The author's tone in the concluding para is _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The theme of the passage is _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

From the passage, we can deduce that Malcolm X was _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The party instrumental in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship was _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

The success of the UNO in 1990 was _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

The present day history texts reveal that _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The bone of contention between the president and the other members of the ruling party is _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

The opening lines of the third last paragraph _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The strike by the miners in support of the Russian President indicates _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

The Russian president forced a show down with the congress because _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

One of the reasons for the people to favor the President's rival is _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

By ''bulldogs under a carpet'', the author means that _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

The author's period of origination and existence is easily decipherable from the passage.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The author, by having some irons in fire implies that _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

The speaker of the Congress of Peoples Deputies wants the constitutional referendum of April to be cancelled because _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.

The history books of the fifties _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

We can deduce from the passage that the history books of the fifties _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The author points out that today's history is _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

The example of the ''Salad Bowl'' is used to highlight the fact that _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

There is a fear of civil war in Nicaragua because _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

The Somoza dynasty during their rule of dictatorship owned _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

The present crisis in Nicaragua was started because _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

After three years of Ms. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro's presidency, Nicaragua is still in a state of political crisis. The country is paralyzed by a struggle between her and a divided legislature and soured by the government's inability to meet the basic economic needs of the populace.

Ms. Chamorro was elected in February 1990 after a 12 year long civil war between the then ruling Sandinistas and the United States backed Contra guerrillas. The National Endowment for Democracy which was funded by the US Congress to support non–Sandinista opposition groups in Nicaragua played the most visible role in forming Ms. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition.

The UNO consists of 14 parties with widely differing ideologies – conservatives and Christian democrats to liberals and communists. During the election campaign the Sandinista National Liberation Front or FSLN was depicted as a party of "war, poverty, death and misery". UNO was identified as the party of peace and economic recovery. UNO's platform included plans to expand the market economy, abolish compulsory military service and radically reduce the size of the armed forces.

What truly united its diverse membership, however, was the common objective of defeating the FSLN. The FSLN had led a successful socialist revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and then fought a bitter, low intensity war unleashed by the US under the guise of restoring democracy in Central America. The objective of this US sponsored Contra "revolution" was to overthrow the leftwing Sandinistas. The war shattered the economy and the Sandinista revolution, opening the way for UNO's victory in 1990.

Under Ms. Chamorro, the UNO won an absolute majority. The Sandinistas remained the single largest party with 41 per cent of the votes. Ms Chamorro promised to make Nicaragua a full and peaceful democracy. The US also promised to usher in a new era of progress with an increased dose of aid.

Today, UNO is a house divided. The Sandinistas which brought the members together is ironically the source of disunity now. There is much criticism of Ms. Chamorro and her close advisers within the coalition for having made an "illegitimate and immoral marriage with the FSLN". Among other things, as part of her national reconciliation policy Ms. Chamorro allowed the Sandinistas to retain their hold over the army and police. At least six of the 14 UNO partners support the formation of a new opposition group. Bitterness has run so deep that the UNO has formally declared itself the opposition. Leaders refuse to meet Ms. Chamorro.

The present crisis was sparked off when the comptroller general, Mr. Guillermo Potoy, was dismissed allegedly to shield a colleague of Ms. Chamorro, Mr. Antonio Lacayo Oyanguren, from charges of corruption. Mr. Potoy made public a report accusing the former deputy minister, Mr. Antonio lbarra, of misappropriating $1,000,000 in foreign aid. Ms. Chamorro's chief advisor, Mr. Lacayo, was charged with responsibility for the actions of his former deputy.

The scandal surfaced just weeks after the president had dissolved the National Assembly directorate. Using executive powers Ms Chamorro named a new directorate that held new elections. UNO refused to participate leaving the legislative leadership to the Sandinistas and breakaway groups from the UNO.

The first move of the revised assembly was to fire the comptroller general on a written request from the president. The charges were dismissed as an attempt by rightwing elements in the ruling party to discredit Ms. Chamorro's government for collaborating with FSLN on security and economic matters.

In Nicaragua corruption can make or break a government. The Sandinista revolution was triggered by corruption surrounding relief aid to the 1972 Nicaraguan quake victims. It was this act that sparked off the long crusade of Pedro Joquin Chamorro, Ms. Chamorro's husband and the editor of La Prensa against the dynasty. The assassination of Joquin Chamarro was just the sort of tinder needed to ignite what the New York Times called a "national mutiny".

The 1972 scandal gave the FSLN the opportunity to enter Nicaraguan politics. Whether they will be able to repeat the feat in 1993 is doubtful. One of the contentious issues facing Ms. Chamorro's government concerns land and property expropriated during the Sandinista regime. The president issued three decrees and a presidential agreement in September last year in an attempt to quash the issue. This included 4,600 redressed claims from property owners. The agreement specified confiscated property be returned to the rightful owners or that they be compensated.

To avoid unrest in the rural areas she specified it would be impossible to return land confiscated and distributed among the peasants now holding legal title or those confiscated for public purposes. Property owned by the former dictator and the national guard was also not to be returned. Though Ms. Chamorro's decision was politically sensible it angered UNO's ultra right and external paymasters in Washington.

Prior to 1979 1.5 percent of Nicaraguan big landowners possessed 41.5 per cent of all cultivable land. The Somoza dynasty controlled a major chunk of the arable land, dominating 40 percent of the rice production.

