单项选择题  Free schools are flourishing in the UK. More than 400 free schools have either opened or been approved to open across England     1    . These schools have been made possible by the hundreds of teachers, parents and charities working in their own time to go through a     2    application process to bring their     3    of a new school to life.     4    these schools proving so popular, parents and groups continue to come forward in significant numbers to set them up. The government’s commitment to expand the program with another new 500 schools is     5    a logical next step.
    Importantly these schools are already making a(n)     6    to the education of thousands of pupils around the country. Over 70% of those inspected have been judged good or outstanding by inspectors, and     7    they are being opened where they are most needed. There are far more free schools in     8    local communities than in wealthy neighborhoods. Obviously free schools can play a role in     9    the current shortage of school places. For free schools to continue to have the biggest impact, they must be allowed to bring in new ideas and challenge existing schools in areas where low     10    have been accepted for far too long.

单项选择题  Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed a disturbing trend during her decade as the former dean of freshmen at Stanford University. Incoming students were brilliant and accomplished and virtually flawless, on paper. But with each year, more of them seemed incapable of taking care of themselves.
    At the same time, parents were becoming increasingly involved in their children’s lives. They talked to their children multiple times a day and rushed in to personally intervene whenever something difficult happened.
    Lythcott-Haims came to believe that parents in wealthy communities have been hindering their children by trying so hard to protect the children from any disappointment, failure and hardship. Such "over-helping" might assist children in developing impressive résumés for college applications, but it also deprives them of the chance to learn who they are, what they love and how to navigate the world, she argues in her book.
    "We want so badly to help them by shepherding them from milestone to milestone and by shielding them from failure and pain. But over-helping is devastating," she writes. "It can leave young adults without the strengths of skill, will and character that are needed to know themselves and to craft a life."
    "Don’t call me a parenting expert," she said in an interview. "I’m interested in humans’ thriving, and it turns out that over-parenting is getting in the way."
    She cites statistics on the rise of depression and other mental health problems among the young people. She has seen the effects up close: she lives in a community that, following a string of suicides in the past year, has undertaken a period of soul-searching about what parents can do to stem the pressure that young people face.
    Her book tour is taking her to more school auditoriums and parent groups than bookstores. She tells stories about over-involvement and shares statistics about problems in young people, which she hopes will spark change in communities where helicopter parents are making themselves and their children miserable.
    "Our job as a parent is to put ourselves out of a job," she said. "We need to know that our children are able to get up in the morning and take care of themselves."
    And how can parents help their children become serf-sufficient Teach them the skills they’ll need in real life and make sure they practice those skills on their own. And have them do chores. "Chores build a sense of accountability. They build life skills and a work ethic," she said.

单项选择题  The death of Harambe, the endangered lowland gorilla (大猩猩) shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old crawled through a barrier and fell into his enclosure, was a shocking event. After such a tragedy, it seems someone must be blamed, but fingers are pointed in the wrong direction.
    Many in the animal protection community suggest that Harambe wasn’t a threat to the boy. Gorillas tend not to be aggressive, and if Harambe wanted to hurt the child, he could have done so immediately, not after playing with this curious creature for 10 minutes.
    Did the gorilla care staff do enough to separate Harambe from the child If they could lure the female gorillas away, why not Harambe Some activists are calling the killing of Harambe an act of cowardice by incompetent zoo employees. Others are arguing that the boy’s mother is to blame. How could she let her child fall into a wild-animal enclosure How long did she let her child wander unsupervised before he got through the barriers Some people suggest that she be deemed legally negligent and charged with causing the death of an endangered animal.
    For me, the real question is not who to blame, but why anyone was in a situation in which they had to make a choice between the life of a human child and the life of an endangered teenage gorilla. Keeping wild animals in captivity is detrimental to their health. This tragic choice arose only because we keep animals in zoos. So why have zoos
    One of the reasons often given is that zoos protect endangered wild animals. A few zoos, including the Cincinnati Zoo, do fund conservation efforts that are praiseworthy, but captive animals, especially large mammals born in captivity, like Harambe, cannot be "returned to the wild." These sensitive, smart, long-lived gorillas are destined to remain confined, never to experience the freedom of the wild. They are, at best, symbols meant to represent their wild counterparts. Zoos distort our understanding of these wonderful beings and perpetuate the notion that they are here for our purposes.
    If we really need someone to blame, maybe we should look at our society, which supports these types of institutions of captivity. If zoos were more like shelters where captive animals are treated with respect, free from screaming crowds and external dangers, no one would have had to decide to kill Harambe. Kids could see gorillas in cinemas, where their curiosity could be safely satisfied.

单项选择题  Free schools are flourishing in the UK. More than 400 free schools have either opened or been approved to open across England     1    . These schools have been made possible by the hundreds of teachers, parents and charities working in their own time to go through a     2    application process to bring their     3    of a new school to life.     4    these schools proving so popular, parents and groups continue to come forward in significant numbers to set them up. The government’s commitment to expand the program with another new 500 schools is     5    a logical next step.
    Importantly these schools are already making a(n)     6    to the education of thousands of pupils around the country. Over 70% of those inspected have been judged good or outstanding by inspectors, and     7    they are being opened where they are most needed. There are far more free schools in     8    local communities than in wealthy neighborhoods. Obviously free schools can play a role in     9    the current shortage of school places. For free schools to continue to have the biggest impact, they must be allowed to bring in new ideas and challenge existing schools in areas where low     10    have been accepted for far too long.

单项选择题  Teams have become the basic building—blocks of organizations. Recruitment ads routinely call for "team players". Business schools grade their students in part on their performance in group projects. Office managers knock down walls to encourage team-building. Numerous companies were either in the middle of restructuring or about to embark on it, and restructuring meant putting more emphasis on teams.
    Companies are abandoning functional silos and organizing employees into cross-disciplinary teams that focus on particular products, problems or customers, with more power to run their own affairs and more time to work with each other rather than reporting upwards. A network of teams is replacing the conventional hierarchy.
    However, teams are not always the answer—teams may provide more insight, creativity and knowledge, but teamwork may also lead to confusion, delay and poor decision-making.
    It is noted that teams are hindered by problems of coordination and motivation that erode the benefits of collaboration. High-flyers forced to work in teams may be undervalued and free-riders empowered. Groupthink may be unavoidable. Less than 10% of the supposed members agree on who exactly is on the team. Agreeing on its purpose is harder.
    Profound changes in the workforce are making teams trickier to manage. Teams work best if their members have a strong common culture. This is hard to achieve when, as is now the case in many big firms, a large proportion of staff are temporary contractors. Teamwork improves with time: 73% of the incidents in a civil-aviation database occurred on a crew’s first day of flying together.
    Companies need to think harder about managing teams to keep teams small and focused. A new study finds that the best way to ensure employees are "engaged" is to give them more control over where and how they do their work—which may mean liberating them from having to do everything in collaboration with others.
    However, organizations need to ask themselves whether teams are the best tools for the job. Team-building skills are in short supply: Deloitte reports that only 12% of the executives understand the way people work together in networks and only 21% feel capable of building cross-functional teams. Slackly managed teams can become hotbeds of distraction—employees routinely complain that they can’t get their work done because they are forced to spend too much time in meetings or in noisy offices. Even in the age of open-plan offices and social networks some work is best left to the individual.