Decide which of the choices given below would best complete the passage if inserted in the corresponding blanks. Mark the best choice for each blank on your ANSWER SHEET. The effect of the baby boom on the schools helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education in the 1920’s. In the 1920’s, but especially in the Depression of the 1930’s, the United States experienced a (31) birth rate. Then with the prosperity (32) by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed, young people married and (33) households earlier and began to (34) larger families than had their (35) during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. (36) economics was probably the most important (37) , it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed (38) the idea of the family also helps to (39) this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming (40) the first grade by the mid-1940s and became a (41) by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself (42) The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. (43) , large numbers of teachers left their profession during that period for better-paid jobs elsewhere. (44) , in the 1950s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and (45) school system. Consequently, the custodial rhetoric of the1930s no longer made (46) ; keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high (47) for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children. With the baby boom, the focus of educators (48) turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and (49) The system no longer had much (50) in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to the older youths.
A. predecessors
B. successors
C. processors
D. dominators
In this section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. Mark your answers on your ANSWER SHEET.TEXT A The Carnegie Foundation report says that many colleges have tried to be "all things to all people." In doing so, they have increasingly catered to a narrow-minded careerism while failing to cultivate a global vision among their students. The current crisis, it contends, does not derive from a legitimate desire to put learning to productive ends. The problem is that in too many academic fields, the work has no context; skills, rather than being means, have become ends. Students are offered a variety of options and allowed to pick their way to a degree. In short, driven by careerism, "the national colleges and universities are more successful in providing credentials than in providing a quality education for their students." The report concludes that the special challenge confronting the undergraduate college is one of shaping an "integrated core" of common learning. Such a core would introduce students "to essential knowledge, to connections across the disciplines, and in the end, to application of knowledge to life beyond the campus." Although the key to a good college is a high-quality faculty, the Carnegie study Found that most colleges do very little to encourage good teaching. In fact, they do much to undermine it. As one professor observed: "Teaching is important, we are told, and yet faculty know that research and publication matter most." Not surprisingly, over the last twenty years colleges and universities have failed to graduate half of their four-year degree candidates. Faculty members who dedicate themselves to teaching soon discover that they will not be granted tenure, promotion, or substantial salary increases. Yet 70 percent of all faculty say their interests lie among more in teaching than in research. Additionally, a frequent complaint among young scholars is that "There is pressure to publish, although there is virtually no interest among administrators or colleagues in the content of the publications." American colleges and universities failed to graduate half of their four-year degree candidates because
A. most of them lack high-quality faculties.
B. the interests of most faculty members lie in research.
C. there are not enough incentives for students to study hard.
D. they attach greater importance to research and publication than’ to teaching.