a billion people, two-thirds of them women, will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or write their names,” warns UNICEF in a new report, “The State of the World’s Children 1999.”
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, points out that the illiterate “live in more desperate poverty and poorer health” than those who can read and write. The shocking number — 1 billion people illiterate — generated frightening headlines in major newspapers.
Poverty in the poorest countries is indeed something that ought to concern all of us, especially in a season when we pause to remember the less fortunate. But as usual, there’s more to this striking statistic than UNICEF tells us. Consider three points.
The Good News. Bad news sells, news watchers tell us. And 1 billion people unable to read and write — about 16 percent of world population — is certainly bad news. But let’s deconstruct the news.
First, UNICEF’s actual number is 855 million, a figure that did not appear in major newspapers. That’s still a large number, but it is 15 percent less than 1 billion.
America the Beautiful (B)
The billows .... sleep.
Personification is when you give a human characteristic to something, in this case, sleep
Answer: The world of Forms is “ideal” rather than material; Forms, and beauty, are non-physical ideas for Plato. Yet beauty is objective in that it is not a feature of the observer's experience.
The correct answer is option one.
Mrs Pontellier and Madame Ratignolle are friends who have opposite characteristics and represent different female roles. The first does not have a special bond with her children - she makes them carry her paints and things into the house. The children do not stop to talk to her - they just want to see what is in the bonbon box.
On the other hand, Mrs Pontellier sees Madame Ratignolle as a graceful and refined woman with a stronger maternity spirit. She has a more loving relationship with her children, since they embrace her as soon as they see her.
