Goal of American Education
Education is an enormous and expensive part of American life. Its size is matched by its variety.
Differences in American schools compared with those found in the majority of other countries lie in the fact that education here has long been intended for everyone — not just for a privileged elite. Schools are expected to meet the needs of every child, regardless of ability, and also the needs of society itself. This means that public schools offer more than academic subjects. It surprises many people when they come here to find high schools offering such courses as typing, sewing, radio repair, computer programming or driver training, along with traditional academic subjects such as mathematics, history, and languages. Students choose their curricula depending on their interests, future goals, and level of ability. The underlying goal of American education is to develop every child to the utmost of his or her own possibilities, and to give each one a sense of civic and community consciousness.
Schools have traditionally played an important role in creating national unity and "Americanizing" the millions of immigrants who have poured into this country from many different backgrounds and origins. Schools still play a large role in the community, especially in the small towns.
The approach to teaching may seem unfamiliar to many, not only because it is informal, but also because there is not much emphasis on learning facts. Instead, Americans try to teach their children to think for themselves and to develop their own intellectual and creative abilities. Students spend much time, learning how to use resource materials, libraries, statistics and computers. Americans believe that if children are taught to reason well and to research well, they will be able to find whatever facts they need throughout the rest of their lives. Knowing how to solve problems is considered more important than the accumulation of facts.
This is America’s answer to the searching question that thoughtful parents all over the world are asking themselves in the fast-moving time: "How can one prepare today’s child for a tomorrow that one can neither predict nor understand\
According to the passage, American education meets the needs of all the following EXCEPT

A new anti-cheating system for counting the judges’ scores in ice skating is flawed, according to leading sports specialists. Ice skating’s governing body announced the new rules last week after concerns that a judge at the Winter Olympics may have been unfairly influenced.
Initially the judges in the pairs figure-skating event at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City voted 5 to 4 to give the gold medal to a Russian pair, even though they had a fall during their routine. But the International Skating Union suspended the French judge for failing to reveal that she had been put under pressure to vote for the Russians. The International Olympics Committee then decided to give a second gold to the Canadian runners-up (亚军).
The ISU, skating’s governing body, now says it intends to change the rules. In future 14 judges will judge each event, but only 7 of their scores—selected at random—will count.
The ISU won’t finally approve the new system until it meets in June but already UK Sport, the British Government’s sports body, has expressed reservations. "1 remain to be convinced that the random selection system would offer the guarantees that everyone concerned with ethical sport is looking for", says Jerry Bingham, UK Sport’s head of ethics (伦理).A random system can still be manipulated, says Mark Dixon, a specialist on sports statistics from the Royal Statistical Society in London. "The score of one or two judges who have been hobbled (受到贿赂) may still be in the seven selected."
Many ether sports that have judges, including diving, gymnastics, and synchronized swimming, have a system that discards the highest and lowest scores; If a judge was under pressure to favour a particular team, they would tend to give it very high scores and mark down the opposition team, so their scores wouldn’t count. It works for diving, says Jeff Cook, a member of the international government body’s technical committee. "If you remove those at the top and bottom you’re left with those in the middle, so you’re getting a reasonable average."
Since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, diving has tightened up in its system still further. Two separate panels of judges score different rounds of diving during top competitions. Neither panel knows the scores given by the other. "We have clone this to head off any suggestion of bias," says Cook.
Bingham urged the ISU to consider other options. "This should involve examining the way in which other sports deal with the problem of adjudicating (裁定) on matter of style and presentation," he says.

Also, several legal requirements (56) be met before the procedure.
The candidate must provide proof from police that he or she has does not have any criminal offenses in the past.
Police must also agree to change the sex status on the identity card of the (57) receiver before the operation can, take (58) .
The advent of such a guideline (59) to show that the government is concerned (60) the needs of a relatively small (61) of people who want to change sex.
But doctors also warn that all stakeholders, including the hospital and prospective receivers, should be highly cautious about this surgery.
The operation is more than a medical procedure due (62) its huge social and legal consequences. Doctors should make it clear to those (63) sex-change surgeries that the option always remains to continue to live in the original role. The guideline requires surgeons to tell patients about other options (64) hormone therapy. They are also required to explain the risks involved, and underlying social barriers including discrimination, and administrative recognition and approval.
For the candidates, the surgery itself is not the big issue (65) the long run. The real issue is the kind of life he or she will have to lead afterward.