Directions: Read the following text and then answer the questions by marking T if the statement is true or F if the statement is not true. Mark your answers on Answer Sheet 1 (10 points)

　　Prospects of Education

　　In the information Age---an era defined by knowledge workers---nothing will be as important as education. Yet today's educational system is a creature of the Industrial Age, a factory system for mass-producing minds. That is simply not up to the task of preparing our children---and us---for the rigors（严酷）of the Digital Age. Ours is an era of nearly unfathomable expansion of knowledge. It's said that about 80 percent of all the scientists who ever lived are alive and working today. The sum total of the world's knowledge is roughly doubling every four years.

　　Experts devoted to full-time study of their specialties can't keep up with all the cutting-edge developments in their fields. How can we expect that of teachers---let alone students?

　　And this is just the beginning. We're only now computerizing our entire society and building an information infrastructure（基础设施）that will push everything into warp speed.

　　Fortunately, the same digital technologies that are spurring on this knowledge glut can also help provide a way out. Individualized learning will turn teachers into mentors.

　　Until now, a teacher facing a class of 30 kids had to decide whether to gear the lesson to the fast or slow kids and to choose the one style of learning in which the whole class would proceed.

　　Multimedia personal computers, using text and sound and photos and video, hold the potential to tailor lessons to the peculiarities of each individual mind in the room. They'll proceed at that individual's pace and be driven by the individual's natural curiosity.

　　These new technologies will provide tools to better address the complex learning needs of the modern student.

　　However, that means the time-honored role of the teacher almost certainly will change dramatically. No longer will teachers be the fonts of knowledge with all the answers that children seek. They can't possibly fulfill that role in the coming era. Instead they'll be more like mentors (指导者) or coaches who inspire or motivate the students to find the answers themselves. They'll be problem-solvers who help keep the students moving down their own learning tracks.

　　The purpose of teaching will essentially remain the same---but the style will be much different. Schools will be smaller and more plentiful, like today's day care.

　　Multimedia interactive learning will make possible a much more decentralized educational system and will do away with the need to physically gather students in large numbers at central sites.

　　Future education may be lifelong independent learning. In the Digital Age, formal education will be more focused on learning how to learn rather than on mastering a specific body of knowledge that will quickly become obsolete (陈旧过时的).

　　The emphasis will be on becoming adept at the learning tools, on mastering concepts quickly, on thinking critically, on expressing oneself effectively---preparing the student for lifelong independent learning.

　　In a very real sense, our education will never end. That may mean that our formal education will technically end much earlier than it does now. (Do we all really need the standard 12 to 16 years of study before we're allowed to get on with our lives?)

　　Or it may mean that we'll maintain lifelong relationships with institutions of higher education---ones that might not be the same colleges and universities that we look to today. Perhaps we'll never graduate.

　　41. Though nothing is more important than education in the Information Age, the present educational system is inadequate to prepare children for the requirements of the new era.

　　42. Teachers are devoted to full-time study of their specialties, and are therefore capable of keeping up with the latest developments in their own fields.

　　43. The new technologies will help deal with the complex learning needs of the modern students.

　　44. In the Digital Age, educational focus will be on learning how to learn rather than on mastering a specific body of knowledge.

　　45. In the future, our education will end much earlier than it does now so we can graduate at an earlier age.