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  3. The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politi

The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politi

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问题     The relationship between formal education and economic growth in poor countries is widely misunderstood by economists and politicians alike. Progress in both area is undoubtedly necessary for the social, political and intellectual development of these and all other societies; however, the conventional view that education should be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic development in poor countries is wrong. We are fortunate that is it, because new educational systems there and putting enough people through them to improve economic performance would require two or three generations. The findings of a research institution have consistently shown that workers in all countries can be trained on the job to achieve radical higher productivity and, as a result, radically higher standards of living.
    Ironically, the first evidence for this idea appeared in the United States. Not long ago, with the country entering a recessing and Japan at its pre-bubble peak, the U.S. workforce was derided as poorly educated and one primary cause of the po or U.S. economic performance. Japan was, and remains, the global leader in automotive-assembly productivity. Yet the research revealed that the U.S. factories of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota achieved about 95 percent of the productivity of their Japanese counterparts—a result of the training that U.S. workers received on the job.
    What is the real relationship between education and economic development? We have to suspect that continuing economic growth promotes the development of education even when governments don’t force it. After all, that’s how education got started. When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers 10,000 years ago, they didn’t have time to wonder much about anything besides finding food. Only when humanity began to get its food in a more productive way was there time for other things.
    As education improved, humanity’ s productivity potential increased as well. When the competitive environment pushed our ancestors to achieve that potential, they could in turn afford more education. This increasingly high level of education is probably a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the complex political systems required by advanced economic performance. Thus poor countries might not be able to escape their poverty traps without political changes that may be possible only with broader formal education. A lack of formal education, however, doesn’ t constrain the ability of the developing world’s workforce to substantially improve productivity for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn’ t developing more quickly there than it is.
The author holds in paragraph 1 that the importance of education in poor countries______.
选项 A、is subject to groundless doubts
B、has fallen victim to bias
C、is conventionally downgraded
D、has been overestimated
答案D
解析 细节题。短文第一段中间部分指出the conventional view that educationshould be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic developmentin poor countries is wrong．即传统观点认为：在贫穷国家，教育是促进经济快速发展的重要因素之一。这种观点是错误的。由此可知，作者认为，在贫穷国家，教育的重要性被高估了。故答案为D。
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