In a few states where racial prejudice is serious, violence has so come to be taken for granted as a means of solving differences, that it is not even questioned. There are states where the white man imposes his rule by force; there are states where the black man protests by setting fire to cities and by looting and pillaging. Important people on both sides, who would in other respects appear to be reasonable men, get up and calmly argue in favor of violence – as if it were a legitimate solution, like any other. What is really frightening, what really fills you with despair, is the realization that when it comes to the crunch, we have made no actual progress at all. We may wear collars and ties instead of war-paint, but our instincts remain basically unchanged. The whole of the recorded history of the human race, that tedious documentation of violence, has taught us absolutely nothing. We have still not learnt that violence never solves a problem but makes it more serious. The sheer horror, the bloodshed, the suffering mean nothing. No solution ever comes to light the morning after when we dismally contemplate the smoking ruins and wonder what hit us.
The truly reasonable men who know where the solutions lie are finding it harder and harder to get a hearing. They are despised, mistrusted and even persecuted by their own kind because they advocate such apparently outrageous things as law enforcement. If half the energy that goes into violent acts were put to good use, if our efforts were directed at cleaning up the shabby houses at improving living-standards and providing education and employment for all, we would have gone a long way to arriving at a solution. Our strength is weakened by having to mop up the mess that violence leaves in its wake. In a well-directed effort, it would not be impossible to fulfill the ideals of a stable social programme. The benefits that can be derived from constructive solutions are everywhere apparent in the world around us. Genuine and lasting solutions are always possible, providing we work within the framework of the law.
Before we can even begin to reflect on peaceful co-existence between the races, we must appreciate each other's problems. And to do this, we must learn about them: it is a simple exercise in communication, in exchanging information. "Talk, talk, talk," the advocates of violence say, "all you ever do is talk, and we are none the wiser." It's rather like the story of the famous lawyer who carefully explained his case to the judge. After listening to a lengthy argument the judge complained that after all this talk, he was none the wiser. "Possible, my lord," the lawyer replied, "none the wiser, but surely far better informed." Knowledge is the necessary prerequisite to wisdom: the knowledge that violence creates the evils it pretends to solve.
【小题1】  What is the best title for this passage?

Recently a group of children in America poured some gasoline on a sleeping man and set him on fire. When caught, the children said they had done what they’d seen on TV.

The incidents make people angry who believe that American children are harmed by watching too much TV. They claim children can’t tell between the fiction of TV and reality, and TV distracts them from learning and makes them violent.

To estimate the impact of TV on young people, “Life” magazine hires a company to interview hundreds of school children in Nora Springs, Iowa and in Dallas, Texas. Although the two cities are very different, the company finds children in each city watch the same TV shows.

Many Iowa children, who watch an average of three hours of TV a day, recognizing that life on TV is rosier than what they experience. Their favourite shows are situation comedies about American families in trouble. Many boys like violent shows about police detectives or heroes, girls particularly soap operas-stories about families and friends.

On the whole, children find real violence on news programs hard to take. “If you see a bus crash on the news, it’s frightening,” one fifth grader says. By and large, the Iowa children agree that the best thing about TV is it makes you laugh.

Children in Dallas are savvier about programs of drug use on TV. “They don’t really show them doing it right. On TV they are not real.” A fifth grader says.

“Life” agrees with a 1988 study by the U. S Department of education that finds children are none the worse for watching TV. The study finds TV doesn’t have lasting effect on children. On the contrary, kids show good judgment about what they watch. “There are very few good shows on TV anymore,” a 10-year-old boy says.

While the debate about TV is so heated, the “Life” survey gives hope that American kids aren’t wasting three or four hours a day (what is worse, by the time young people enter college today, they will have devoted more time to watching television than they will spend in college). However, a child watching TV isn’t reading a good book or joining in healthful sports.

1.The main idea of the passage is       .

2.Children who see real violence on TV news programs        .

3.Children who enter college today        .

4.The “Life” survey of children’s TV habits        .

Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? Recently a test was given in the United States. Those tested included people of different ages, from 12 to 83. During the experi??ment, these people were given all kinds of breakfasts, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Special tests were set up to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten a certain kind of breakfast. The results show that if a person eats a proper breakfast, he or she will work with better effect than if he or she has no breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person works with his brains. If a student eats fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he will learn more quickly and listen with more attention to class.

Opposite to what many people believe, if you don't eat breakfast, you will not lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch, and end up gaining weight instead of losing. You will probably lose more weight if you reduce your other meals.

