2. 外语
  3. When young people who want to be journalists ask me what subject they should study after leaving school, I tell them: "Anything

When young people who want to be journalists ask me what subject they should study after leaving school, I tell them: "Anything

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问题      When young people who want to be journalists ask me what subject they should study after leaving school, I tell them: "Anything except journalism or media studies."
     Most veterans of my trade would say the same. It is practical advice. For obvious reasons, newspaper editors like to employ people who can bring something other than a knowledge of the media to the party that we call our work.
     On The Daily Telegraph, for example, the editor of London Spy is a theologian by academic training. The obituaries editor is a philosopher. The editor of our student magazine, Juice, studied physics. As for myself, I read history, ancient and modern, at the taxpayer’s expense.
     I am not sure what Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, would make of all this. If I understand him correctly, he would think that the public money spent on teaching this huge range of disciplines to the staff of The Daily Telegraph was pretty much wasted. The only academic course of which he would wholeheartedly approve in the list above would be physics -- but then again, he would probably think it a terrible Waste that Simon Hogg chose to edit Juice instead of designing aero planes or building nuclear reactors. By that, he seems to mean that everything taught at the public expense should have a direct, practical application that will benefit society and the economy.
     It is extremely alarming that the man in charge of Britain’s education system should think in this narrowminded, half-witted way. The truth, of course, is that all academic disciplines benefit society and the economy, whether in a direct and obvious way or not. They teach students to think -- to process information and to distinguish between what is important and unimportant, true and untrue. Above all, a country in which academic research and intelligent ideas are allowed to flourish is clearly a much more interesting, stimulating and enjoyable place than one without "ornaments", in which money and usefulness are all that count.
     Mr. Clarke certainly has a point when he says that much of what is taught in Britain’s universities is useless. But it is useless for a far more serious reason than that it lacks any obvious economic utility. As the extraordinarily high drop-out rate testifies, it is useless because it fails the first test of university teaching--that it should stimulate the interest of those being taught. When students themselves think that their courses are a waste of time and money, then a waste they are.
     The answer is not to cut off state funding for the humanities. It is to offer short, no-nonsense vocational courses to those who want to learn a trade, and reserve university places for those who want to pursue an academic discipline. By this means, a great deal of wasted money could be saved and all students--the academic and the not-so-academic—would benefit. What Mr. Clarke seems to be proposing instead is an act of cultural vandalism that would rob Britain of all claim to be called a civilized country.
Charles Clarke as described in the passage would probably agree that ______.
选项 A、people should choose their jobs according to their majors at college
B、physics should be the topmost choice of disciplines for prospective journalists
C、the Daily Telegraph is poorly staffed and needs rearrangement
D、there is no reason for the state to pay for subjects of higher education
答案A
解析 推理判断题。根据作者对查尔斯·克拉克的理解，后者会认为花在《每日电讯报》编辑身上的学习各种学科的钱是极大的浪费。也就可以推理为，他会认为神学家本该去做神职工作，学物理的就应该去设计飞机或是核反应堆，否则不是白学那个专业了吗?因此A (人们应该按照大学所学的专业选择工作)是对的。
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