【考前必备】托福阅读背景材料-为什么人文科学不应该被放弃.docVIP

【考前必备】托福阅读背景材料-为什么人文科学不应该被放弃 在托福备考中，很多学生都视托福阅读为自己的强项，从而就忽视了托福阅读的备考。其实不然，如果，因为在托福阅读中贸贸然的失分，而转加压力在其余三项中，那么对大家来说，可能冲刺高分的压力可能就更多了。那么，在备考托福过程中，我们应该更多关注些哪些内容呢？相信一些阅读背景材料会为你的备考带来不少的帮助吧。 “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” Rick Scott, the Floridagovernor, once asked. A leader of a prominent Internet company once told me that the firmregards admission to Harvard as a useful heuristic of talent, but a college education itself asuseless. “拥有更多人类学家是本州的关键利益所在吗?”佛罗里达州州长里克·斯科特(Rick Scott)曾经这样问道。某著名互联网公司的负责人曾经告诉我，该公司把哈佛大学的录取通知书当成一个人是否有才的具有启发性的有用依据，但并不认为大学教育本身有什么参考价值。 Parents and students themselves are acting on these principles, retreating from thehumanities. Among college graduates in 1971, there were about two business majors for eachEnglish major. Now there are seven times as many. (I was a political science major; if I weredoing it over, I’d be an economics major with a foot in the humanities.) 学生和家长们正按照这类准则行事，纷纷摒弃人文学科。1971年，商科本科毕业生和英语系本科毕业生的比例是2：1。现在，两者的比例是7：1。(我学的是政治学专业;如果可以重来一次，我会去学经济学，同时选修人文学科。) Ive been thinking about this after reading Fareed Zakaria’s smart new book, “In Defense of aLiberal Education.” Like Zakaria, I think that the liberal arts teach critical thinking (not tomention nifty words like “heuristic”). 自从读了法里德·扎卡里亚(Fareed Zakaria)颇有见地的新书《捍卫人文教育》(In Defense of a LiberalEducation)之后，我一直在思考这一现象。和扎卡里亚一样，我认为人文教育有助于培养学生的批判性思维(具有“启发性”等漂亮话就更不用说了)。 So, to answer the skeptics, here are my three reasons the humanities enrich our souls andsometimes even our pocketbooks as well. 人文学科可以丰富我们的精神生活，有时甚至可以充实我们的钱袋子。为了回应怀疑论者，我在此给出三点理由。 First, liberal arts equip students with communications and interpersonal skills that are valuableand genuinely rewarded in the labor force, especially when accompanied by technical abilities. 首先，人文教育有助于提高学生的沟通和人际交往能力，在职场上，这种能力可以给人带来巨大的回报，尤其是在跟技术能力共同起作用的时候。 “A broad liberal arts education is a key pathway to success in the 21st-century economy,” saysLawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. Katz says tha