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  3. The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrina

The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrina

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问题     The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America’s colleges as "indoctrination mills" from which Americans should keep their distance. Calling President Obama a " snob" for urging all Americans to go to college, he joined a long tradition that runs from Andrew Carnegie, who more than a century ago described colleges as places that prepare students for " life upon another planet," to Newt Gingrich, who has claimed that alumni donations are often used " to subsidize bizarre and destructive visions of reality. "
    Mr. Santorum’s remarks have been widely, and justly,rebutted. Yet defenders of college should do more than respond to its critics with contempt. We should seize the opportunity for introspection. Why does the anti-college mantra still touch a nerve among so many Americans?
    Consider the fact that SAT scores(a big factor in college admissions)correlate closely with family wealth. The total average SAT score of students from families earning more than $ 100,000 per year is more than 100 points higher than for students in the income range of $ 50,000 to $ 60,000. Or consider that a mere 3 percent of students in the top 150 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile of American society. Only a very dogmatic Social Darwinist would conclude from these facts that intelligence closely tracks how much money one’s parents make. A better explanation is that students from affluent families have many advantages—test-prep tutors, high schools with good college counseling, parents with college savvy and so on.
    Yet once the beneficiaries arrive at college, what do they learn about themselves? It’s a good bet that the dean or president will greet them with congratulations for being the best and brightest ever to walk through the gates. A few years ago, the critic and essayist William Deresiewicz, who went to Columbia and taught at Yale, wrote that his Ivy education taught him to believe that those who didn’t attend " an Ivy League or equivalent school" were "beneath" him.
    Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one’s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God’s unmerited mercy—as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum.
    Benjamin Franklin, who founded the University of Pennsylvania, once defined true education as " an Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one’s Country, Friends, and Family; which Ability.. . should indeed be the great Aim and End of all Learning. " We would be well served to keep this public-spirited conception of learning squarely in mind.
    Perhaps if our leading colleges encouraged more humility and less hubris, college-bashing would go out of style and we could get on with the urgent business of providing the best education for as many Americans as possible.
In this text, the author mainly discusses the problem of______.
选项 A、elitism in best American colleges
B、anti-intellectualism prevalent in America
C、alumni preference in college admission
D、anti-college tendency in America
答案A
解析 作者在第一段介绍了共和党人里克·圣多伦最近在美国教育界内引发的口水战，并且回顾了历史上几位和里克持相似观点的名人，他们都对大学嗤之以鼻，认为人们应该远离大学。作者在下文中主要分析了他们的这种“反大学论”在美国仍然有市场的原因。作者的切入点是美国教育的精英主义倾向。进人大学的都是富家子弟(第三段)，进入大学后被灌输的又是“上帝宠儿论”(第四段)，难怪不少民众会对美国大学教育心存不满了。因此，本题的正确答案应该选[A]。[B]答案有一定的迷惑性，里克等人的观点似乎反映了美国国内的反智主义倾向，但是在通读整篇文章、把握作者整体思想的基础上，就会发现作者要讨论的并不是反智主义倾向，相反是一种精英主义的教育倾向。[C]答案以偏概全，利用第三段中的内容设置干扰，作者在第三段中提到了来自富裕家庭的学生的录取几率大，提到了父母是校友的优势，但是这并不是整篇文章都要讨论的内容，只是问题的一个方面。[D]答案错误，作者由美国人反对大学的言论引入话题，但是主要讨论的并不是这个问题，而是为什么反大学言论在美国仍有市场的原因，即美国精英主义教育理念。
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