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.”

　　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.

　　[答案] A

　　[解题思路]

　　文章第二段第一句明确指出“Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual”(学校总是处于一个社会中，在这个社会里，实用性总是高于知识性)，可见美国人一向不重视知识，与A选项正好吻合。同时，本文从头至尾都是围绕着美国人轻视知识这个主题展开的。B选项的意思正好与原文相反，因此是错误答案。C选项也是错误的，文中并没有讲到美国人一向支持学校改革。而D选项“suppressing”(压制)这个词语过于极端，也与原文意思相左。

　　[题目译文]

　　我们可以从文中了解到，美国人一直以来

　　[A] 轻视知识

　　[B] 赞成追求知识

　　[C] 支持学校改革

　　[D] 压制天生的智力