The New York Times recently reported that American teens are hugging practically everyone they see. Say goodbye to the greetings of the past, from the hands-off "What"s up!" to the handshake or high-five ². For young people across the country, hugging is the new "Hello".

    Girls are hugging girls. Boys are hugging boys. Girls and boys are hugging each other. And, like every major trend, there are lots of variations on the form. There"s the classic, full-body, arms-around-the-person bear hug, the casual one-armed side hug, the group hug and the hug from behind. There"s the handshake that turns into a hug and the hug that turns into a pat on the back.

    As trends go, this one seems pretty innocent. But some parents, teachers and school administrators are worried nonetheless. Will young people who aren"t as comfortable with physical contact feel peer pressured into hugging? Willkids who don"t receive hugs feel left Out ³? Could an extra-long hug slide into the more ominous territory of sexual harassment?

    In response to some of these concerns, some schools have set up new rules to limit or eliminate hugging. One school head has created a three-second limitation ⁴ for hugs at her school. A few schools have taken even more drastic measures, placing a ban on all forms of touching between students.

    A few important points are being left out of the discussion. While the US has traditionally been reserved about touching - saving hugs and kisses for relatives, romantic partners and very close friends - people in many other parts of the world have been greeting each other this way for ages.

    In Latin America or Western Europe, in countries like Spain,France, andItaly, a kiss on the cheek is common among women, as well as among women and men who are not romantically involved. The cheek-kiss varies by region.

    Sometimes it is just an air kiss blown past the face. In other places, the proper way of greeting is to deliver a kiss upon both cheeks, or sometimes even a triplet of kisses performed by kissing one cheek, then the other, then back to the first.

    Latin American men are more likely to shake hands when greeting other men,but in some countries likeTurkey, it"s not unusual for men who know each other well to exchange kisses on the cheek. Meanwhile, for the Maori people ⁵ ofNew Zealand, a traditional greeting called the "hongi" involves pressing nosestogether.

    So, from a global perspective, the new trend of teen hugging inAmericais not so "new" after all. People all around the world move in close to say hello,and Americans are just now joining in.

词汇：

touchy ["tʌtʃɪ] 易怒的；敏感的

harassment ["hærəsmənt] 骚扰

triplet ["trɪplət] 三个一组；三件一套

注释：

1.touchy的本意为“易怒的”“敏感的”，这里用来指“喜欢肢体接触的”，标题意味美国人越来越喜欢肢体接触了。

2.high-five:是美国文化手势的一种，并没有正式的中文名称，一般代表了“庆祝成功的击掌”，有时也写成“Give  me - five”。

3.feel left out:感到被排斥

4.three-second limitation:学校制定的将拥抱限制在三秒钟之内的规定

5.Maori people:毛利人（新西兰的土著）

Some parents,teachers and school administrators concern the new trend of hugging for thefollowing reasons EXCEPT____.

A:Some young people get involved into the trend due to peer pressure B:Those who don"t receive hugs feel left out C:There"s the danger that hugging slide into the more ominous territory of sexual harassment D:Diseases could be transmitted more easily through the extra-long body contact

(D)

Diana Jacobs thought her family had a workable plan to pay for college for her 21-year-old twin sons: a combination of savings, income, scholarships, and a modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job, and the plan fell apart.
"I have two kids in college, and I want to say ’come home,’ but at the same time I want to provide them with a good education," says Jacobs.
The Jacobs family did work out a solution: They asked and received more aid form the schools, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum amount through the federal loan (贷款) program. They will each graduate with $20,000 of debt, but at least they will be able to finish school.
With unemployment rising, financial aid administrators expect to hear more families like the Jacobs. More students are applying for aid, and more families expect to need student loans. College administrators are concerned that they will not have enough aid money to go around.
At the same time, tuition(学费)continues to rise. A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while average family income rose just 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade.
"If we go on this way for another 25years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education," says Patrick M. Callan, president of the center. "The middle class families have been financing it through debt. They will send kids to college whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt."
Financial aid administrators have been having a hard time as many companies decide that student loans are not profitable enough and have stopped making them. The good news, however, is that federal loans account for about three quarters of student borrowing, and the government says that money will flow uninterrupted.

A:provide most students will scholarships B:dismiss some financial aid administrators C:stop the companies from making student loans D:go on providing financial support for college students

Good teachers matter. This may seem obvious to anyone who has a child in school or, for that matter, to anyone who has been a child in school. For a long time, though, researchers couldn’t actually prove that teaching talent was important. But new research finally shows that teacher quality is a close cousin to student achievement: A great teacher can cram one-and-a-half grades’ worth of learning into a single year, while laggards are lucky to accomplish half that much.
Yet, while we know now that better teachers are critical, flaws in the way that administrators select and retain them mean that schools don’t always hire the best.
Failing to recognize the qualities that make teachers truly effective and to construct incentives to attract and retain more of these top performers has serious consequences. Higher salaries draw more weak as well as strong applicants into teaching — applicants the current hiring system can’t adequately screen. Unless administrators have incentives to hire the best teachers available, it’s pointless to give them a larger group to choose from. Study after study has shown that teachers with master’s degrees are no better than those without. Job experience does matter, but only for the first few years, according to research by Hoover Institution’s Eric A. Hanushek. A teacher with 15 years of experience is no more effective, on average, than a teacher with five years of experience, but which one do you think is paid more
This toxic combination of rigid pay and steep rewards for seniority causes average quality to decline rather than increase as teacher groups get older. Top performers often leave the field early for industries that reward their excellence. Mediocre teachers, on the other hand, are soon overcompensated by seniority pay. And because they are paid more than their skills command elsewhere, these less-capable pedagogues settle in to provide many years-of ineffectual instruction.
So how can we separate the wheat from the chaff in the teaching profession To make American schools competitive, we must rethink seniority pay, the value of master’s degrees, and the notion that a teacher can teach everything equally well — especially math and science — without appropriate preparation in the subject.
Our current education system is unlikely to accomplish this dramatic rethinking. Imagine, for a moment, that American cars had been free in recent decades, while Toyotas and Hondas sold at full price. We’d probably be driving Falcons and Corvairs today. Free public education suffers from a lack of competition in just this way. So while industries from aerospace to drugs have transformed themselves in order to compete, public schooling has stagnated.
School choice could spark the kind of reformation this industry needs by motivating administrators to hire the best and adopt new strategies to keep top teachers in the classroom. The lesson that good teachers matter should be taught, not as a theory, but as a practice.
According to the text, which of the following is true

