2. 外语
  3. You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect

You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect

admin2011-02-11  65
问题   You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsection of her mom’s Toyota Sienna, bopping along to the music on her iPod. Now and then she pulls out one of the ear buds so that she can tell her mom some forgotten bit of news or gossip; Chloe’s mom is up to speed on the dramas that are always unfolding in her daughter’s circle of friends, just as she can tell you the date of her next French test, the topic of her coming history paper and the location and scope of her next community service project. They have a great night planned out: they’re going to pick up Chloe’s best friend and then drive back home for a night of DVDs and popcorn in the family room. Her mom will putter around close by, and her dad will probably sit down and watch one of the movies with the girls.
  When I was in high school in the 1970s,we had a name for teenagers like Chloe: losers. If an otherwise normal girl thought that the best way to spend a Saturday night was home with her parents—not just co-existing with them, but actually hanging out with them—we would have been looking for a bucket of pig’s blood.
  In my day, we did whatever was necessary to get out on a Saturday night: we climbed out of windows; we jumped on the hack of motorcycles; God help us, we hitchhiked. We needed, on the most basic and physical level, to be out in the dangerous night, with one another, away from our parents and the safety of home. It was no way to live, and some of us didn’t. But it was a drive so elemental and essential that there seemed no way to deny it.
  That a profound change has taken place in the relationship between American teenagers and their parents is made clear by statistics from the Federal Highway Administration showing a steady decline in the number of licensed teenage drivers. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third.
  The reasons have a great deal to do with the cost of car insurance and driver’s education programs. But among middle-and upper-middle-class young adults, the peer power that created the teenage car culture, the compelling energy that once served to blast an adolescent away from his or her parents has begun to drain away. Teenagers report that they don’t need to drive: their parents are willing to take them where they want to go, and they are content to ride shotgun with Mom, texting and yakking all the way to the mall.
  I had not taught high school long before I attended my first funeral: an 18-year-old,loud in the halls one day, dead on the side of the road the next. If you want to improve your daughter’s chances of surviving her teens, don’t give her the car keys. If our generation of parents has done one thing right, it has been to manipulate our children into giving up driving.
  How have we managed it? Through the very aspect of family life we complain about the most: the extracurricular activities that we pay for and arrange and attend; the risibly involved homework assignments that we are so enmeshed with; the whole annoying side industry of being a "servant" and a "private driver".
  These things harass us no end. But they have bound our children to us in complex and powerful ways, and this has been, to some extent, the point of the entire exercise. It means that we can prolong the period of our children’s dependency, to extend the sweet phase of cocooning and protecting well into their adolescence.
  An American teenager is part premature and part invalid, able to excel in obscure sports but needing his mother to rush the field with a jacket and thermos of soup when he’s finished. They have been hobbled by our endless meddling; they lack resourcefulness and resilience. They’re like little children, soft and easily wounded.
  But for all their fussiness and neediness, they love us; they want to be close to us. They have every reason to believe that we will take care of them, even when they would be better off if we lei them struggle a bit.
  Learn to drive? Why would they want to do that?  
What’s the main idea of this passage?
选项 A、Teenager’s driving is unsafe and unnecessary.
B、Teenagers were more rebellious in 1970s.
C、Teenage driving decreased because of car insurance, driver’s education and parents’ love.
D、To make teenagers dependent on parents helps stop them from driving.
答案D
解析 主旨题。作者在文章里集中分析了家长对孩子的照顾使孩子更加依赖父母，这一现象所起到的遏止青少年开车的作用，故答案为D。通过第五段和第六段作者提到参加18岁孩子的葬礼以及父母可以开车送孩子到他们想去的地方，说明青少年开车是危险也是没有必要的，但是这并不是作者写作的意图，故排除A。文章的第二段提到了20世纪70年代的青少年比较叛逆，在周末喜欢跟同伴出去玩儿，其目的是与当今的美同青少年对父母的依赖作对比．而不是文章的主旨，故排除B。文中作者阐述了青少年开车比重的下降，更进一步分析了原因，虽然车辆支付保险和驾驶培训都是原因，但作者却认为子女对父母的依赖才是最主要的原因，这也是本文的主旨，故排除C。
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