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  3. It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future

It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future

admin2013-09-16  92
问题     It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, President Obama declared that "If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education. " But what everyone knows is wrong. The fact is that since 1990 or so the U. S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by "hollowing out": both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider; many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.
    Why is this happening? The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information. However, some economists argued that this was the wrong way to think about it. Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, "cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules. " And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized.
    And then there’s globalization. Once, only manufacturing workers needed to worry about competition from overseas, but research by Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger suggests that high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more "offshorable" than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers. If they’re right, growing international trade in services will further hollow out the U, S. job market.
    So what does all this say about policy? Yes, we need to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent -- aren’t just an outrage; they represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential.
    But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen. We can’t just give workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.
The text intends to express the idea that______.
选项 A、we need to fix American education
B、it’s time to restore an equal society
C、middle class makes the core of American strength
D、education isn’t the answer to economic success
答案D
解析 第一段指出大众观点“教育是经济成功的关键”，并表明作者不同看法：当前美国就业市场的主要问题不是欠缺技能，而是中等薪资就业增长缓慢。第二、三段通过反驳“当前技术进步会增加高技能工作者的就业机会”和“全球化对低技能劳动者造成最大威胁”来否定大众观点，论证自己观点。第四、五段基于前文例证，向政策制定者提出建议：改革教育虽非常必要，但这并非繁荣美国经济的根本；正确的做法是直接构建这样的社会(即，采取更直接的经济政策)。由此可见，全文旨在表达教育并非取得经济成功的答案，[D]选项正确。
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