历年考研英语阅读理解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."
