单项选择题

Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don’’t know where they should go next.   The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teen-agers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan’’s rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed.   While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores--personality, ability, courage or humanity--are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’’s education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild. "Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War Ⅱ had weakened the" Japanese morality of respect for parents."   But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it’’s never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization ,fully 76 percent of Japan’’s 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two- generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter. In the Westerners’’ eyes, the postwar Japan was__________.

A.under aimless development
B.a positive example
C.a rival to the West
D.on the decline
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填空题
Our world of the mid-1990s faces potentially bursting change. The question is in what direction will it take us 46) Will the change come from worldwide initiatives that reverse the degradation of the planet and restore hope for the future, or will it come from continuing environmental deterioration that leads to economic decline and social instabilityThere is no precedent for the rapid substantial change we need to make. 47) Building an environmentally sustainable future depends on restructuring the global economy, major shifts in human reproductive behavior, and dramatic changes in values and lifestyles. Doing all this quickly adds up to a revolution that is driven and defined by the need to restore the earth’’s environmental systems. If this Environmental Revolution succeeds, it will rank with the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions as one of the great economic and social transformations in human history.Like the Agricultural Revolution, it will dramatically alter population trends. 48) While the former set the stage for enormous increases in human numbers, this revolution will succeed only if it stabilizes human population size, reestablishing a balance between people and natural system on which they depend. In contrast to the Industrial Revolution, which was based on a shift to fossil fuels, this new transformation will be based on a shift away from fossil fuels.49) The two earlier revolutions were driven by technological advances―the first by the discovery of farming and the second by the invention of the steam engine, which converted the energy in coal into mechanical power. The Environmental Revolution, while it will obviously need new technologies, will be driven primarily by the restructuring of the global economy so that it does not destroy its natural support system.The pace of the Environmental Revolution needs to be far faster than that of its predecessors. The Agricultural Revolution began some 10,000 years ago, and the Industrial Revolution has been under way for about two centuries. But if the Environmental Revolution is to succeed, it must be compressed into a few decades. Progress in the Agricultural Revolution was measured almost exclusively in the growth in food output that eventually enabled farmers to produce a surplus that could feed city dwellers. Similarly, industrial progress was gained by success in expanding the output of raw materials and manufactured goods. 50) The Environmental Revolution will be judged by whether it can shift the world economy into an environmentally sustainable development path, one that leads to greater economic security, healthier lifestyles, and a worldwide improvement in the human condition.