Directions: There are four reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. You should choose the one best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET with a pencil.
Children are a relatively modern invention. Until a few hundred years ago they
look like adult, wearing grown-up clothes and grown-up expressions, performing grown-up tasks. Children did not exist because the family as we know it had not evolved.
Children today not only exist; they have taken over, in no place more than in America, and at on time more than now. It is always Kids' Country here. Our civilization is child-centered, child-obsessed. A kid's body is our physical ideal. In Kids' Country we do not permit middle-aged. Thirty is promoted over 50, but 30 knows that soon his time to be overtaken will come.