As punishment for the failure to reverse land reform the US blocked $ 100,000,000 worth of aid. The Sandinista Chamorro link up antagonized US legislators like Senator Jesse Helms. The Bush administration held up $104 million assistance for months to register its dissatisfaction. Half the aid is still being withheld despite the desperate state of Nicaragua. Managua now awaits the response of the new reformist government in Washington.

Nicaragua's economy is in the doldrums. Fifty–three percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed, inflation is astronomically high, more so after the devaluation of the currency by 20 percent.

In addition to this is the fear of civil war, which may erupt any time. The creation of an armed ultra left force comprising former Sandinista operatives is a warning shot. This group killed three prominent landlords or ranchers trying to reclaim land confiscated during Sandinista rule. The leftist punishment front also set off a number of small bomb blasts in schools and private enterprises. Former Contras and soldiers of the Sandinista army have also formed armed groups.

A series of assassinations and clashes in the north indicate the revival of the violence which wrecked the country in the last one decade. Mr. Alredo Caesar, one of Ms. Chamarro's critics and a former Contra, says. "I cannot say there is war, but what we have are the preparations for war. If institutional channels for change remain closed, I am afraid within 90 days we will see a reactivation of the war".

No one wants to return to the days of civil war. "It is a tragedy even to talk about returning to war," said Mr. Sergio Ramirez, leader of the Sandinista legislative delegation. "To stabilize the democratic process, Ms Chamorro needs to complete her term as president."

The Sandinista electoral defeat was projected by the Western media as another example of socialism's failure and how in free elections pro–Western forces always prevail over leftists. The reality was that it was US pressure and consequent economic deprivation and civil war that convinced a minority of voters to opt for the UNO. After the elections the US lifted its trade embargo.

Washington still has a stake in keeping UNO one party. The FSLN is the largest single party. Both the US and Ms. Chamorro have an interest in keeping UNO together and US aid is being used to cement the coalition. Even then the present government will find it difficult to consolidate power and resolve fundamental contradictions within its ranks.

Halfway through her tenure, Ms. Chamorro should now ask Nicaraguans the same question she asked in 1990: "Are you better off now than you were six years ago"? The answer then was no. One can presume what the answer will be now. It remains to be seen if Ms. Chamorro, once the darling of the West, will be able to lead "free Nicaragua" for another three years.

As of now, the author's age can be maximum of _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

We can definitely deduce from the passage that _______.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

Everything about the Russian constitution is true, except that

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

The parliament refused to dissolve, declaring Yeltsin's presidency unconstitutional. In open rebellion against Yeltsin, it appointed its own acting president. On September 28, public protests against Yeltsin's government began in earnest in the streets of Moscow, and the first blood was shed. Yeltsin's supporters surrounded the parliament building (the "Russian White House"), where the representatives and their newly–appointed leaders were staying, with barricades. For the next week, protests in the street grew, until a mass uprising erupted in the city on October 2. Russia was on the brink of civil war. At this point the military threw their support behind Yeltsin, besieged the parliament building, and slowly forced the opposing faction out over the next six days. By October 8, the "second October Revolution" had been crushed. The ten–day conflict had seen the most deadly street fighting in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917: 187 had been killed and 437 wounded.

As the present round of grappling between Mr. Boris Yeltsin and the speaker of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies, Mr. Ruslan Khasbulatov, painfully shows democracy has changed nothing except to remove the carpet. The origins of the present no-holds-barred conflict between congress and president lies in the country's tatterdemalion constitution. Written by Joseph Stalin and amended to the point of illegibility it is a blueprint for chaos. The division of powers between the various arms of government is so ill defined, a crisis would have been possible even in the best of times. Today with Mr. Yeltsin attempting drastic economic changes that would undercut the influence of the new apparatchiki industrialists, conflict is all but written in the stars.

For months, congress has stymied Mr. Yeltsin's reforms. He reacted last: year by forcing a showdown that only revealed how much his own support had slipped. It was a defeat that cost him his prime ministership. Ever since, the balance of power has been tilting in Mr. Khasbulatov's favour. Hyperinflation and his subservience to the West have further eroded Mr. Yeltsin's support. The two rivals put together an agreement earlier this year by which Mr. Yeltsin handed over more authority to the legislature in return for a constitutional referendum in April. Canceling this referendum is the primary aim of Mr. Khasbulatov and the deputies because it would result in elections that would unseat most of them. Despite the resolutions stripping him of authority Mr. Yeltsin still has some irons in the fire. The military is not one of then. He has, however, three key sources of support that Mr. Khasbulatov cannot ignore. One is the West. Mr. Bill Clinton's recent statement is a blunt warning that the Russian president is the West's favoured man in the Kremlin. Throw him out and Russia's aid lifeline comes under risk. Another is the regional leadership. Mr. Yeltsin has gone out of his way to woo the various heads of the autonomous republics whose clout has increased as Moscow's grasp has grown feebler. Finally, and most important, is that Mr. Yeltsin is still miles ahead of Mr. Khasbulatov and his ilk in populate. The president has the legitimacy of an election behind him. His present political setbacks and his frustrations with the constitutional setup will tempt Mr. Yeltsin to take a leaf from August 1991 and return to the politics of the streets. The recent strike threat by Siberian miners in favour of the president is an indication of what path Mr. Yeltsin will take if pushed far enough. Until Russia straightens out its government, extra–constitutional means of wielding power will remain a perpetual temptation and administrative paralysis the norm rather than the exception.