Less is more
However, the fall in fertility is already advanced in most of the world. Over 80% of humanity lives in countries where the fertility rate is either below three and falling, or already two or less. This is thanks not to government limits but to modernisation and individuals’ desire for small families. Whenever the state has pushed fertility down, the result has been a blight. China’s one-child policy is a violation of rights and a demographic disaster, upsetting the balance between the sexes and between generations. China has a bulge of working adults now, but will bear a heavy burden of retired people after 2050. It is a lurid example of the dangers of coercion.

Enthusiasts for population control say they do not want coercion. They think milder policies would help to save the environment and feed the world. As the World Bank points out, global food production will have to rise by about 70% between now and 2050 to feed 9 billion. But if the population stays flat, food production would have to rise by only a quarter.

When Mr Simon won his bet he was able to say that rising population was not a problem: increased demand attracts investment, producing more. But this process only applies to things with a price; not if they are free, as are some of the most important global goods—a healthy atmosphere, fresh water, non-acidic oceans, furry wild animals. Perhaps, then, slower population growth would reduce the pressure on fragile environments and conserve unpriced resources?

That idea is especially attractive when other forms of rationing—a carbon tax, water pricing—are struggling. Yet the populations that are rising fastest contribute very little to climate change. The poorest half of the world produces 7% of carbon emissions. The richest 7% produces half the carbon. So the problem lies in countries like China, America and Europe, which all have stable populations. Moderating fertility in Africa might boost the economy or help stressed local environments. But it would not solve global problems.

There remains one last reason for supporting family planning: on some estimates, 200m women round the world—including a quarter of African women—want contraceptives and cannot get them. A quarter of pregnancies are unplanned. In our view, parents ought to decide how many children to bring into the world and when—not the state, or a church, or pushy grandparents. Note, though, that this is not an argument about the global environment but individual well-being. Moreover, family planning appears to do little directly to control the size of families: some studies have shown no impact at all; others only a modest extra one. Encouraging smaller families in the highest-fertility places would still be worth doing. It might boost the economy and reduce the pressure of population in some fragile places. But the benefits would probably be modest. And they would be no substitute for other sensible environmental policies, such as a carbon tax.
1.what is Malthusian pessimism ?
2.what leads to the low fertility in most of the world?
3.What does World Bank think about the family planning in China?
4.What is Simon's logic about growing population and its benefit environmentally?
5. 英文表述有点忘了，好像是关于人口与环境的关系，


III. 一篇英文作文400字以上，关于中国的计划生育政策。talk about the family planning in China and what you have learned above the passage and otherwise your life around you .差不多这个意思。和上篇阅读理解稍微联系一下。总分40分。

一月8号上午 8:30-11:30
英语翻译基础 总分 150
I. 英文翻译成中文词汇，15分
1. Austerity measures
2. UNESC
3. The US Senate
4. APEC
5. Washington  Post
6. NATO
7. Arab Spring
8. Gary Locke
9. Reuters
10. Wall Street  Journal
II. 中文词汇翻译成英文
1.十二五规划
2.十七届六中全会
3.全国人大
4.新华社
5.软实力
6.中美战略经济对话
7.上海合作组织
8.珠江三角州
9.西气东输
10.北京共识
III. 翻译下面划线文章，60分
Reforming education
The great schools revolution
Education remains the trickiest part of attempts to reform the public sector. But as ever more countries embark on it, some vital lessons are beginning to be learned
Sep 17th 2011 | DRESDEN, NEW YORK AND WROCLAW| from the print edition


FROM Toronto to Wroclaw, London to Rome, pupils and teachers have been returning to the classroom after their summer break. But this September schools themselves are caught up in a global battle of ideas. In many countries education is at the forefront of political debate, and reformers desperate to improve their national performance are drawing examples of good practice from all over the world.

Why now? One answer is the sheer amount of data available on performance, not just within countries but between them. In 2000 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at the OECD, a rich-country club, began tracking academic attainment by the age of 15 in 32 countries. Many were shocked by where they came in the rankings. (PISA’s latest figures appear in table 1.) Other outfits, too, have been measuring how good or bad schools are. McKinsey, a consultancy, has monitored which education systems have improved most in recent years.

Technology has also made a difference. After a number of false starts, many people now believe that the internet can make a real difference to educating children. Hence the success of institutions like America’s Kahn Academy (see article). Experimentation is also infectious; the more governments try things, the more others examine, and copy, the results.

Above all, though, there has been a change in the quality of the debate. In particular, what might be called “the three great excuses” for bad schools have receded in importance. Teachers’ unions have long maintained that failures in Western education could be blamed on skimpy government spending, social class and cultures that did not value education. All these make a difference, but they do not determine outcomes by themselves.

The idea that good schooling is about spending money is the one that has been beaten back hardest. Many of the 20 leading economic performers in the OECD doubled or tripled their education spending in real terms between 1970 and 1994, yet outcomes in many countries stagnated—or went backwards. Educational performance varies widely even among countries that spend similar amounts per pupil. Such spending is highest in the United States—yet America lags behind other developed countries on overall outcomes in secondary education. Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis at PISA, thinks that only about 10% of the variation in pupil performance has anything to do with money.

Many still insist, though, that social class makes a difference. Martin Johnson, an education trade unionist, points to Britain’s “inequality between classes, which is among the largest in the wealthiest nations” as the main reason why its pupils underperform. A review of reforms over the past decade by researchers at Oxford University supports him. “Despite rising attainment levels,” it concludes, “there has been little narrowing of longstanding and sizeable attainment gaps. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds remain at higher risks of poor outcomes.” American studies confirm the point; Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington claims that “non-school factors”, such as family income, account for as much as 60% of a child’s performance in school.
Yet the link is much more variable than education egalitarians suggest. Australia, for instance, has wide discrepancies of income, but came a creditable ninth in the most recent PISA study. China, rapidly developing into one of the world’s least equal societies, finished first.

Culture is certainly a factor. Many Asian parents pay much more attention to their children’s test results than Western ones do, and push their schools to succeed. Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea sit comfortably at the top of McKinsey’s rankings (see table 2). But not only do some Western countries do fairly well; there are also huge differences within them. Even if you put to one side the unusual Asians, as this briefing will now do, many Western systems could jump forward merely by bringing their worst schools up to the standard of their best.

So what are the secrets of success? Though there is no one template, four important themes emerge: decentralisation (handing power back to schools); a focus on underachieving pupils; a choice of different sorts of schools; and high standards for teachers. These themes can all be traced in three places that did well in McKinsey’s league: Ontario, Poland and Saxony.


IV 中文翻译成英文。60分。总共才6句话。考试的试题印错了2个地方。下面的是正确的。国务院新闻办发表《中国特色社会主义法律体系》白皮书，这是2011年10月27号发布的。以下是其中的一些内容。

社会实践是法律的基础，法律是实践经验的总结、提炼。社会实践永无止境，法律体系也要与时俱进。建设中国特色社会主义是一项长期的历史任务，完善中国特色社会主义法律体系同样是一项长期而又艰巨的任务，必须随着中国特色社会主义实践的发展不断向前推进。
法律的生命力在于实施。中国特色社会主义法律体系的形成，总体上解决了有法可依的问题，对有法必依（试卷中还是“有法可依”）、执法必严、违法必究提出了更为突出、更加紧迫的要求。中国将积极采取有效措施，切实保障宪法和法律的有效实施，加快推进依法治国、建设（试卷中居然是“将是”）社会主义法治国家的进程。