公共英语五级
Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to make ways of sharing the available employment more widely.
But we need to go further. We must ask some primary questions about the future of work. Would we continue to treat employment as the norm? Would we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer?
Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work?
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought
may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could provide the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people depend-
ent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves.
Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transportation improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the place in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put wornen at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial time, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary forthe husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still as- sume this norm today and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded--a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full time iobs.
Research carried out in the recent opinion polls shows that __
A．available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population
B．new jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures
C．available employment must be more widely distributed among the unemployed
D．the nowaday high unemployment figures are a truth of life
本文提出了部分就业的观点。作者认为，现在居高不下的失业率迫使人们必须找到增加就业的方法。不仅应当增加职位，还应当鼓励人们自谋出路，而不是受雇于别人。作者还认为，现在已经到了改变工作模式的时候了。是工业革命剥夺了人们的土地，将人们驱赶进工厂，并形成了丈夫主外、妻子主内的家庭分工模式。由于就业，妇女、年轻人和老人处于不利的工作地位上，他们被排除在工作之外。因此作者认为。比起为所有人创造工作，更为紧迫的是帮助人们依靠非全职工作生活下去。
答案及解析
D【解析】由短文第一句“Opinion polls are now beginning to show that，whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on，high unemployment is probably here to stay．”可知。
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