专四阅读详解 四.doc

星期4 Thursday No thorns , no throne ; no cross, no crown.没有辛劳，何来成功；没有挫折，何来辉煌。 日常生活类457 5.5分钟学校教育类452 6.5分钟社会热点类522 7.5分钟社会生活类452 5.5分钟When television is good, nothing — not the theatre, not the magazines, or newspapers — is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, or anything else to distract you and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, mayhem, more violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, still more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials that scream and sweet-talk and offend. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it. Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for a children’s news show explaining something about the world for them at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading the great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fine children’s shows, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence, and more violence. Search your conscience and see whether you cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you guard so many hours each and every day. You will get no argument from me if you say that, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch the Western. I like Westerns and private eyes, too, but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained