“Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege,” writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American life, a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children:“We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized —— going to school and learning to read —— so he can preserve his innate goodness.
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines.
School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country's educational system is in the grips of people who “joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise.”
56. What do American parents expect their children to acquire in school?
[A] The habit of thinking independently.
[B] Profound knowledge of the world.
[C] Practical abilities for future career.
[D] The confidence in intellectual pursuits.
57. We can learn from the text that Americans have a history of
[A] undervaluing intellect.
[B] favoring intellectualism.
[C] supporting school reform.
[D] suppressing native intelligence.
58. The views of Ravish and Emerson on schooling are
[A] identical.
[B] similar.
[C] complementary.
[D] opposite.
59. Emerson, according to the text, is probably
[A] a pioneer of education reform.
[B] an opponent of intellectualism.
[C] a scholar in favor of intellect.
[D] an advocate of regular schooling.
60. What does the author think of intellect?
[A] It is second to intelligence.
[B] It evolves from common sense.
[C] It is to be pursued.
[D] It underlies power.
Part B
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2.(10 points)
The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. (61) The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century. (62) We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from “exotic” language, were not always so grateful. (63) The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data Native American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages.
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