2004考研英语text4全文翻译
2004年
Text 4
①Americans today don't place a very high value on intellect. ②Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. ③Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education—not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. ④Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren't difficult to find.
①今天的美国人对才智并不十分重视。②我们心目中的英雄不是学者，而是运动员、演艺界人士和企业家。③甚至我们的学校也只是我们送孩子去接受实用教育，而不是为了知识而去求知的地方。④反才智主义在我们的学校里散布很广，各种迹象屡见不鲜。
①"Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. ②"Schools could be a counterbalance." ③Ravitch'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.
①教育著作家Diane Ravitch说："我们的学校一直处在一个强调实用而不是才智的社会之中，②学校本可以成为一种抗衡力。"③拉维奇的新书《落后：一个世纪失败的学校改革》追溯了学校里反才智主义的根源，并得出结论：美国学校决没有逆转美国人对才智追求的厌恶。
①But they could and should be. ②Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. ③Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. ④Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society."
①然而，学校原本可以并且也应该做到这一点的。②鼓励孩子们排斥精神生活，会使他们很容易被利用和控制。③如果缺乏批判地思考、捍卫自己的思想和理解他人观点的能力，他们就不能够完全参与到我们的民主当中去。④作家厄尔·邵丽斯说："沿着这种路线走下去，我们会变成一个二流国家。我们社会的文明程度将会降低。"
①"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 US politics, religion, and education. ②From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to
anything that smells of elitism. ③Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
①"才智被当作一种权利和特权而遭到厌弃，"历史学家理查德·霍夫斯坦教授在《美国生活中的反才智主义》中这样写道。这本曾获普利策奖的书探讨了美国政治、宗教和教育领域中反才智主义的根源。②霍夫斯坦特说，在我们历史的一开始，我们对于民主和平民主义的渴望驱使我们拒绝任何带有精英优越论味道的东西。③实用、常识、先天的智力被认为是比从书本中能学到的任何东西都高尚的素质。
①Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children:② "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."③Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. ④Its hero avoids being civilized—going to school and learning to read—so he can preserve his innate goodness.
①拉尔夫·沃尔朵·爱默生和其他一些先验主义哲学家认为学校教育和僵化的书本学习不正常地禁锢了孩子。②"我们被关在中小学和大学里背诵了十到十五年，出来之后装满了有一肚子的单词，却什么也不懂。"③马克·吐温写的《哈克贝利芬历险记》即展示了美国的反才智主义。④这本书的主角拒绝变成文明人，即：不上学，不学习读书写字。这样他就能保存自己善良的本性。
①Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. ②Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. ③Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines.
①按照霍夫斯坦特的观点，才智同我们所不情愿赞赏的那种天生的智力有所不同。②才智指的是人精神世界中批判、创造和思考的一面。③智力寻求的是理解、运用、整合和调节，而才智是审视、思考、怀疑、形成理论、批判和想象。
①School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. ②Hofstadter 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."
①学校仍然是一个才智受到怀疑的地方。②霍夫斯坦特说我们国家的教育体制掌握在这样的一群人的手中，"他们沾沾自喜地、霸气十足地公然宣称他们对才智的敌意，也迫不及待地表示出对那些在才智上没有前途的孩子们的认同。"
