一 教育类
1. A nation should require all its students to study the same national
curriculum until they enter college rather than allow schools in different
parts of the nation to determine which academic courses to offer.”
2. While some leaders in government, sports, industry, and other areas
attribute their success to a well-developed sense of competition, a society
can better prepare its young people for leadership by instilling in them a
sense of cooperation.
3. In order to improve the quality of instruction at the college and
university level, all faculty should be required to spend time working
outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they
teach.
4. Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses
outside the student’s field of study because acquiring knowledge of
various academic disciplines is the best way to become truly educated.
5. Colleges and universities should offer more courses on popular music,
film, advertising, and television because contemporary culture has much
greater relevance for students than do arts and literature of the past.
6. It is primarily through formal education that a culture tries to
perpetuate the ideas it favors and discredit the ideas it fears.
7. Some educational systems emphasize the development of students’
capacity for reasoning and logical thinking, but students would benefit
more from an education that also taught them to explore their own emotions.
8. It is often asserted that the purpose of education is to free the mind
and the spirit. In reality, however, formal education tends to restrain our
minds and spirits rather than set them free.
9. How children are socialized today determines the destiny of society.
Unfortunately, we have not yet learned how to raise children who can help
bring about a better society.
10. Both parents and communities must be involved in the local schools.
Education is too important to leave solely to a group of professional
educators.
11. The purpose of education should be to provide students with a value
system, a standard, a set of ideas—not to prepare them for a specific job.
12. Society should identify those children who have special talents and
abilities and begin training them at an early age so that they can
eventually excel in their areas of ability. Othervise, these talents are
likely to remain undeveloped.
13. Although innovations such as video, computers, and the internet seem to
offer schools improved methods for instructing students, these technologies
all too often distract from real learning.
二 学习类
1. We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than
from people whose vies contradict our own. Disagreement can cause stress
and inhibit learning.
2. No field of study can advance significantly unless outsiders bring their
knowledge and experience to that field of study.
3. Anyone can make things bigger and more complex. What requires real
effort and courage is to move in the opposite direction-in other words, to
make things as simple as possible.
4. Students should memories facts only after they have studied the ideas,
trends, and concepts that help explain those facts. Students who have
learned only facts have learned very little.
5. Scholars and researches should not be concerned with whether their work
makes a contribution to the larger society. It is more important that they
pursue their individual interests, however unusual or idiosyncratic those
interests may seem.
6. In any academic area or professional field, it is just as important to
recognize the limits of our knowledge and understanding as it is to acquire
new facts and information.
7. Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passions.
8. Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They
should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively.
9. There is no such thing as purely objective observation. All observation
is subjective; it is always guided by the observer’s expectations or
desires.
10. The human mind will always be superior to machines because machines are
only tools of human minds.
11. Critical judgment of work, in any given field has little value unless
comes from someone who is an expert in that field.
12. People who pursue their own intellectual interests for purely personal
reasons are more likely to benefit the rest of the world than are people
who try to act for the public good.
13. Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought
before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways.
14. The study of ac academic discipline alters the way we perceive the
world. After studying the discipline, we see the same world as before, but
with different eyes.
15. The way students and scholars interpret the materials they work with in
their academic fields is more of personality than of training. Different
interpretations come about when people with different personalities look at
exactly the same objects, facts, data, or events and see different things.
16. As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible,
but more complex and more mysterious.
17. It is a grave mistake to theorize before one has data.
三 行为类
1. Although many people think that the luxuries and conveniences of
contemporary life are entirely harmless, they in fact, prevent people from
developing into truly strong and independent individuals.
2. Public figures such as actors, politicians, and athletes should expect
people to be interested in their private lives. When they seek a public
role, they should expect that they will lose at least some of their privacy.
3. Creating an appealing image has become more important in contemporary
society than is the reality or truth behind that image.
4. The concept of ‘individual responsibility’ is a necessary fiction.
Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions,
people’s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.
5. People work more productively in teams than individually. Teamwork
requires cooperation, which motivates people much more than individual
competition does.
6. In any realm of life-whether academic, social, business, or political—
the only way to succeed is to take a practical, rather than an idealistic,
point of vies. Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic
views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options.
7. It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we
define ourselves.
8. Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress.
9. Most people recognize the benefits of individuality, but the fact is
that personal economic success requires conformity.
10. People who are the most deeply committed to an idea or policy are the
most critical of it.
11. No amount of information can eliminate prejudice because prejudice is
rooted in emotion, not reason.
12. The most essential quality of an effective leader is the ability to
remain consistently committed in particular principles and objectives. Any
leader who is quickly and easily influenced by shifts in popular opinion
will accomplish little.
13. Sometimes imagination is a more valuable asset than experience. People
who lack experience are free to imagine what is possible and thus can
approach a task without constraints of established habits and attitudes.
14. In any given field, the leading voices come from people who are
motivated not by conviction but by the desire to present opinions and ideas
that differ from those held by the majority.
15. It is always an individual who is the impetus for innovation; the
details may be worked out by a team, but true innovation results from the
enterprise and unique perception of an individual.
16. Success, whether academic or professional, involves an ability to
survive in a new environment and--, eventually, --to change it.
17. Most people choose a career on the basis of such pragmatic
considerations as the needs of the economy, the relative ease of finding a
job, and the salary they can expect to make. Hardly anyone is free to
choose a career based on his or her natural talents or interest in a
particular kind of work.
18. If a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable.
19. People often look for similarities, even between very different things,
and even when it is unhelpful or harmful to do so. Instead, a thing should
be considered on its own terms, we should avoid the tendency to compare it
to something else.
20. People are mistaken when they assume that the problems they confront
are more complex and challenging than the problems, faced by their
predecessors. Thus illusion is eventually dispelled with increased
knowledge and experience.
21. Moderation in all things is ill-considered advice. Rather, one should
say, ‘Moderations is most things,’ since many areas of human concern
require or at least profit from intense focus.
22. Most people are taught that loyalty is a virtue. But loyalty—whether
to one’s friends, to one’s school or place of employment, or to any
institution—is all too often a destructive rather than a positive force.
四 政治类
1. It is often necessary, even desirable, for political leaders to withhold
information from the public.
2. There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a
society has a responsibility to obey just laws and, even more importantly,
to disobey and resist unjust laws.
3. To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest
ethical and moral standards.
4. It is impossible for an effective political leader to tell the truth all
the time. Complete honesty is not a useful virtue for a politician.
5. Those who treat politics and morality as though they were separate
realms fail to understand either the one or the other.
6. Laws should not be stationary and fixed. Instead, they should be
flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.
7. The goal of politics should not be the pursuit of an ideal, but rather
the search for common ground and reasonable consensus.
五 科技类
1. The primary goal of technological advancement should be to increase
people’s efficiency so that everyone has more leisure time.
2. Money spent on research is almost always a good investment, even when
the results of that research are controversial.
3. Humanity has made little real progress over the past century or so.
Technological innovations have taken place, but the overall condition of
humanity is no better. War, violence, and poverty are still with us.
Technology cannot change the condition of humanity.
4. When research priorities are being set for science, education, or any
other area, the most important question to consider is : How many people’s
lives will be improved if the results are successful.
5. The function of science is to reassure; the purpose of arts is to upset.
Therein lies the value of each.
6. Technology creates more problems than it solves, and may threaten or
damage the quality of life.
7. Most important discoveries or creations are accidental: it is usually
while seeking the answer to one question that we come across the answer to
another.
六 传媒类
1. In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once
was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading
books.
2. The purpose of many advertisements is to make consumers want to buy a
product so that they will ‘be like’ the person in the ad. This practice
is effective because it not only sells products but also helps people feel
better about themselves.
3. Because of television and worldwide computer connections, people can now
become familiar with a great many places that they have never visited. As a
result, tourism will soon become obsolete.
4. High-speed electronic communications media, such as electronic mail and
television, tend to prevent meaningful and thoughtful communication.
5. In this age of intensive media coverage, it is no longer possible for a
society to regard any woman or man as a hero. The reputation of anyone who
is subjectied to media scrutiny will eventually be diminished.
七 社会类
1. Such nonmainstream areas of inquiry as astrology, fortune-telling, and
psychic and paranormal pursuits play a vital role in society by satisfying
human needs that are not addressed by mainstream science.
