下面的短文后有2项测试任务：(1)第23～26题要求从所给的6个选项中为第2—5段每段选择1个最佳标题；(2)第27—30题要求从所给的6个选项中为每个句子确定1个最佳选项。 Museums in the Modern World 1. Museums have
changed. They are no longer places for the privileged few or for bored
vacationers to visit on rainy days. Action and democracy are words used in
descriptions of museums now. 2. At a science museum in Ontario, Canada, you
can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity passes through your
body. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, you can look at 17th
century instruments while listening to their music. At the Modem Museum in
Sweden, you can put on costumes provided by the Stockholm Opera. As these
examples show, museums are reaching out to new audiences, particularly the
young, the poor, and the less educated members ’of the population. As a result,
attendance is increasing. 3. More and more, museums directors are realizing
that people learn best when they can somehow become part of what they are
seeing. In many science museums, for example, there are no guided tours. The
visitor is encouraged to touch, listen, operate, and experiment so as to
discover scientific principles for himself. He can have the experience of
operating a spaceship or a computer. He can experiment with glass blowing and
paper making. The purpose is not only to provide fun but also to help people
feel at home in the world (y[ science. The theory is that people who do not
understand science will probably fear it, and those who fear science will not
use it to best advantage. Many museums now provide educational services and
children’s departments. In addition to the usual displays, they also offer film
showings and dance programs. Instead of being places that one "should" visit,
they are places to enjoy. 4. One cause of all these changes is the increase
in wealth and leisure time. Another cause is the rising percentage of young
people in the population. Many of these young people are college students or
college graduates. They are better educated than their parents. They see things
in a new and different way. They are not content to stand and look at works of
art; they want art they can participate in. The same is true of science and
history. In the US, certain groups who formerly were too poor to care about
anything beyond the basic needs of daily life are now becoming curious about the
world around them. The young people in these groups ,like young people in
general, have benefited from a better education than their parents received. All
these groups, and the rest of the population as well, have been influenced by
television, which has taught them about other places and other times. 5. The
effect of all this has been to change existing museums and to encourage the
building of new ones. In the US and Canada alone, there are now more than 6,000
museums, almost twice as many as there were 25 years ago. About half of them are
devoted to history, and the rest are evenly divided between the arts and
sciences. The number of visitors, according to the American Association of
museums, has risen to more than 700 million a year. 6. In fact, the crowds of
visitors at some museums are creating a major problem. Admission to museums has
always been either free or very inexpensive, but now some museums are charging
entrance fees for the first time or raising their prices. Even when raised,
however, entrance fees are generally too low to support a museum, with its
usually large building and its highly trained staff. Paragraph 2______