During the test, those who were tested were given ________.

A. no breakfast at all.            B. very rich breakfast.

C. little food for breakfast.         D. different breakfasts or none.

The results of the test show that ________.

A. breakfast has great effect on work and studies.

B. breakfast has little to do with a person’s work.

C. a person will work better if he has a simple breakfast.

D. those working with brains should have much for breakfast.

According to the passage, if a student does not eat breakfast, ________.

A. he will fall ill.

B. he will fail to listen to his teacher.

C. he will not make progress in his study.

D. his mind will work more slowly.

Dogs may help save the day in the Philippines, as they use their noses to smell out survivors buried by Friday’s mudslide(泥石流). The team of dogs arrived in the Philippines from Spain, and this Tuesday they were just beginning their work. Search officials told CNN they hope the recent rain will wash away the smell of rescue teams so the dogs can do their job more accurately.

The dogs were brought in after sound equipment found sounds coming from deep inside the ruins, at a place where a school stood before the mudslide covered it. The sounds could mean people are still alive under all the mud or it could just be the earth resettling.

On Monday, rescue workers worked at the school site until three in the morning, trying to locate survivors, and they will begin digging again as soon as the dogs think they find someone.

Human teams from the US, Malaysia, and Australia are all trying to help, too. But so far they have yet to locate any survivors. Rescue workers told CNN that an earlier report that 50 survivors had been found was false.

How did all that mud bury the village in the first place? On Friday, 2,400-foot Mt Kanabag turned into a mudslide after two weeks of constant rain weakened it. The mountain crumbled and the mud fell onto the village Guinsaugon, burying the 1,800 people who lived there . Out of the 300 houses in the village, only 3 were not covered by the mud . The village is on a southern Philippine Island called Levte. Rescue efforts have been difficult because the village takes six hours to reach from the nearest airport. Hopefully, the dogs can help their human friends find survivors.

According to the search officials’ words in the first paragraph, we can learn that_________

A.the smell of rescue teams can disturb the dogs

B.the dogs can follow the smell of rescue teams

C.the gods can’t smell the rescue teams

D.the dogs can tell the differences between people and rescue teams

 The main purpose of this passage is probably_______.

 A.to show the way to rescue the victims in the ruins

  B.to introduce the instruments to save victims in a disaster

  C.to tell readers that dogs can smell out victims buried in the ruins

  D.to show how to train dogs to save victims in a mudslide

How many survivors were found by the dogs?

  A. 50.           B. Only a few.           C. 1,800.          D. None.

The reason why the rescue work wasn’t going smoothly was probably that_______.

  A. the rain was heavy

  B. so many people were buried

  C.it was difficult to reach the village

  D.these is little chance to save the survivors

The underlined word “crumbled” in the last paragraph can be replaced by______.

  A. broke          B. shook              C. fell             D. moved

“Birds are not as loyal to their partners as you might think, with divorce, child abandonment and remarriage a common part of birds’ life,” a new book has shown. Author and biology professor Bridge Stutchbury, dispels the love-bird belief that birds pair up for life. “In terms of the top 10 beliefs about birds, the lasting pair bonds that we think about, do occur in some birds, but in most of the little songbirds that we studied, no,” the professor from York University in Toronto said. The divorce rate among greater flamingos is 99 percent.
Stutchbury’s book, The Private Lives of Birds, based on 20 years of research from radio filming and DNA testing shows male Acadian flycatchers fertilize(使受孕) females far away from their home nests, “ The main discovery is that so many birds do divorce for what humans would describe as selfish reasons,” Professor Stutchbury said. She noted that females may seek out males that are more colorful and better singers, or look to “step up in the world” and move to areas that are safer and have more food. “Females are looking for the highest quality male so that their children will be of high quality,” she added.
Professor Stutchbury said shorter summers may drive females to leave their nests before their young are fully grown up so they can quickly find new mates（配偶） and lay more eggs, leaving the males to feed the hungry chicks on their own.
Males can double their success in producing children by fertilizing neighboring females, but only “mates” care for the young, and some are none the wiser. “  They can’t tell when the egg comes out and whether it’s theirs or not,” She said. “They have no way to know.”
Divorce is surprisingly common among birds, and most live with one partner for only a few months or years. Divorce rates range from 99 percent in the greater flamingo to zero in the wandering albatross(信天翁).
【小题1】What does the underline word “dispels” mean?