56 In many countries, textbooks for children in elementary school give a false picture of women's lives. They often show women only as mothers and housewives. The women are seen caring for their families or doing simple tasks around the home. In reality, in many countries, the majority of women work outside the home. They may also have children and do housework, but at the same time, they have jobs. Their lives can be quite complicated as they try to balance their responsibilities at home and at work. Their situation is nothing like the situations shown in the school books. some educators believe that these book
57. Supermarket managers have all kinds of tricks to encourage people to spend to money. Their aim is to slow people down as they move through the supermarket. To do this, they place colorful displays in surprising places to catch the customers attention. They also make the aisles (walkways) near the cash registers narrower,so customers will not be able to move quickly with their shopping carts. Sometimes the floor is even slightly uphill people moving toward the cash registers. The idea behind these tricks is simple: If you make customers go slowly, they will
58. The guppy is a small fish that people often keep on bowls or tanks in their homes. In their bowls, guppies are harmless, but in the wild, the story is different. When some guppy owners in Nevada grew tired of their fish, they threw them in a small lake. The guppies then multiplied rapidly and ate all the food in the lake, so that there was none left for the native fish, which disappeared. The same thing has happened in a number of other laker in the western United States, and now at least one species of fish-the white river spring fish-is almost extinct. Thus, even a little fish like the guppy
59. Imagine what it would be like to wake up and find yourself locked in a metal box. This is what happened to a man in south Africa who had been in a car accident. The doctors thought he was dead,so he was put in the metal box. He remained there, unconscious, for two days. Then he woke up and called called for help. The people who heard him were afraid at first, but when they realized that he was alive, they let him out the box. He was happy to be alive and free, but his happiness did not last long because his girlfriend refused to see him. She did not believe that he was really alive and said that
60. Sociologists and psychologists have argued for centuries about how a person's character is formed. The argument has long been known as "nature versus nurture," describing the two main opposing theories. the first theory says that character is formed genetically before birth. According to this theory, nature-through genetics-determines what a person will be like. The other theory says, on the contrary, that a newborn baby has no definite character. The child's character develops as he or she grows up, and the development of that character is influenced by the child's family and social environment. Thus,according to the second theory, the most important factors are