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  3. The Republican presidential candidateRick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrinat

The Republican presidential candidateRick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrinat

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问题     The Republican presidential candidateRick 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 umnerited 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 theUniversity 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.
The conclusion that can be drawn from Paragraph 3 is that______.
选项 A、family wealth is a factor that weighs when referees’ are screening admission application
B、students from wealth families stand a better chance to be admitted by best colleges
C、the intelligence of students is directly correlated with the economic background of his family
D、colleges fail to do a good job in removing barriers between different social groups
答案B
解析 第三段第一句话就点明了这一段的主旨。美国高中生的高考分数(SAT)和家庭财富紧密相关。[A]答案偷换概念，家庭财富是影响高中生高考分数的因素之一，而不是影响评委们评判一个学生是否有资格进入大学的考虑因素。[B]答案正确，来自富裕家庭的孩子高考成绩比普通家庭的孩子平均高出100分以上，因此他们在被大学录取的时候自然占尽优势。[C]答案错误，原文明确指出，“Only a very dogmatic Social．Darwinist would conclude from these facts that intelligence closely tracks how much money one’s parents make．”只有少部分严格的社会达尔文主义者才会从高考分数和家庭财富的关联中得出智力和家庭背景相关的结论。[D]答案错误，这一段主要讨论的是社会阶级在高中生的录取中所起的作用，并没有在追责美国大学在消除阶级隔阂方面的失职。
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