2. Society does not place enough emphasis on the intellect-that is, on
reasoning and other cognitive skills.
3. It is through the use of logic and of precise, careful measurement that
we become aware of our progress. Without such tools, we have no reference
points to indicate how far we have advanced or retreated.
4. At various times in the geological past, many species have become
extinct as a result of natural, rather than human, processes. Thus, there
is no justification for society to make extraordinary efforts, especially
at a great cost in money and jobs, to save endangered species.
5. The absence of choices is a circumstance that is very, very rake.
6. What society has thought to be it greatest social, political, and
individual achievements have often resulted in the greatest discontent.
7. The well-being of a society is enhanced when many of its people question
authority.
8. Tradition and modernization are incompatible. One must choose between
them.
9. The only responsibility of corporate executives, provided they stay
within the law, is to make as much money as possible for their companies.
10. Many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and the legal
system because moral behavior cannot be legislated.
11. Scandals—whether in politics, academia, or other areas—can be useful.
They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer
ever could.
12. Practicality is now our great ideal, which all powers and talents must
serve. Anything that is not obviously practical has little value in today’
s world.
13. It is easy to welcome innovation and accept new ideas. What most people
find difficult, however, is accepting the way these new ideas are put into
practice.
14. The best way to understand the character of a society is to examine the
character of the men and women that the society chooses as its heroes or
its heroines.
15. Progress is best made through discussion among people who have
contrasting points of vies.
八 历史类
1. The video camera provides such an accurate and convincing record of
contemporary life that it has become a more important form of documentation
than written records.
2. Most people would agree that building represent a valuable record of any
society’s past, but controversy arises when old buildings stand on ground
that modern planners feel could be better used for modern purposes. In such
situations, modern development should be given precedence over the
preservation of historic buildings so that contemporary needs can be served.
3. The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after
them, not by their contemporaries.
4. The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most
significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the
famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been
forgotten.
5. The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to
our daily lives.
6. When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become
storytellers. Becauses we can never know the past directly but must
construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a
creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are
storytellers.
7. So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding
of the past provides little guidance for living in the present.
8. The chief benefit of the study of history is to break down the illusion
that people in one period of time are significantly different from people
who lived at any other time in history.
九 艺术类
1. Imaginative works such as novels, plays, films, fairytales, and legends
present a more accurate and meaningful picture of human experience than do
factual accounts. Because the creators of fiction shape and focus on
reality rather than report it literally, their creations have a more
lasting significance.
2. The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden
ideas and impulses of a society.
3. ‘It is the artist, not the critic,’ who gives society something of
lasting value. A person who evaluates works of art, such as novels, films
music, paintings, etc.
4. As long as people in a society are hungry or out of work or lack the
basic skills needed to survive, the use of public resources to support the
arts is inappropriate—and, perhaps, even cruel—when one considers all the
potential uses of such money.
5. In order for any work of art—whether film, literature, sculpture, or a
song—to have merit, it must be understandable to most people.
十 文化类
1. Governments must ensure that their major cities receive the financial
support they need in order to thrive, because it is primarily in cities
that a nation’s cultural traditions are preserved and generated.
2. Rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Without them, societies or
groups of people have a diminished sense of who they are.
3. The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and
interests. You can tell much about a society’s ideas and values by
observing the appearance and behavior of its people.
4. The true value of a civilization is reflected in its artistic creations
rather than in its scientific accomplishments.
十一 国际类
1. All nations should help support the development of a global university
designed to engage students in the process of solving the world’s most
persistent social problems.
2. Many of the world’s lesser-known languages are being lost as fewer and
fewer people speak them. The government of countries in which these
languages are spoken should act to prevent such languages from becoming
extinct.
3. With the growth of global networks in such areas as economics and
communication, there is no doubt that every aspect of society—including
education, politics, the arts, and the sciences—will benefit greatly from
international influences.
4. The surest indicator of a great nation is not the achievements of its
rulers, artists, or scientists, but the general welfare of all its people.
5. The material progress and well-being of one country are necessarily
connected to the material progress and well-being of all other countries.