Jill Ker Conway, president of Smith, echoes the prevailing view of contemporary technology when she says that " anyone in today’

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问题     Jill Ker Conway, president of Smith, echoes the prevailing view of contemporary technology when she says that " anyone in today’s world who doesn’t understand data processing is not educated. "But she insists that the increasing emphasis on these matters leave certain gaps. Says she: " The very strongly utilitarian emphasis in education, which is an effect of man-made satellites and the cold war, has really removed from this culture something that was very profound in its 18th and 19th century roots, which was a sense that literacy and learning were ends in themselves for a democratic republic. "
    In contrast to Plato’s claim for the social value of education, a quite different idea of intellectual purposes was advocated by the Renaissance humanists. Overjoyed with their rediscovery of the classical learning that was thought to have disappeared during the Dark Ages, they argued that the imparting of knowledge needs no justification—religious, social, economic, or political. Its purpose, to the extent that it has one, is to pass on from generation to generation the corpus of knowledge that constitutes civilization. " What could man acquire, by virtuous striving, that is more valuable than knowledge?" asked Erasmus, perhaps the greatest scholar of the early 16th century. That idea has acquired a tradition of its own. "The educational process has no end beyond itself, " said John Dewey. "It is its own end. "
    But what exactly is the corpus of knowledge to be passed on? In simpler times, it was all included in the medieval universities’ Quadrivium ( arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music ) and Trivium(grammar, rhetoric, logic). As recently as the last century, when less than 5% of Americans went to college at all, students in New England establishments were compelled mainly to memorizeand recite various Latin texts, and crusty professors angrily opposed the introduction of any new scientific discoveries or modern European languages. "They felt, " said regretfully Charles Francis Adams, Jr. , the Union Pacific Railroad president who devoted his later years to writing history, "that a classical education was the important distinction between a man who had been to college and a man who had not been to college, and that anything that diminished the importance of this distinction was essentially revolutionary and tended to anarchy. "
According to the third paragraph, which of the following is true?

选项 A、Five percent of American college students learnt Latin texts.
B、Students in New England learnt Latin texts in official organizations.
C、Students were compelled to learn modern European languages.
D、American college students had to learn Latin grammar by heart.

答案B

解析 该题为细节题。根据第三段第三句“As recently as the last century,when less than 5% of Americans went to college at all,students in New England establishments were compelled mainly to memorize and recite various Latin texts…”我们知道,上世纪美国只有不到5%的人接受大学教育,而只有新英格兰教育机构的学生们被强迫记忆及背诵各类拉丁文课文,故A、D项错误;根据A项的分析我们知道,新英格兰的学生在教育机构学习拉丁文课文,教育机构属于官方组织,故B项正确;根据第三段第三句“…crusty professors angrily opposed the introduction of any new scientific discoveries or modern European languages.”我们知道,脾气暴躁的大学教授愤怒的反对引进任何新科学发现或者现代欧洲语言,故C项错误。
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