Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
Hello, everyone!
British children used to play conkers (板栗游戏) in the autumn when the horse-chestnut trees started to drop their shiny brown nuts. They would select a suitable chestnut, drill a hole in it and thread it onto a string, then swing their conker at that of an opponent until one of them broke. But the game has fallen out of favour. Children spend less time outdoors and rarely have access to chestnut trees. Besides, many schools have banned conkers games, worried that they might cause injuries or nut allergies.
That sort of risk-averseness(规避风险) now spreads through every aspect of childhood. Playgrounds have all the excitement designed out of them to make them safe. Many governments, particularly in societies such as America, have tightened up their rules, requiring parents to supervise(监管) young children far more closely than in the past. Frank Furedi of the University of Kent, a critic on modern parenting, argues that allowing children to play unsupervised or leaving them at home alone is increasingly described as a symptom of irresponsible parenting.
In part, such increased caution is a response to the huge wave of changes. Large-scale urbanization, smaller and more mobile families, the move of women into the labor market and the digitization of many aspects of life have unavoidably changed the way that people bring up their children. There is little chance that any of these trends will be changed, so today's more intensive(精细化的) parenting style is likely to go on.
Such parenting practices now embraced by wealthy parents in many parts of the rich world, particularly in America, go far beyond an adjustment to changes in external conditions. They mean a strong bid to ensure that the advantages enjoyed by the parents’ generation are passed on to their children. Since success in life now turns mainly on education, such parents will do their best to provide their children with the schooling, the character training and the social skills that will secure access to the best universities and later the most attractive jobs.
To some extent that has always been the case. But there are more such parents now, and they are competing with each other for what economists call positional goods. This competition starts even before the children are born. The wealthy classes will take their time to select a suitable spouse and get married, and will start a family only when they feel ready for it.
Children from less advantaged backgrounds, by contrast, often appear before their parents are ready for them. In America 60% of births to single women under 30 are unplanned, and over 40% of children are born outside marriage. The result, certainly in America, has been to widen already massive social inequalities yet further.
All the evidence suggests that children from poorer backgrounds are at a disadvantage almost as soon as they are born. By the age of five or six they are far less “school-ready” than their better-off peers, so any attempts to help them catch up have to start long before they get to school. America has had some success with various schemes involving regular home visits by nurses or social workers to low-income families with new babies. It also has long experience with programmes for young children from poor families that combine support for parents with good-quality child care. Such programmes do seem to make a difference. Without extra effort, children from low-income families in most countries are much less likely than their better-off peers to attend preschool education, even though they are more likely to benefit from it. And data from the OECD’s PISA programme suggest that children need at least two years of preschool education to perform at their best when they are 15.
So the most promising way to ensure greater equality may be to make early-years education and care for more widely available and more affordable, as it is in the Nordics. Some governments are already rethinking their educational priorities, shifting some of their spending to the early years.
Most rich countries decided more than a century ago that free, compulsory education for all children was a worthwhile investment for society. There is now an argument for starting preschool education earlier, as some countries have already done. In the face of crushing new inequalities, a modern version of that approach is worth trying.
1．What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．More attention is placed on children’s safety. |
| B．More and more parents are becoming irresponsible. |
| C．Children are no longer interested in outdoor activities. |
| D．Parents are advised to spend more time with their children. |
| A．Chances are that this style could be changed. |
| B．Financial pressure forces parents to be stricter. |
| C．Rich families adopt such style to keep their advantages. |
| D．Such style is largely influenced by the size of the family. |
| A．Economists offer practical advice to guide parenting. |
| B．A happy marriage secures children’s social positions. |
| C．Unfair division of social resources drives parents mad. |
| D．Parents are struggling for their children’s edge over peers. |
| A．Parents are persuaded to give birth to babies in their later years. |
| B．Funds are provided for poor children after they are admitted to school. |
| C．New babies in low-income families are sent to nurses or social workers. |
| D．Children from low-income families are ensured to receive early education. |
| A．Supportive | B．Disapproving |
| C．Skeptic | D．Unconcerned |
| A．show competition overweighs cooperation |
| B．imply educational inequalities should be broken |
| C．make readers aware of the rules of the game |
| D．indicate the game has lost its appeal to children |
Almost 1:00 am. I was woken by loud knocks at my door. It was Mrs. Lim, one of my neighbors who lived down the street with her old and weak husband.
“It’s my husband. I think he .s having a heart attack. Can you help me?” she cried. With lightning speed,I changed my clothes. Then, I followed Mrs.Lim to her house. Along the passage leading to the kitchen was Mr.Lim, lying on the ground. He appeared to have difficulty in breathing. With Mrs.Lim’s help,I managed to carry him to the car in their yard and rushed him to the hospital.
The doctor on duty told us that Mr. Lim had a mild stroke (中风)and had to stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I companied Mrs.Lim all the time. She asked me to contact her son and tell him the news. I never knew that Mr. and Mrs.Lim had children. I had thought that the Lims had no children. I could not recall a time when they ever mentioned a son. I tried to contact the son at the given address, but I was told that he had moved to another city with his wife and children. I could see the pain in Mrs. Lim’s face as I told her the news.
As I was driving home, I told myself that I would call my own parents.
On a weekend, a woman won a big bag of coins at a game machine. She took a break for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room. But first she wanted to put the coins in her room.
“I’ll be right back and we’ll go to eat,” she told her husband. Then she carried the bag to the lift. As she was about to walk into the lift she noticed two men already aboard.
Both were huge, very huge figures. The woman was scared. Her first thought was: “These two are going to rob me.” Her next thought was: “Don’t be afraid. They look like nice gentlemen.”
