"Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?" Rick Scott, the Florida governor, once asked. A leader of a

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问题    "Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?" Rick Scott, the Florida governor, once asked. A leader of a prominent Internet company once told me that the firm regards admission to Harvard as a useful proof of talent, but a college education itself as useless. Parents and students themselves are acting on these principles, retreating from the humanities.
   I’ve been thinking about this after reading Fareed Zakaria’s smart new book, In Defense of a Liberal Education. Like Mr. Zakaria, I think that the liberal arts teach critical thinking. So, to answer the skeptics, here are my three reasons the humanities enrich our souls and sometimes even our pocketbooks as well.
   First, liberal arts equip students with communications and interpersonal skills that are valuable and genuinely rewarded in the labour force, especially when accompanied by technical abilities. "A broad liberal arts education is a key pathway to success in the 21st-century economy," says Lawrence Katz, a labour economist at Harvard. Professor Katz says that the economic return to pure technical skills has flattened, and the highest return now goes to those who combine soft skills— excellence at communicating and working with people—with technical skills.
   My second reason: We need people conversant with the humanities to help reach wise public policy decisions, even about the sciences. Technology companies must constantly weigh ethical decisions. To weigh these issues, regulators should be informed by first-rate science, but also by first-rate humanism. When the President’s Council on Bioethics issued its report in 2002, "Human Cloning and Human Dignity," it depends upon the humanities to shape judgments about ethics, limits and values.
   Third, wherever our careers lie, much of our happiness depends upon our interactions with those around us, and there’ s some evidence that literature nurtures a richer emotional intelligence. Science magazine published five studies indicating that research subjects who read literary fiction did better at assessing the feelings of a person in a photo than those who read nonfiction or popular fiction. Literature seems to offer lessons in human nature that help us decode the world around us and be better friends. Literature also builds bridges of understanding.
   In short, it makes eminent sense to study coding and statistics today, but also history and literature.
What is implied in the first paragraph?

选项 A、Parents may encourage their children to major in anthropology.
B、The humanities in Harvard are not popular among parents and students.
C、The leader of an Internet company values Harvard education itself most.
D、Rick Scott may think anthropologists aren’t key interests of the state.

答案D

解析 推断题。根据题干关键词定位到第一段。句首是里克.斯科特的一个问句:“拥有 更多人类学家是本州的关键利益所在吗?”文章接着指出互联网公司、学生、家长等对人 文学科的间接或直接的态度。同时借助于第二段作者对人文教育的支持态度可知,第一 段是从反面引出文章的中心,所以里克.斯科特是对问题表示怀疑的,故D项“里克.斯 科特可能认为人类学家并不一定是本州的关键利益”为正确答案。其他三项均属于过度 推断,均排除。
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