歷年考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解2004年04

[00:05.97]2004 Text4 [00:08.49]Americans today don't place a very high value on intellect. [00:13.23]Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, [00:16.56]and entrepreneurs, not scholars. [00:20.38]Even our schools are where we send our children [00:23.00]to get a practical education [00:25.12]--not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. [00:28.45]Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism [00:31.67]in our schools aren't difficult to find. [00:35.51]"Schools have always been in a society [00:37.84]where practical is more important than intellectual," [00:40.75]says education writer Diane Ravitch. [00:43.77]"Schools could be a counterbalance." [00:46.31]Ravitch's la-test book, Left Back: [00:48.93]A Century of Failed School Reforms, [00:51.58]traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, [00:55.48]concluding they are anything [00:57.02]but a counterbalance to the American distaste [00:59.72]for intellectual pursuits. [01:02.55]But they could and should be. [01:04.67]Encouraging kids to reject the life [01:06.90]of the mind leaves them vulnerable [01:08.60]to exploitation and control. [01:11.42]Without the ability to think critically, [01:13.42]to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, [01:17.15]they cannot fully participate in our democracy. [01:20.99]Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, [01:24.93]"We will become a second-rate country. [01:27.08]We will have a less civil society." [01:30.38]"Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," [01:34.41]writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter [01:37.93]in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, [01:42.27]a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots [01:44.57]of anti-intellectualism in US politics, [01:47.59]religion, and education. [01:49.85]From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, [01:52.47]our democratic and populist urges have driven us [01:55.79]to reject anything that smells of elitism. [01:59.73]Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence [02:03.28]have been considered more noble qualities [02:05.39]than anything you could learn from a book. [02:08.70]Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist [02:11.94]philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning [02:14.88]put unnatural restraints on children: [02:18.01]"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms [02:21.13]for 10 or 15 years and come out at last [02:24.66]with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." [02:28.90]Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American [02:32.23]anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized [02:37.17]--going to school and learning to read [02:39.79]--so he can preserve his innate goodness. [02:43.44]Intellect, according to Hofstadter, [02:45.85]is different from native intelligence, [02:48.68]a quality we reluctantly admire. [02:52.23]Intellect is the critical, creative, [02:54.67]and contemplative side of the mind. [02:57.29]Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, [03:01.21]and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, [03:06.15]theorizes, criticizes and imagines. [03:10.39]School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. [03:14.43]Hofstadter says our country's educational system [03:17.35]is in the grips of people who [03:19.16]"joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility [03:22.28]to intellect and their eagerness to identify with [03:25.71]children who show the least intellectual promise."

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