But fear seized her. She stood and stared at the two men. She felt anxious and ashamed. She hoped they didn’t read her mind. Surely they knew her hesitation about joining them in the lift. It was all too obvious. Her face was red. She couldn’t just stand there, so with an effort of will she picked up one foot and stepped forward and followed with the other foot and was on the lift. Avoiding eye contact, she turned around and faced the lift doors as they closed.
A second passed, and then another second, and then another. Her fear increased! The lift didn’t move. Panic consumed her. “Oh dear,” she thought, “I’m about to be robbed!”
Her heart sank and sweat poured. Then one of the men said, “Hit the floor.” Instinct (本能) told her: Do what they tell you. The bag of coins flew upwards as she threw out her arms and collapsed on the lift carpet. A shower of coins rained down on her. “Take my money and spare me,” she prayed. More seconds passed.
She heard one of the men say politely, “Madam, if you’ll just tell us what floor you’re going to, we’ll push the button.” The one who said it had a little trouble getting the words out. He couldn’t help laughing.
Para. 1：She lifted her head and looked up at the two men.
Para. 2：Then, the lift arrived at her floor.
Lon was chasing his runaway horse when a goose went under his feet. And he fell into a thornbush (荆棘丛). “Why do I have such bad luck?”
Things never seemed to go Lon’s way. If there was a bee about, he was stung.
And if his horse ran away, it would run straight through a thornbush. Still, even bad luck might turn good if he could catch that goose for dinner.
He scanned the bushes, and found a nest with an egg. Just an egg, but even one egg might make a small meal.
He picked it up, but dropped it in surprise. The egg was unusually heavy, and it gleamed (发光) in the sunlight. It was made of gold!
Lon sighed. He’d nearly stepped on a goose that lays golden eggs. If he had captured the goose, he would have had golden egg after golden egg.
Then a thought exploded in his mind.
Perhaps he could take the egg and get it to hatch, and the new goose would lay golden eggs just as its mother did.
Lon smiled. His luck seemed to be changing.
Once home, Lon placed the egg into a bed of cotton next to the hearth. He turned it every hour for several days.
One morning, he heard a faint chk-chk-chk. A small golden beak poked its way through the shell.
It was an ugly little thing, but Lon didn’t care. All that mattered was the golden eggs it would soon lay.
The gosling demanded food. Lon happily kept its beak filled. He named the bird Goly and became fond of it, even though it was soon better fed than he was. Lon talked to his goose and taught it to play checkers (国际跳棋).
Time passed as Lon waited for the first golden egg. Goldy had grown quite fat, but there were no eggs. Lon finally took the goose to a farmer to see what the problem was.
The farmer took a closer look and laughed. “You’ll never get eggs from this goose. It’s a boy goose!
I might as well roast you for dinner,” Lon said. “At least then I’ll get a meal for all my work!”
Alarmed，Goldy popped out of Lon’s arm and escaped into the forest.
One morning, Lon awoke to Goldy’s familiar honking outside.
The story between Mr. Jordan and me was the most amazing story I wanted to share. Mr. Jordan was one of the teachers who I would never forget.
When I was young at school, I loved talking, a characteristic not always appreciated by Mr. Jordan, my 10-grade English teacher.
Mr. Jordan was a teacher whom no one liked because he was too strict. He stood about 5-foot-five, was very thin and wore his hair pulled back in a way that gave him a horsy look. He wore those half-circular reading glasses. Whenever he got upset, he would lower his head and look at you over the top of his glasses.
One day in his class I was busy talking. I didn’t realize he had stopped teaching and staring straight at me. “Sam, I would like to see you after school.”
Later Mr. Jordan explained in a low, but very firm voice that showed he expected me to listen when he was talking. For punishment he told me to write a thousand-word essay on education and its effect on the society. He wanted it in by the following Wednesday.
Well, I met my deadline. I was confident. It was a good paper. And I expected a sign of approval from him. The next day in class, however, he was looking at me over his glasses. He called me forward and returned my paper. “Go back and rewrite，” he said. “Remember, each paragraph is supported to begin with a topic sentence.” When he gave my paper back a second time, he corrected the grammar. The third time, the spelling. The fourth time, it was punctuation. The fifth, it wasn’t neat enough. I was sick!
The sixth time, I rewrote the whole paper slowly in ink, leaving generous space. When he saw it, he removed his glasses and smiled. He firmly accepted the paper. After that, I put the whole thing out of my mind.
One day after two weeks, Mr. Jordan came into the class and said，
I was amazed, thrilled and grateful.
It was an unusually hot day. Extremely tired after football practice, I headed to the bus stop to wait for Bus 112 which would take me home. I was beginning to slowly and gently fall asleep when I saw the bus arriving. The sun was in my eyes and that was probably the reason why I got onto Bus 113.
I was glad to get a seat. Within minutes, I was slumped against the window, fast asleep. When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside. I was the only passenger left on the bus. I could not recognize the part of town we were passing through. I pressed the bell and the bus stopped. I planned to jump across the road and catch a bus going in the opposite direction. However, I found myself on a quiet street with a row of shops that were all closed. I beat myself up for not asking the driver for directions.
As I was wondering what to do, a motorcycle came down the road. The rider looked at me as he passed and then stopped a short distance away. I went to him and asked him how to get back to Taman Klang Utama. He smiled, tapping the back seat and said that he would send me home. Without a second thought, I climbed up behind the rider. He turned the motorcycle around and headed in the direction I wanted. We traveled for about 15 minutes and the surroundings still looked unfamiliar to me. The rider made a few turns and I knew I was hopelessly lost. I asked him where we were going. He did not answer but increased his speed. Alarm bells started to ring in my head.
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