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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 writer Diane Ravitch."Schools could be a ounterbalance".Ravitch's latest book,Left Back:A Century of Failed School Reforms,traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools,concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American 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 writer Earl 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 in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in U.S.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".
What do American parents expect their children to lean in school?查看材料
细节题。题干：美国家长们希望孩子在学校学到什么?第一段提到“Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education--not tO pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge”，即“我们送孩子去学校是为了让他们获得实践教育——而不是为了知识而学知识”。由此可知C项符合原文意思，学知识是为了实践。
有“泥土诗人”之称的诗人是（）。
将下列各项按所表示年龄大小顺序排列，正确的顺序应是（ ）。
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1931年，一位给人们带来光明的科学家重病的消息牵动着世界人民的心，几十名记者为他守夜。每隔一个小时就对外发布一次消息：“灯”还亮着。这位科学家是（ ）。
钱穆在评论中国古代某制度时说，它“可以培植全国人民对政治之兴味……可以团结全国各地域于一个中央之统治”，这一制度是()。
明朝初年强化君主专制的措施是（）。
知识是个体通过与环境相互作用后获得的（ ）。
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一个国家教育经费投入的多少最终取决于（ ）。
在我国历史上，传统音乐与外族音乐、北方与南方音乐进行广泛交流的时期是()。
教育的本体功能之一是( )。
