When students and parents are asked to grade subjects according to their importance, the arts are usually at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is only viewed as entertainment, but certainly not an education priority（优先）. This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is very important for all students.
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it shows their thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity（身份，特性）as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception（感知）that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts can express the emotive（情感的）meaning of the same thing. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.
The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language through which we express our fears, our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses.
Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, celebration, the value of peace and love.
So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.
【小题1】What can we learn from Paragraph 1?      

Carmen Arace Middle School is situated in the pastoral town of Bloomfield, Conn., but four years ago it faced many of the same problems as inner-city schools in nearby Hartford: low scores on standardized tests and dropping enrollment（入学注册）. Then the school’s hard-driving headmaster, Delores Bolton, persuaded her board to shake up the place by buying a laptop computer for each student and teacher to use, in school and at home. What’s more, the board provided wireless Internet access at school. Total cost: $2.5 million.

Now, an hour before classes start, every seat in the library is taken by students who cannot wait for getting online. Fifth-grade teacher Jen Friday talks about different kinds of birds as students view them at a colorful website. After school, students on buses pull laptops from backpacks to get started on homework. Since the computer arrived, enrollment is up 20%. Scores on state tests are up 35%.

Indeed, school systems in rural Maine and New York City also hope to follow Arace Middle School’s example. Governor Angus King had planned using $50 million to buy a laptop for all of Maine’s 17,000 seventh-graders – and for new seventh-graders each fall.

In the same spirit, the New York City board of education voted on April 12 to create a school Internet portal（入口）, which would make money by selling ads and licensing public school students. Profits（盈利）will also provide e-mail service for the city’s 1.1 million public school students. Profits will be used to buy laptops for each of the school system’s 87,000 fourth-graders. Within nine years, all students in grades 4 and higher will have their own computers.

Back in Bloomfield, in the meantime, most of the kinks have been worked out. Some students were using their computers to visit unauthorized（非法的）websites. But teachers have the ability to keep an eye on where students have been on the Web and to stop them. “That is the worst when they disable you,” says eighth-grade honors student Jamie Bassell. The habit is rubbing off on parents. “I taught my mom to use e-mail,” says another eighth-grader, Katherine Hypolite. “And now she’s taking computer classes. I’m so proud of her!”

1.The example of Carmen Arace Middle School in the passage is used to ______.

A. show the problems schools are faced with today

B. prove that a school without high enrollment can do well

C. express the importance of computers in modern education

D. tell that laptops can help improve students’ school performance

2.According to the writer, students in New York City’s public schools will ______.

A. enjoy e-mail service in the near future

B. make money by selling ads on websites

C. all have their own laptops within nine years

D. become more interested in their studies with laptops

3.The underlined word “kinks” in the last paragraph most probably means ______.

A. plans         B. projects       C. problems      D. products

4.From the passage we learn that ______.

A. a school Internet portal is the key to a laptop program

B. the laptop program also has a good influence on parents

C. students slowly accept the fact their online activities controlled

D. the laptop program in public school is mainly for the eighth-graders

阅读与回答问题，阅读下列短文，然后根据其内容回答问题。
During the summer holidays there will be a new schedule (时间表).
Changes for meal and library service hours and for bus schedules will be shown on the wall outside the dining room. Weekly film and concert schedules, which are being made, will be shown each Wednesday outside the library.
Buses to the town center will leave the North Beijing every hour on the half during the day. The dining room will serve three meals a day from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. during the weekdays and two meals from noon to 7:00p.m on weekends. The library will continue its usual hours during the weekdays, but have shorter hours on Saturdays and Sundays. The weekend hours are from noon to 5:00 p.m.
All students who want to use the library borrowing service must have a new summer card. This announcement (通知) will also be shown in the next week’s student newspaper.
【小题1】 What’s the main idea of this announcement ?
【小题2】When will the bus leave the North Beijing during the summer holiday?
【小题3】 Which schedule is not ready?
【小题4】 Is there going to be breakfast on weekends during the holiday?
【小题5】What do the students need if they want to borrow books during the holiday?

All students need to have good study habits(习惯). When you have good study habits, you can learn things quickly. You also remember them easily. Do you like to study in the living-room? This is not a good place because it is usuallytoo noisy. You need to study in a quiet place, like your bedroom. A quiet place will help you only think about one thing, and you will learn better.
Before you begin to study, do not forget to clean your desk. A good desk
light is important, too. You are feeling tired easily if there is not enough(足够的) light.
【小题1】When you have good study habits, you will __________.
A. learn things quickly   B. remember things easily    C. both A and B
【小题2】The living-room is not a good place for study because it is too ____.
A. quiet               B. noisy               C. clean
【小题3】You are feeling tired easily if the light is __________.
A. good               B. enough               C. bad
【小题4】You should remember to ___________ before you study.
A. tidy the room        B. clean the desk        C. turn on the light
【小题5】The best title(标题) for this passage is __________.
A. Good Study Habits    B. How to Study    C. Desk Light is important

All students need to have good habits (习惯): When you have good study habits, you can learn things quickly. You can also remember (记住) them easily.
Do you like to study in the living room? This is not a good place because it is usually too noisy. You need to study in a quiet place, like your bedroom. A quiet place will help you only think about one thing, and you will learn better.
Before you study, do not forget to clean your desk. A good desk light is important (重要的), too. You’ll feel tired easily if (如果) there is not enough light.
【小题1】When you have good study habits, you will ________.