GMAT网络课堂阅读笔记-王昆嵩主讲[3]

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:03:10 10:22:44
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

Passage 3
In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two year old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, (5) less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three year old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $750,000. The transformation in social values implicit in juxta- posing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana (10) Zelizers excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the "useful" child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the "useless" child who, though producing no income (15) for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally "priceless." Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800s, this new view of childhood spread through- out society in the iate-nineteenth and early-twentieth (20) centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a childs emotional value made child labor taboo. For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were (25) many and complex. The gradual erosion of childrens productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family (a family in which members were united by (30) explicit bonds of love rather than duty) were all factors critical in changing the assessment of childrens worth. Yet "expulsion of children from the cash nexus.... although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures," Zelizer (35) maintains, "was also part of a cultural process of sacral- ization of childrens lives." Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she suggests. this sacralization was a way of resisting what (40) they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace. In stressing the cultural determinants of a childs worth, Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new "sociological economics," who have analyzed such tradi- (45) tionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, educa- tion. and health solely in terms of their economic deter- minants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual "preferences," these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by (50) the principle of maximizing economic gain, Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their "exchange" or " sur- (55) render" value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater.

1. It can be inferred from the passage that accidental-death damage awards in America during the nineteenth century tended to be based principally on the
(A) earnings of the person at time of death
(B) wealth of the party causing the death
(C) degree of culpability of the party causing the death
(D) amount of money that had been spent on the person killed
(E) amount of suffering endured by the family of the person killed

2. It can be inferred from the passage that in the early 1800s children were generally regarded by their families as individuals who
(A) needed enormous amounts of security and affection
(B) required constant supervision while working
(C) were important to the economic well-being of a family
(D) were unsuited to spending long hours school
(E) were financial burdens assumed for the good of society

3. Which of the following alternative explanations of the change in the cash value of children would be most likely to be put forward by sociological economists as they are described in the passage?
(A) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because parents began to increase their emotional investment in the upbringing of their children.
(B) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because their expected earnings over the course of a lifetime increased greatly.
(C) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because the spread of humanitarian ideals resulted in a wholesale reappraisal of the worth of an individual.
(D) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because compulsory education laws reduced the supply, and thus raised the costs, of available child labor.
(E) The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because of changes in the way negligence law assessed damages in accidental death cases.