Airlines: the network administrator who manages systems and network operations at P&G: the advanced-manufacturing technician at Intel.
    But until American business recognizes these people as a new class of worker, one whose collar is neither blue nor white, demands that schools do a better job of preparing employees for the twenty-first-century workforce will be futile. Certainly, polytechnic high schools, colleges, and universities have made heroic efforts to teach workers new skills. But because many people see these initiatives as primarily training blue-collar workers, adequate funds are not invested in such programs, leaving them short of state-of-the-art tools and experienced teachers. And because gold-collar workers need to constantly update their skills to stay current with emerging technology, learning must be a continuous process, one that is funded by companies as well as by taxpayers.
From the second paragraph we learn that______.

选项 A、the workforce classification is as serious as the reason of education system
B、twenty-first-century work are separated from the needs of the business world
C、white-collar worker is only part of the problem of education system
D、blue-collar manual laborers are needed in agrarian-aged America

答案A

解析 根据A答案中的关键词workforce classfication,可以把相关信息定位到第二段倒数第一句:一个不太明显但影响同样重要的原因是劳动力划分方法,再回读前文寻找另一个原因:然而,不适当的、陈旧的教育体制只是一部分原因,由此可以推断出划分方法和教育体制是同等重要的两个原因,所以A为正确答案。B错在第二段第一句话中separated from the needs of the business world是表语从句的过去分词,其逻辑主语是education system,也就是说,是教育体制脱离了商业的需要,而不是21世纪的工作,此答案偷换了主语。C答案的错误是同样的,原文是说教育体制是部分原因,而不是白领工人是教育体制的部分问题。D项并未提及。
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