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  3. The familiar sounds of an early English summer are with us once again. Millions of children sit down to SATs, GCSEs, AS-levels,

The familiar sounds of an early English summer are with us once again. Millions of children sit down to SATs, GCSEs, AS-levels,

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问题     The familiar sounds of an early English summer are with us once again. Millions of children sit down to SATs, GCSEs, AS-levels, A-levels and a host of lesser exams, and the argument over educational standards starts. Depending on whom you listen to, we should either be letting up on over-examined pupils by abolishing SATs, and even GCSEs, or else making exams far more rigorous.
    The chorus will reach a peak when GCSE and A-level results are published in August. If pass rates rise again, commentators will say that standards are falling because exams are getting easier. If pass rates drop, they will say that standards are falling because children are getting lower marks. Parents like myself try to ignore this and base our judgements on what our children are learning. But it’s not easy given how much education has changed since we were at school.
    Some trends are encouraging—education has been made more relevant and enthuses many children that it would have previously bored. My sons’ A-level French revision involved listening to radio debates on current affairs, whereas mine involved rereading Moliere. And among their peers, a far greater proportion stayed in education for longer.
    On the other hand, some aspects of schooling today are incomprehensible to my generation, such as graps in general knowledge and the hand-holding that goes with ensuring that students leave with good grades. Even when we parents resist the temptation to help with GCSE or A-level coursework, a teacher with the child’s interests at heart may send a draft piece of work back several times with pointers to how it can be improved before the examiners see it.
    The debate about standards persists because there is no single objective answer to the question "Are standards better or worse than they were a generation ago?" Each side points to indicators that favour them, in the knowledge that there is no authoritative definition, let alone a measure that has been consistently applied over the decades. But the annual soul-searching over exams is about more than student assessment. It reveals a national insecurity about whether our education system is teaching the right things. It is also fed by an anxiety about whether, in a country with a history of upholding standards by ensuring that plenty of students fail, we can attain the more modern objective of ensuring that every child leaves school with something to show for it.
To the author, the rereading of Moliere was______.
选项 A、dreary
B、routine
C、outmoded
D、arduous
答案A
解析 本题考查推断能力。根据第三段第二句话“My sons’A-level French revisioninvolved listening to radio debates on current affairs，whereas mine involved rereadingMoliere．”可知，我儿子的A-level法语复习涉及通过收音机收听有关时事新闻的报道，然而我的复习涉及重读莫里哀的作品。这个例子是用来说明第三段第一句话的：以前许多学生认为教育枯燥无趣，但现在很多学生喜欢上学。所以A项符合题意。
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