Before the 1850’s the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, chu

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问题     Before the 1850’s the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church-connected institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of their students.
   Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of university. In Germany a different kind of university had developed. The German university was concerned primarily with creating and spreading knowledge, not morals. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’s, more than nine thousand young Americans, dissatisfied with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced study. Some of them returned to become presidents of venerable (受人尊敬的) colleges—Harvard, Yale, Columbia—and transform them into modern universities. The new presidents broke all ties with the churches and brought in a new kind of faculty. Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, not because they were of the proper faith and had a strong arm for disciplining students. The new principle was that a university was to create knowledge as well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty composed of teacher scholars. Drilling and learning by rote (死记硬背) were replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the professor’s own research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the Ph. D, an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the establishment of the seminar system, graduate students learned to question, analyze, and conduct their own research.
   At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size and course offerings, breaking completely out of the old, constricted curriculum of mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and music. The president of Harvard pioneered the elective system, by which students were able to choose their own courses of study. The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new goal was to make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world. Paying close heed to the practical needs of society, the new universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, with engineering students being the most characteristic of the new regime. Students were also trained as economists, architects, agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers.
It can be inferred from the passage that before the 1850’s, all of the following were characteristic of higher education EXCEPT______.

选项 A、the elective system
B、drilling
C、strict discipline
D、rote learning

答案A

解析 第三段第二句说,哈佛大学校长开创了选举制度,学生能选择自己喜爱的课程,由此可推断,A项选举制度不是19世纪50年代以前学校的一个特征,而B,C,D项都是特征。故选A项。
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