A:It’s always true that teachers’ quality is important. B:Salaries in school are higher than those in other industries. C:The average quality of the teachers in America is declining. D:Administrators have many effective ways to choose best teachers.

Text 2

A:It’s always true that teachers’ quality is important. B:Salaries in school are higher than those in other industries. C:The average quality of the teachers in America is declining. D:Administrators have many effective ways to choose best teachers.

The case for college has been accepted without question for more than a generation. All high school graduates ought to go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more money, become "better" people, and learn to be more responsible citizens than those who don’t go.
But college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who don’t fit the pattern are becoming more numerous, and more obvious. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxi; college students interfere with each other’s experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies, and drop out--often encouraged by college administrators.
Some observers say that the fault is with the young people themselves--they are spoiled and they are expecting too much. But that’s a condemnation of the students as whole, and doesn’t explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame the state of the world, and they are partly right. We have been told that young people have to go to college because our economy can’t absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disappointed graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-year-olds, either.
Some administrators, some educators and campus watchers have openly begun to suggest that college may not be the best, the proper, the only lace for every young person after the completion of high school. Perhaps college doesn’t make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, or quick to learn things.

A:Cheat in school is on the rise. B:Some people concerned challenge the traditional view that college is the best place for high school graduates. C:College administrators should be responsible for the increasing number of drop-out. D:College education is not the first choice for intelligent peopl

The case for college has been accepted without question for more than a generation. All high school graduates ought to go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more money, become "better" people, and learn to be more responsible citizens than those who don’t go.
But college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who don’t fit the pattern are becoming more numerous, and more obvious. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxi; college students interfere with each other’s experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies, and drop out--often encouraged by college administrators.
Some observers say that the fault is with the young people themselves--they are spoiled and they are expecting too much. But that’s a condemnation of the students as whole, and doesn’t explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame the state of the world, and they are partly right. We have been told that young people have to go to college because our economy can’t absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disappointed graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-year-olds, either.
Some administrators, some educators and campus watchers have openly begun to suggest that college may not be the best, the proper, the only lace for every young person after the completion of high school. Perhaps college doesn’t make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, or quick to learn things.

A:Cheat in school is on the rise. B:Some people concerned challenge the traditional view that college is the best place for high school graduates. C:College administrators should be responsible for the increasing number of drop-out. D:College education is not the first choice for intelligent peopl

(D)

Diana Jacobs thought her family had a workable plan to pay for college for her 21-year-old twin sons: a combination of savings, income, scholarships, and a modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job, and the plan fell apart.
"I have two kids in college, and I want to say ’come home,’ but at the same time I want to provide them with a good education," says Jacobs.
The Jacobs family did work out a solution: They asked and received more aid form the schools, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum amount through the federal loan (贷款) program. They will each graduate with $20,000 of debt, but at least they will be able to finish school.
With unemployment rising, financial aid administrators expect to hear more families like the Jacobs. More students are applying for aid, and more families expect to need student loans. College administrators are concerned that they will not have enough aid money to go around.
At the same time, tuition(学费)continues to rise. A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while average family income rose just 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade.
"If we go on this way for another 25years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education," says Patrick M. Callan, president of the center. "The middle class families have been financing it through debt. They will send kids to college whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt."
Financial aid administrators have been having a hard time as many companies decide that student loans are not profitable enough and have stopped making them. The good news, however, is that federal loans account for about three quarters of student borrowing, and the government says that money will flow uninterrupted.

A:provide most students will scholarships B:dismiss some financial aid administrators C:stop the companies from making student loans D:go on providing financial support for college students

(D)

Diana Jacobs thought her family had a workable plan to pay for college for her 21-year-old twin sons: a combination of savings, income, scholarships, and a modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job, and the plan fell apart.
"I have two kids in college, and I want to say ’come home,’ but at the same time I want to provide them with a good education," says Jacobs.
The Jacobs family did work out a solution: They asked and received more aid form the schools, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum amount through the federal loan (贷款) program. They will each graduate with $20,000 of debt, but at least they will be able to finish school.
With unemployment rising, financial aid administrators expect to hear more families like the Jacobs. More students are applying for aid, and more families expect to need student loans. College administrators are concerned that they will not have enough aid money to go around.
At the same time, tuition(学费)continues to rise. A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while average family income rose just 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade.
"If we go on this way for another 25years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education," says Patrick M. Callan, president of the center. "The middle class families have been financing it through debt. They will send kids to college whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt."
Financial aid administrators have been having a hard time as many companies decide that student loans are not profitable enough and have stopped making them. The good news, however, is that federal loans account for about three quarters of student borrowing, and the government says that money will flow uninterrupted.

A:provide most students will scholarships B:dismiss some financial aid administrators C:stop the companies from making student loans D:go on providing financial support for college students