Part Ⅰ Reading Comprehension
Directions: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.
In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music and by psychologists and "human-relation" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not whole heartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets (木偶) who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.
The workers and employees are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realties of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.
Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they are tested again and again by psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etC. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow- competitors creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.
Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to the 19th-century "free-enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason—are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as a means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.
Coincident with concerns about the accelerating loss of species and habitats has been a growing appreciation of the importance of biological diversity, the number of species in a particular ecosystem, to the health of the Earth and human beings. Much has been written about the diversity of terrestrial organisms, particularly the exceptionally rich life associated with tropical rain-forest habitats. Relatively little has been said, however, about diversity of life in the sea even though coral reef systems are comparable to rain forests in terms of richness of life.
An alien exploring the Earth would probably give priority to the planet's dominant, most distinctive feature—the ocean. Humans have a bias toward land that sometimes gets in the way of truly examining global issues. Seen from far away, it is easy to realize that landmasses occupy one-third of the Earth's surface. Given that two-thirds of the Earth's surface is water and that marine life lives at all levels of the ocean, the total three- dimensional living space of the ocean is perhaps 100 times greater than that of land and contains more than 90 percent of all life on Earth even though the ocean has fewer distinct species.
The fact that half of the known species are thought to inhabit the world's rain forests does not seem surprising, considering the huge numbers of insects that comprise the bulk of species. One scientist found many different species of ants in just one tree from a rain forest. While every species is different from every other species, their genetic makeup constrains them to be insects and to share similar characteristics with 750 000 species of insects. If basic, broad categories such as phyla and classes are given more emphasis than differentiating between species, then the greatest diversity of life is unquestionably the sea. Nearly every major type of plant and animal has some representation there.
To appreciate fully the diversity of abundance of life in the sea, it helps to think small. Every spoonful of ocean water contains life on the order of 100 to 100 000 bacterial cells plus assorted microscopic plants and animals, including larva's or organisms ranging from sponges and corals to starfish and clams and much more.
Science is an enterprise concerned with gaining information about causality, or the relationship between cause and effect. A simple example of a cause is the movement of a paddle as it strikes a ping-pong ball; the effect is the movement of the ball through the air. In psychology and other sciences, the word "cause" is often replaced by the term "independent variable". This term implies that the experimenter is often "free" to vary the independent variable as he or she desires (for example, the experimenter can control the speed of the paddle as it strikes the ball). The term "dependent variable" replaces the word "effect", and this term is used because the effect depends on some characteristic of the independent variable (the flight of the ball depends on the speed of the paddle). The conventions of science demand that both the independent and dependent variables be observable events, as is the case in the ping-pong example. In the case of biorhythm theory, the independent variable is the number of days that have elapsed between a person's date of birth and some test day. The dependent variable is the person's level of performance on some specified task on the test day. Notice that although the experimenter is not free to choose a birthday for a given individual, persons with different dates of birth can be tested on the same day, or a single subject can be tested on several different days.
In order to predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables, many scientific theories make use of what are called intervening variables. Intervening variables are purely theoretical concepts that cannot be observed directly. To predict the flight of a ping-pong ball, Newtonian physics relies on a number of intervening variables; including force, mass, air resistance, and gravity. You can probably anticipate that the intervening variables of biorhythm theory are the three bodily cycles with their specified time periods. It should be emphasized that not all psychological theories include intervening variables, and some psychologists object to their use precisely because they are not directly observable.
The final major component of a scientific theory is its syntax, or the rules and definitions that state how the independent and dependent variables are to be measured, and that specify the relationships among independent variables, intervening variables, and dependent variables. It is the syntax of biorhythm theory that describes how to use a person's birthday to calculate the current status of the three cycles. The syntax also relates the cycles to the dependent variable, performance, by stating that positive cycles should cause high levels of performance whereas low or critical cycles should cause low performance levels. To summarize, the components of a scientific theory can be divided into four major categories: independent variables, dependent variables, intervening variables, and syntax.
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 counterbalance." 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, reorder, and adjust, while intellect examines, thinks, 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. \
Part Ⅲ Cloze
Directions: For each numbered bracket in the following passage, fill in a suitable word in the blank on the ANSWER SHEET.
Social change is more likely to occur in societies where there is a mixture of different kinds of people than in societies where people are similar in many (51) . The simple (52) for this is that there are more different ways of looking at things (53) in the first kind of society. There are more ideas, more disagreements (54) interest, and more groups and organizations (55) different beliefs. In (56) , there is usually a greater worldly interest and greater tolerance in (57) societies. All these factors tend to promote social change by (58) more areas of life to decision. In a simple-racial (59) , there are (60) occasions for people to see the need or the opportunity for (61) because everything seems to be the same. And (62) conditions may not be satisfactory, they are at least customary and undisputed.
Social change is also likely to occur more frequently and (63) in the material aspects of the culture than in the non-material, for example, in technology rather than in values; in the (64) basic and emotional aspects of society than in their opposites; in form rather than in (65) ; and in elements that are (66) to the culture rather than in strange elements.
(67) , social change is easier if it is gradual. For example, it comes (68) readily in human relations on a continuous scale rather than one with sharp differences. This is one reason why change has (69) come more quickly to Black Americans as (70) to other American minorities, because of sharp difference between them and their white counterparts.
Part Ⅳ English-Chinese Translation
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese on the ANSWER SHEET.
I shall mention two or three matters in which the need for cooperation between philosophy and science is especially intimate. Since scientific method depends upon first-hand experimental controlled experiences, any philosophic application of the scientific point of view will emphasize the need of such experiences in the school, as over against mere acquisition of ready-made information that is supplied in isolation from the students' own experience. So far, it will be in line with what is called the "progressive" movement in education. But it will be an influence in counteracting any tendencies that may exist in progressive education to slight the importance of continuity in the experiences that are had and the importance of organization. Unless the science of education on its own ground and behalf emphasizes subject-matters which contain within themselves the promise and power of continuous growth in the direction of organization, it is false to its own position as scientific. In cooperation with a philosophy of education, it can lend invaluable aid in seeing to it that the chosen subject-matters are also such that they progressively develop toward formation of attitudes of understanding the world in which students and teachers live and toward forming the attitudes of purpose, desire and action which will make pupils effective in dealing with social conditions.
Another point of common interest concerns the place in the schools of the sciences, especially the place of the habits which form scientific attitudes and methods. The sciences had to battle against powerful enemies to obtain recognition in the curriculum. In a formal sense, the battle has been won, but not yet in a substantial sense. For scientific subject- matter is still more or less isolated as a special body of facts and truths. The full victory will not be won until every subject and lesson is taught in connection with its bearing upon creation and growth of the kind of power of observation, inquiry, reflection and testing that are the heart of scientific intelligence. Experimental philosophy is at one with the genuine spirit of a scientific attitude in the endeavor to obtain for scientific method this central place in education.
Finally, the science and philosophy of education can and should work together in overcoming the split between knowledge and action, between theory and practice, which now affects both education and society so seriously and harmfully. Indeed, it is not too much to say that institution of a happy marriage between theory and practice is in the end the chief meaning of a science and a philosophy of education that work together for common ends.