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1、Design a reading lesson with three stages as required. Imagine that you would teach this text to a senior middle school class, think about the activities you might design for it.lAge is a relative concept. Each of us will know that people in their sixties who regard themselves as “old”, are therefor
2、e seen as old by everyone else. We will also know people in their seventies, eighties or even nineties who remain very much part of society and who are mentally if not physically agile.l“Old” also varies from country to country and place to place. The Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador, for example, is kn
3、own locally as the “Valley of Old Age” or the “Island of Immunity” where many people live to be over 100. no one really knows why, but a number of factors have been suggested, including the altitude, a mainly vegetable diet with little fat, reasonable work conditions, comparatively little stress, th
4、e beneficial effects of a certain kind of tree which recycles airand the relative isolation of the valley. Further down in South America, in Potosi in Bolivia, life expectancy is at the other extreme people dont expect to live beyond their 40th birthday. Mining is the main occupation. The miners and
5、 their families suffer from harsh conditions, poverty, overwork, accidents, silicosis and other forms of lung poisoning. Therefore, in Vilcabamba, you may not be considered “old” until you are 90. in Potosi, you might be “old” at 30.lSo if we cant even really generalize about the meaning of “old”, c
6、an we say that there is an “aging crisis”? Under current conditions and in the light of todays population predictions, I think the answer must be “yes”. As more and more people live longer and their numbers increase both in actual numbers and relative to the general population, there will be fewer p
7、eople to care for them if and when they need it. The dependency ratio, as it is called, is also affected by the increasing financial pressures put on families, particularly in the Third World. More and more women everywhere are working. Because women form the vast majority of careers, this also affe
8、cts the number of people able to support elderly members of the family. As governments reduce spending on pensions and health systems in an attempt to keep taxes low or to conform to the “structural adjustment” policies imposed by thelInternational Monetary Fund, it is old people who are likely to s
9、uffer most. For example, one of the main reasons the people in Africa or Asia or South America give for having large numbers of children is to “provide security” in old age. If people know that they could remain independent and yet be supported in their old age, then they would not feel the need to
10、have so many children. Nor would they feel the isolation from society that arises from not having children.lAs it is, “old” peopleboth in the North and the Southhave been increasingly isolated from the rest of society in retirement homes which were seen as the model of how to deal with old age. Anot
11、her model which claims to help people to live more independently is “care in the community”. What it usually means is “care in the family” and in most cases it comes from the need to find a cheap solution to the problem of caring for the old. This is all very well, but it puts the burden of caring v
12、ery much back into the familyusually the women. While families can in some cases provide the support needed, the breakdown of the extended family and the squeezing of household resources have often led to neglect of, rather than succor for, the elderly. When resources are stretched, the old are like
13、ly to be the ones who go without.lIt is precisely for this reason that in most of the world, “old” people continue to work until they die. They have no choice. They need to earn an incomehowever smallor they dont eat. Indeed, people may even have to work harder as they get old, taking on the manual
14、labor that younger people do not want to do. Many have to uproot themselvesold women who outlive their husbands are forced to leave their villages to seek work in the cities. In most Third World countries, older people figure as part of the huge informal economy, selling vegetables on the streets or
15、 recycling garbage.lThe World Bank has suggested a “three- pillar” approach to financing the old which is based entirely on pensions. But even according to the World Bank, an estimated 60 % of the worlds labour force and 70% of old people, are part of the informal economythey have no pension plan an
16、d are unlikely to save.l Kasturi Sen, a specialist on aging and policy issues, has quite a different strategy towards this problem. She calls it the “life-cycle” approach. The circumstances that people find themselves in when they are older, she says, is simply a continuation to the situation that they have been in throughout their lives. If you are poor, overworked and in ill-health when you
