Ireland now has one of the best education systems in the world. Class sizes are small, exam results are good and most children are happy to stay at school after the minimum(最低的) leaving age of sixteen. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    For years, Ireland had one of the most complicated(复杂的) education systems in the world. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Classes were large and the teaching was very traditional. As in many countries, teachers used to hit the children if they made mistakes. Fortunately, the punishment was not allowed in 1982.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} As a result, there were schools for the rich and schools for the poor. Boys and girls went to different schools. Nowadays, most schools are free and only about half the schools are either for girls or boys. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Girls do better than boys in their exams; more girls go to university and most teachers are women.

    At the end of secondary school, students take their final exams. Compulsory(必修的)subjects are maths, Irish and English. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Some of these, like business organization, help to prepare them for the world of work. This is very different from the past when Latin and Greek used to be the most important subjects.

A. In many ways, education is now a woman's world.

B. Parents used to pay for their children's education.

C. In addition, they must choose two or three extra subjects.

D. Public schools in Ireland are not run by the government.

E. It is easy to forget that the picture used to be very different.

F. Here, children do not learn any subjects but some basic skills.

G. There were many different kinds of school, but most of them had a lot in common.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    The National Gallery

    Description：

    The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.

    Layout：

    The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th- to 15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling．

    The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings, and artists include Leonardo da Vinci, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titan and Veronese.

    The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings, and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Claude and Vermeer．

    The East Wing houses 18th- to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.

    Opening Hours：

    The Gallery is open every day from 10 am. to 6 pm. (Fridays 10 am. to 9 pm.) and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.

Getting There：

    Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk), Leicester Square (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).

    In the years ahead, AI will raise three big questions for bosses and governments. One is the effect on jobs. Although bosses publicly praise the broad benefits AI will bring very much, their main interest lies in cutting costs. One European bank asked a technology company to find a way of reducing the staff in its operations department from 50,000 to 500. This special report has shown that AI-enhanced tools can help reduce staff in departments such as customer service and human resources by a large amount. The McKinsey Global Institute finds that by 2030 up to 375m people, or 14% of the global workers in companies or countries, could have their jobs automated away. Bosses will need to decide whether they are prepared to offer and pay for retraining, and whether they will give time off for it. Many companies say they are all for workers developing new skills, but not at the employer's expense.

    A second important question is how to protect privacy as AI spreads. The Internet has already made it possible to track people's digital（数字的）behaviour in extremely small detail. AT will offer even better tools for businesses to monitor consumers(客户) and workers, both online and in the physical world. Consumers are sometimes happy to go along with this if it results in personalised（个性化的）service. But AI probably brings privacy violations (侵犯) that are seen as shocking and morally unacceptable. In the wrong hands, useful technology could be against fair and equal treatment. Countries with a record of the careful watching of a person place, especially by the police or army and human-rights abuses already using AI to monitor political activity. The police around the world will use AI to spot criminals, but may also look on ordinary citizens secretly, in order to discover things or find out information about them. New rules will be needed to ensure agreement on what degree of monitoring is acceptable.

    The third question is about the effect of AI on competition in business. Today many firms are competing to provide AI-enhanced tools to companies. But a technology company that achieves artificial intelligence could race ahead of competitors, put others out of business and lessen competition. This is unlikely to happen in the near future, but if it did it would be of great concern.

    Failure is an unavoidable part of life. Though science has named some life skills that promise success, we're told over and over again that no great success was ever achieved without failure -- or many failed attempts. One of life's most important lessons, therefore, has to be how to handle failure best. But what is the message?

    For starters, ignore advice from anyone that tells you, "Don't beat yourself up about it," no matter how well-meaning they are. According to the new research from the University of Kansas, we absolutely should be beating ourselves up when we fail. Marketing professor Noelle Nelson and her team found that the more emotional a person's response is to failure, the more likely they are to achieve better results the next time they deal with a related task.

    The researchers carried out two experiments in which undergraduate students were required to perform specific tasks. In one experiment, they were asked to search online for a squeezer and report the lowest price they could find with the possibility of winning a $50 cash prize. However, the task was controlled, and all participants were told (by a computer) that the lowest price was $3.27 less than their reported price. Consequently, no participant won the cash prize. When the results were announced, some participants were asked to focus on their emotional response, and others on their cognitive (认知的) response. During the next similar task, participants who focused on their emotional response to failure made more effort than those who focused on a cognitive response.

    Everybody has their own unique challenges, responsibilities, duties, and projects, but these findings are related to all of us. Your personal failure may be a cake that fails to rise, a presentation that goes wrong, or a deadline that gets missed—it doesn't matter. What matters is how you react to it. Instead of thinking about the failure, let yourself feel bad about it. Then follow this advice on how to bounce back after your failure.

    Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28,1926. Since Lee's mother was mentally ill, she was raised by her father. She became very close to her father.

    The naughty Lee loved reading, and would make up stories with Truman, her neighbour who was two years older than her. Seeing her daughter's imagination, Lee's father gave her a typewriter.

Before her final year in the university of Alabama, Lee dropped out to become a writer. She moved to New York City where her childhood friend Truman was already established as a famous writer. While there, she worked on her first book—To Kill a Mockingbird. It won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was made into an Academy Award winning movie the following year. To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of six-year-old Scout and her brother who lived in the town of Maycomb Alabama with their single father Attics. Attics is a lawyer who defends the blacks. At a young age, Scout is exposed to the terrors of segregation(宗族隔离)。Then, in 2014, the first draft of a new book—Go Set a Watchman was discovered among Lee's papers. It is the story of 26-year-old Scout who returns to Maycomb to visit her father. She is shocked to find her father a changed man. Attics has turned into a segregationists! The story shows the mixed feelings Scout has for the changes that have taken place in her hometown and father.

    A loner for most of her life, Lee stayed unmarried, preferring to lead a small town life. On February 19, 2015, Lee passed away at the age of 89.

Richard Browning has been attracted by flight ever since his father took him into the hills to fly gliders (滑翔机). He has certainly been an adventurer. Richard took it upon himself to develop his own jet suit and began to experiment with some of his friends. He made quick progress. In 2017, he felt confident enough to start a company called Gravity Industries that could make jet suits. It took 15 months to develop the very first one. 

Five very small jet engines are built into the jet suit. These are powered by kerosene (煤油). Two engines are located on the pilot's arms and one is placed on the back. Each engine weighs less than two kilos and can produce22 kilos of thrust(推力). 

The pilot is able to control the direction and speed of the flight. He does this by small movements of the arms which require hours of practice. One wrong move and you could end up falling to the ground. 

Richard is not only in charge of his company; he is also the chief test pilot. He has spent hours and hours perfecting the correct moves to create a perfect flight. He was able to enter the Guinness Book of World Records in 2017 when he became the fastest man in a jet suit and flew at 51 kilometres per hour. Since then, he has presented his jet suit at 60 events in 20 different countries around the world. More recently, he flew alongside Brighton Pier on the south coast of England at 136 kilometres per hour! 

The objective of Richard's company has been to build a suit which members of the public can buy. The first went on sale in a department store in 2018 for f 340, 000. If you want to jet around your own hometown, it's time to start saving—or to work for Richard Browning.