请阅读 Passage 2,完成第 26~30小题。
Passage 2
Americans today don't place a very highvalue on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers ,and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send ourchildren to get a practical education-not to pursue knowledge for the sake ofknowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualismin our schools aren't difficult to find.
"Schools have always been in a societywhere practical is more important than intellectual,"says education writerDiane Ravitch. "Schools could be acounterbalance. " Ravitch ' s latest book,Left Back: A Century of FailedSchool Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools,concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste forintellectual pursuits.
But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of themind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, todefend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fullyparticipate in our democracy. Continuingalong this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-ratecountry. We will have a less civil society. "
"Intellect is resented as a form ofpower or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter inAnti-Intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on theroots 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 smellsof elitism. Practicality, common sense,and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anythingyou could learn from a book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and otherTranscendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning putunnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 0r15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." Mark Twain ' s Huckleberry Finn exemplified Americananti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids beingcivilized-going to school and learning to read-so he can preserve his innategoodness.
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, isdifferent from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, andcontemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate,re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizesand imagines.
Schoolremains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country ' s educational systemis in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim theirhostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who showthe least intellectual promise. "
What do American parents expect their children to acquire in school?
