The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrina

admin2014-10-24  43

问题     The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrination mills" from which Americans should keep their distance. Calling President Obama a " snob" for urging all Americans to go to college, he joined a long tradition that runs from Andrew Carnegie, who more than a century ago described colleges as places that prepare students for " life upon another planet," to Newt Gingrich, who has claimed that alumni donations are often used " to subsidize bizarre and destructive visions of reality. "
    Mr. Santorum’s remarks have been widely, and justly,rebutted. Yet defenders of college should do more than respond to its critics with contempt. We should seize the opportunity for introspection. Why does the anti-college mantra still touch a nerve among so many Americans?
    Consider the fact that SAT scores(a big factor in college admissions)correlate closely with family wealth. The total average SAT score of students from families earning more than $ 100,000 per year is more than 100 points higher than for students in the income range of $ 50,000 to $ 60,000. Or consider that a mere 3 percent of students in the top 150 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile of American society. Only a very dogmatic Social Darwinist would conclude from these facts that intelligence closely tracks how much money one’s parents make. A better explanation is that students from affluent families have many advantages—test-prep tutors, high schools with good college counseling, parents with college savvy and so on.
    Yet once the beneficiaries arrive at college, what do they learn about themselves? It’s a good bet that the dean or president will greet them with congratulations for being the best and brightest ever to walk through the gates. A few years ago, the critic and essayist William Deresiewicz, who went to Columbia and taught at Yale, wrote that his Ivy education taught him to believe that those who didn’t attend " an Ivy League or equivalent school" were "beneath" him.
    Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one’s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God’s unmerited mercy—as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum.
    Benjamin Franklin, who founded the University of Pennsylvania, once defined true education as " an Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends, and Family; which Ability.. . should indeed be the great Aim and End of all Learning. " We would be well served to keep this public-spirited conception of learning squarely in mind.
    Perhaps if our leading colleges encouraged more humility and less hubris, college-bashing would go out of style and we could get on with the urgent business of providing the best education for as many Americans as possible.
William Deresiewicz’s personal experience reflects that______.

选项 A、the Ivy League colleges are not as good as they look like
B、the Ivy League culture encourages the sense of superiority among students
C、the smugness of students in Ivy League culture may influence their whole life
D、the education in Ivy League is usually detached from the society

答案B

解析 根据题干中的人名锁定文章第四段。第四段紧接第三段的内容,当家境富裕的富二代们踏人高校大门之后,大学的教育又不停地向他们灌输“精英主义”的理念。威廉·德莱塞维茨曾就读于哥伦比亚大学,并且现在耶鲁大学执教,他在反思自己的常青藤背景时说道,“Ivy education taught him to believethat those who didn’t attend‘an Ivy League or equivalent school’were‘beneath’him”。在常青藤高校接受的教育让他相信,那些未能进入“常青藤联盟或同等水准高校”的学生低自己一等。因此,作者这里引用威廉的例子是为了证明常青藤大学的教育往往会引发学生们的自命不凡,正确答案为[B]。[A]答案错误,常青藤大学的优劣并不是这里关注的主要问题,常青藤的文化对学生的影响才是主要关注的问题。[C]答案错误,威廉陈述的只是常青藤大学让他认为自己高人一等的事实,而并不是要说明这种文化的灌输对他一生的影响。[D]答案内容和第四段内容无关。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/BtK4777K
0

最新回复(0)