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For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favorite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down. Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason", for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that "the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing(unless required todo so forschool) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004." So it is a surprise that this trend seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008. The increase, modest as it is, has thrown educationalists into excitement "It"s just a blip," one professor told The New York Times. It is certainly a snapshot. But it is not statistically insignificant. As the NEA"s research director, Sunil Iyengar, points out, almost every demographic and ethnic group seems to be reading more. The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics (up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third. Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing. Dana Gioia, the NEA"s outgoing chairman, thinks the reason for the turnaround is the public reaction to earlier reports which had sounded the alarm. "There has been a measurable change in society"s commitment to literacy," he says. "Reading has become a higher priority." It may also be benefiting from the growing popularity of serious-minded leisure pursuits of many kinds. Museums, literary festivals and live opera transmissions into cinemas are all reporting larger audiences. Mr. Iyengar thinks the division between those who read a lot and those who don"t is eroding. What has not changed, though, is America"s "functional illiteracy" rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn"t, one of the worst rates in the rich world. The sentence "Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men." (Line 1, Paragraph 4) denotes that young men have
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Give the Senate some credit: in shaping the current immigration-reform bill, it has come up with one idea that almost everybody hates. That"s the plan to create a new class of "guest workers"—immigrants who would be allowed to work in the U.S. for three two-year stretches, at most, provided that they return home for a year after each visit. Conservatives dislike the plan because they believe that the guest workers won"t return home after their visas expire. Liberals dislike it because they believe the program will depress American wages and trap guest workers in a state of serfdom. The only vocal supporters of the provision are businesses that rely heavily on immigrant labor, and they"re presumably just looking out for themselves. With the broader concerns about the effects of illegal immigration, the hostility to the new plan is understandable. It"s also misguided. However imperfect, the guest-worker program is better than any politically viable alternative. Opponents of immigration sometimes imply that adding workers to a workforce automatically brings wages down. But immigrants tend to work in different industries than native workers, and have different skills, and so they often end up complementing native workers, rather than competing with them. That can make native workers more productive and therefore better off. According to a recent study by the economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, between 1990 and 2004 immigration actually boosted the wages of most American workers; its only negative effect was a small one, on the wages of workers without a high-school diploma. And if by increasing the number of legal guest workers we reduced the number of undocumented workers, the economy would benefit even more. Guest workers are also, paradoxically, less likely than illegal immigrants to become permanent residents. The U.S. already has a number of smaller—and less well-designed—temporary-worker programs, and there"s no evidence that workers in those plans routinely overstay their visas. One remarkable study found that after border enforcement was stepped up in 1993 the chances of an illegal immigrant returning to his homeland to stay fell by a third. In fact, whatever benefits the guest-worker program brought to the U.S. economy or to particular businesses, the biggest winners would be the workers themselves. Congress, of course, is under no obligation to care about foreign workers. But the program"s costs to American workers are negligible, the gains for the guest workers are enormous, and the U.S. economy will benefit. This is that rare option which is both sensible and politically possible. Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 4
Give the Senate some credit: in shaping the current immigration-reform bill, it has come up with one idea that almost everybody hates. That"s the plan to create a new class of "guest workers"—immigrants who would be allowed to work in the U.S. for three two-year stretches, at most, provided that they return home for a year after each visit. Conservatives dislike the plan because they believe that the guest workers won"t return home after their visas expire. Liberals dislike it because they believe the program will depress American wages and trap guest workers in a state of serfdom. The only vocal supporters of the provision are businesses that rely heavily on immigrant labor, and they"re presumably just looking out for themselves. With the broader concerns about the effects of illegal immigration, the hostility to the new plan is understandable. It"s also misguided. However imperfect, the guest-worker program is better than any politically viable alternative. Opponents of immigration sometimes imply that adding workers to a workforce automatically brings wages down. But immigrants tend to work in different industries than native workers, and have different skills, and so they often end up complementing native workers, rather than competing with them. That can