首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not schola
Americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not schola
admin
2010-06-30
73
问题
Americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education--not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficult to find.
"Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance. "Ravitch’s latest book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits.
But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second rate country. We will have a less civil society."
"Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a Pulizer Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. "Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized - going to school and learning to read - so he can preserve his innate goodness.
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, reorder, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines.
School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country’s educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise."
We can learn from the text that Americans have a history of______.
选项
A、undervaluing intellect
B、favoring intellectualism
C、supporting school reform
D、suppressing native intelligence
答案
A
解析
这是一道推断题。依据第二段最后一句:Ravitch最新的专著《回顾:一百年来学校改革的失败》探究了学校中反学识倾向的根源,结论认为,学校根本未能制衡美国人对学识追求的厌恶。据此推断,美国人素来厌恶学识追求,答案显然为A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/0aPd777K
本试题收录于:
公共英语四级笔试题库公共英语(PETS)分类
0
公共英语四级笔试
公共英语(PETS)
相关试题推荐
AlthoughsocialchangesintheUnitedStateswerebeingwroughtthroughoutmostofthenineteenthcentury,publicawarenessoft
AlthoughsocialchangesintheUnitedStateswerebeingwroughtthroughoutmostofthenineteenthcentury,publicawarenessoft
Atthedawnofthe20thcentury,suburbiawasadreaminspiredbyrevulsiontothepovertyandcrowdingofthecities.Inthevi
Therewasatimeinthelate17thcenturywhennorespectablemonarchwouldbeseenwithoutaguitar.BothLouisXIVandCharle
Therewasatimeinthelate17thcenturywhennorespectablemonarchwouldbeseenwithoutaguitar.BothLouisXIVandCharle
Therehavebeenmanytechnologicaldevelopmentsinthe20thcentury,forexample,computersandelectricpower.Chooseeithero
OnehundredandthirteenmillionAmericanshaveatleastonebank-issuedcreditcard.Theygivetheirownersautomatic(31)____
OnehundredandthirteenmillionAmericanshaveatleastonebank-issuedcreditcard.Theygivetheirownersautomatic(31)____
OnehundredandthirteenmillionAmericanshaveatleastonebank-issuedcreditcard.Theygivetheirownersautomatic(31)____
随机试题
A.与中医药有关的评审或者鉴定活动B.中医药专业技术职称任职资格评审C.获得定点资格的中医医疗机构D.非营利性中医医疗机构E.中医药人员培训规划应当体现中医药特色,遵循中医药自身的发展规律的是
湿疹糜烂型唇炎的表现与单独发生在唇部黏膜的斑纹表现难以鉴别的是
A、成型材料B、增塑剂C、增稠剂D、遮光剂E、溶剂制备空胶囊时加入下列物质的作用是山梨醇是
计量标准如何进行定期溯源?
《中华人民共和国企业破产法》规定,人民法院裁定受理破产申请的,应当同时指定()。
[2006年,第63题]横截面面积为A的圆杆受轴向拉力作用,在其他条件不变时,若将其横截面改为面积仍为A的空心圆截面,则杆的()。
某施工项目图纸完备,承包人对发承包双方已经签认的土方工程的工程量计量结果有异议,但是并没有提供具体证据,则鉴定人应按()进行鉴定。
场外期权交易与交易所场内期权交易相比,具有()的特点。
有一种观点认为,到21世纪初,和发达国家相比,发展中国家将有更多的人死于艾滋病。其根据是:据统计,艾滋病毒感染者人数在发达国家趋于稳定或略有下降,在发展中国家却持续快速发展;到21世纪初,估计全球的艾滋病毒感染者将达到4OOO万至1亿1千万人,其中,60
社会规律和自然规律的区别在:于
最新回复
(
0
)