四六级考试

【单选题】Americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars.Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education—not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficult to finD、
"Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual, " says education writerDiane Ravitch, "schools could be a counterbalance. " Ravitch’s latest hook, LeftBack:
A、Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to theAmerican distaste for intellectual pursuits.
But they could and should be.Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy.Continuing along this path, says writerEarl Shorris, "we will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society. "
"Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege", writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter inAnti-Intellectualism inAmerican 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 hook.
Ralph WaldoEmerson 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 exemplifiedAmerican 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. \
We can learn from the text thatAmericans have a history of ______.

A、undervaluing intellect B、favoring intellectualism
C、supporting school reformD、suppressing native intelligence
网考网参考答案：A
网考网解析：
这是一道细节题。依据第二段末句可知，美国人素来厌恶学识追求，答案显然为A。 document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>