make native workers more productive and therefore better off. According to a recent study by the economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, between 1990 and 2004 immigration actually boosted the wages of most American workers; its only negative effect was a small one, on the wages of workers without a high-school diploma. And if by increasing the number of legal guest workers we reduced the number of undocumented workers, the economy would benefit even more. Guest workers are also, paradoxically, less likely than illegal immigrants to become permanent residents. The U.S. already has a number of smaller—and less well-designed—temporary-worker programs, and there"s no evidence that workers in those plans routinely overstay their visas. One remarkable study found that after border enforcement was stepped up in 1993 the chances of an illegal immigrant returning to his homeland to stay fell by a third. In fact, whatever benefits the guest-worker program brought to the U.S. economy or to particular businesses, the biggest winners would be the workers themselves. Congress, of course, is under no obligation to care about foreign workers. But the program"s costs to American workers are negligible, the gains for the guest workers are enormous, and the U.S. economy will benefit. This is that rare option which is both sensible and politically possible. Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri point out that immigration
Just east of downtown Irvine, in southern California, a pastoral landscape is under construction. Little by little, a former military airport is being dismantled, to be replaced by grass, trees and a canyon 70 feet (21 meters) deep. When it is finished, Orange County"s Great Park will cover 1,350 acres (550 hectares), more than one-and-a-half times as much as Central Park in New York.Thebiggest landscaped municipal park to be built in more than a century, it reveals much about how American attitudes to open space have changed. Urban parks are back in fashion. In Denver, an 80-acre park opened in September on the site of another disused airport. New York plans to build a huge park on top of the Fresh Kills landfill in Stat-en Island. Innumerable town squares and pocket parks have been created or beautified, even in places like Detroit. City planners, who once viewed parks as financial drains and nests of crime, now see them as magnets for tourists and creative types. The great parks that were built in the second half of the 19th century were intended to counteract the ill effects of city living, and so are the new ones. But the perceived ills have changed. Frederick Olmsted, who designed Central Park and many others, wanted to provide people with a break from their tough, dirty jobs. Ken Smith, the Great Park"s architect, reckons the residents of Orange County are quite idle enough. What they need is exercise: hence the park"s proposed 21 football fields and 12 baseball fields, together with some exhausting-looking walks. Another difference is that parks are now expected to function like natural ecosystems as well as looking like them. The Great Park will use recycled water in its lake (older parks often used mains water). The runways will be dismantled and turned into roads and a memorial In a nod to the local-food movement, the park will include land for farming. Even the car park will be situated in an orange orchard. Most striking of all is the new parks" deference to history. America"s great 19th-century landscape architects saw the land as a blank slate. An entire village was pulled down to build Central Park. By contrast, Denver"s park preserves a control tower, and the Great Park will convert an air-dock into a museum and retain the outline of a runway. A river diverted underground by the marines will be restored to its former course. The preservation lobby is stronger these days. And besides, says Yehudi Gaffen, a partner in the Great Park project, "Southern California has so little history that we should try to keep some of it." According to the text, urban parks are back in fashion because
For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favorite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down. Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason", for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that "the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing(unless required todo so forschool) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004." So it is a surprise that this trend seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008. The increase, modest as it is, has thrown educationalists into excitement "It"s just a blip," one professor told The New York Times. It is certainly a snapshot. But it is not statistically insignificant. As the NEA"s research director, Sunil Iyengar, points out, almost every demographic and ethnic group seems to be reading more. The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics (up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third. Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing. Dana Gioia, the NEA"s outgoing chairman, thinks the reason for the turnaround is the public reaction to earlier reports which had sounded the alarm. "There has been a measurable change in society"s commitment to literacy," he says. "Reading has become a higher priority." It may also be benefiting from the growing popularity of serious-minded leisure pursuits of many kinds. Museums, literary festivals and live opera transmissions into cinemas are all reporting larger audiences. Mr. Iyengar thinks the division between those who read a lot and those who don"t is eroding. What has not changed, though, is America"s "functional illiteracy" rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn"t, one of the worst rates in the rich world. What does the author mean by "dumbing down" (line 3, Paragraph 1)
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