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 kids 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.
We are the first society in which parents expect to learn from their children. Such a topsy-turvy situation has come to abort at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, ours is an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids. In the Old Country, that is, Europe, hope was in the father, and how much wealth he could accumulate and pass along to his children. In the growth pattern of America and its ever-expanding frontier, the young man was ever advised to GO WEST； the father was ever inheriting from his son. Kids Country may be the inevitable result.
Kids Country is not all bad. America is the greatest country in the world to grow up in because it is Kids Country. We not only wear kids clothes and eat kids food； we dream kids dreams and make them come true. It was, after all, a boys game to go to the moon.
If in the old days children did not exist, it seems equally true today that adults, as a class, have begun to disappear, condemning all of us to remain boys and girls forever, jogging and doing push-ups against eternity.
21. The author uses the example of the Renaissance painting to show that. A. adults showed less concern for children than we do now B. adults were smaller and thinner at that time, but they still had lots of work to do C. children looked and acted like adults at that time D. children were not permitted to appear in family paintings at that time
22. In the third paragraph, “the Old Country” is contrasted with America . A. to show differences in family size B. to show differences in attitudes towards family relations C. to show two kinds of geography D. to show two different kinds of economic relations between generations
23. Going to the moon is an example of . A. Americas dreams and creativity B. Americas childish and queer behavior C. Why America hasnt grown up D. Why America is considered as the greatest country in the world
24. According to the passage, which of the following is true？
A. It is very difficult for the middle-aged to live in Ameri
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