【正文】 they were more aware of the struggles of others. In limited respects, perhaps the recession will leave society better off. At the very last, it has awoken us from our national fever dream of easy riches and bigger houses, and put a necessary end to an ear of reckless personal spending. But for the most part, these benefits seem thin, uncertain, and far off. In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, the economic historian Benjamin Friedman argues that both inside and outside the ., lengthy periods of economic stagnation or decline have almost always left society more meanspirited and less inclusive, and have usually stopped or reversed the advance of rights and freedoms. Antiimmigrant sentiment typically increases, as does conflict between races and classes. In e inequality usually falls during a recession, but it has not shrunk in this one. Indeed, this period of economic weakness may reinforce class divides, and decrease opportunities to cross themespecially for young people. The research of Till Von Wachter, the economist at Columbia University suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed。s biotech industry to its core. Companies had won patents for isolated DNA for decadesby 2020 some 20% of human genes were parented. But in March 2020 a judge ruled that genes were unpatentable. Executives were violently agitated. The Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), a trade group, assured members that this was just a “preliminary step” in a longer battle. On July 29th they were relieved, at least temporarily. A federal appeals court 8 overturned the prior decision, ruling that Myriad Geics could indeed hold patents to two genes that help forecast a woman39。 lives and interests to Paragraph 2, which of the following is true of colours？ [A]Colours are encoded in girls39。 power in education 5 24. As mentioned in Paragraph 4, a key question unanswered about homework is whether______. [A] it should be eliminated [B]it counts much in schooling [C]it places extra burdens on teachers [D]it is important for grades suitable title for this text could be______. [A]Wrong Interpretation of an Educational Policy [B]A Weled Policy for Poor Students [C]Thorny Questions about Homework [D]A Faulty Approach to Homework 參考答案 21~25 ACABD Text 2 Pretty in pink: adult women do not remember being so obsessed with the colour, yet it is pervasive in our young girls’ lives. It is not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among twoyearolds, between girls as not only innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls’ lives and interests. Girls’ attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American Studies, it is not. Children were not colourcoded at all until the early 20th century: in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What’s more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as genderneutral dresses. When nursery colours 6 were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolised femininity. It was not until the mid1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children’s marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem inherently attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years. I had not realised how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children’s behaviour: wrong. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularised as a marketing trick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s. Trade publications counselled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a “third stepping,