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  3. At Harvard College in September, a controversy erupted over the adoption of a "freshman pledge," which for the first time asked

At Harvard College in September, a controversy erupted over the adoption of a "freshman pledge," which for the first time asked

admin2014-06-25  60
问题     At Harvard College in September, a controversy erupted over the adoption of a "freshman pledge," which for the first time asked incoming students to sign a commitment to act with respect, integrity, and kindness in order to "promote understanding. " Libertarian commentator Virginia Postrel, wrote that "treating ’kindness’ as the way to civil discourse doesn’t show students how to argue with accuracy and respect. " Harry R. Lewis, a former dean of Harvard College and someone with an excellent perspective on undergraduate education, warned that it intruded into freedom of thought and that "a student would be breaking the pledge if she woke up one morning and decided it was more important to achieve intellectually than to be kind. "
    Has empathy become the new scapegoat in the long-standing concern about academic attainment in American schools? Books like Academically Adrift chart the decline in academic rigor on American college campuses, citing the plummeting hours that students spend on studying and critical thinking skills. But there’s also been a troubling, and concurrent, decrease in empathy over the past thirty years. Many people disgusted at calls to increase empathy in young people because they assume that the ability to empathize is incompatible with traits like logic, reason, and impartiality. We’ve now entered a debate about how nice we should be or, rather, how nice we can afford to be and still stay competitive as a society, clinging to the pernicious belief that anything beneficial to young people must be painful and that we are in a rat race that is a zero-sum game.
    In fact, there need be no tradeoff, at Harvard or anywhere else, between intellectual rigor and kindness. This is a false dichotomy, like the belief that a sick person must choose between a competent doctor and a humane one. Indeed, empathetic behavior — listening well, for example — actually makes a doctor better able to diagnose and treat illness, and studies show that when doctors are empathetic, their patients need less medication to relieve pain and less time to heal wounds.
    People often equate empathy with gentleness and passivity. But empathy is really just a cognitive walk in another person’s shoes. An empathetic person is, fundamentally, a curious and imaginative person. Empathy involves a search for understanding. And we need today’s students to understand the world better in order to respond to its seemingly stubborn problems.
    Of course, we can always find examples of world-class thinkers who are oblivious to people’s feelings. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the vast majority of students will need to assume the perspective of others in order to get ahead in life. We can call this empathy. Or we can call it 21st century learning. Empathy doesn’t always lead to more moral behavior, but it can lead to more intelligent behavior.
The word "scapegoat"(Line 1, Para. 2)is most likely to refer to someone who______.
选项 A、takes blame for another’s action
B、attracts people’s attention recently
C、loses popularity very quickly
D、sparks concern among a group of people
答案A
解析 所考词出现在第二段首句。上文(第一段)指出，呼吁学生“友好”的号召在许多人看来并无益处，甚至会影响学业。所考词所在句设问：难道“移情”成了“学术下滑”的scapegoat了吗?随后则指出美国的学术能力的下滑令人担忧，人们认为“移情能力”会影响到“学术追求”。且作者通过“与学术能力同期下滑的还有人们的移情能力”暗示自己观点：学术能力的下滑和倡导移情无关。可见，作者认为“移情能力”被当做了“学术下滑”的替罪羊，[A]选项符合题意。
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