Enrichment English
Unit 1
An Education in Cynicism
Colleges’ early-admissions policies serve their interests
--- but not those of students or society
Robert J. Samuelson
1. College admissions in America has become an overwrought and frenzied ritual, driven by the anxieties of striving students and middle-class parents who worry that if Stephen and Suzie don’t get into the “right” college their lives will be ruined. This is a myth, but one hard to demolish and especially at this time of year, when most applications are being completed. Worse, all the pressures and absurdities of the process are now needlessly magnified by colleges that resort more and more to “early admissions” --- a practice rightly characterized as a “racket” by writer James Fallows in a recent Atlantic Monthly.
2. The most selective colleges and universities sin the most. In the fall of 2000, there were about 1.2 million entering freshmen at four-year schools. Of these, only 163,004 applied for early admissions, according to the College Board. But Harvard routinely admits 55 to 60 percent of its freshman class early; at the University of Pennsylvania the proportion is 40 to 50 percent. The College Board found 41 schools where the share exceeded 30 percent and 464 four-year schools --- a fourth of the total --- that offered some sort of early admissions. (Early-admissions means that students submit their applications before the standard January deadline and are typically admitted in December or January, rather than in the spring.)
3. Let us now count early admissions’ drawbacks:
It’s unfair, because it discriminates against students who apply later. A study of 14 of the country’s most selective schools by researchers at Harvard found that applying early gave students a significant advantage, equal to about a 100-point jump in their SAT scores. (The researchers couldn’t reveal schools’ names, but they presumably included many Ivies and schools like Amherst and Stanford.)
It forces students to make premature choices about where to apply. They haven’t visited enough schools, talked to enough friends, thought about it enough. “There’s a tremendous growth that occurs in the 12th grade,” says Dean Strassburger, a college counselor at Lincoln ParkHigh School in Chicago. “Early decision is rushing this along.”
It inflicts unnecessary cruelty. Getting rejected once is bad enough. Now students can get rejected twice. The most selective schools still don’t accept most early-admissions candidates. Harvard admits about one in six (the acceptance rate for “regular” admissions is about one in 18.)
It worsens “senioritis” ---the academic letdown after college acceptances are received.” “A lot of these kids, the second they get their decisions, are in your office saying, ‘ I want to drop Modern European History’”, says Scott White, a guidance counselor at MontclairHigh School in New Jersey.
4. Sure, students accepted under early admissions benefit. Their ordeal is over. But in general, the practice has “adverse effects on high-school students”, says Yale president Richard C. Levin. Although Yale now admits about 40 percent of its class through early admission, Levin has become an open (and rare) critic among college and university leaders. The problems and contradictions will multiply, because as more students and parents become aware of the advantages of applying early, more will do so. More early choices will be made with less conviction. Already, Yale’s early applications have doubled since 1996. If colleges accept more early candidates, discrimination and premature senioritis will increase. If the rejection rate rises, so will gratuitous cruelty.
5. What motivates colleges and universities? Mainly self-interest that, at most, is only partially defensible. The University of Pennsylvania is one of the few schools can do enough to admit that it favors candidates who apply early. “The majority of students on campus at Penn are here because it’s their first choice --- that changes the tone of the campus,” says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions. When he first came to Penn in 1978, only 35 to 40 percent of freshmen picked it as their first choice. “It’s a whole different attitude,” he says.
6. But there are other, less commendable reasons for using early admissions, as Fallows shows. It improves colleges’ “yield” (the percentage of students accepted who actually attend). Because yield is one factor in U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings, that can boost a schools position. Early admissions also improves “enrollment management”; it minimizes the chances that too many or too few students will show up in the fall. Finally, early admissions may allow colleges to attract more upper-middle-class students who don’t need financial aid, though a recent College Board study disputes this. (The study found that freshmen, regardless of when admitted, got similar aid packages.)
7. All this expediency comes at a growing moral cost. Many colleges --- including Harvard --- contend that students who apply later do not reduce their personal odds of admission. This is almost certainly false, and colleges that maintain the fiction are being misleading and even dishonest. Bad show.
8. It is true that, compared with most social problems, the sins of early admissions are small potatoes. Most students will get over any disappointments, just as they will get over not being admitted to Dartmouth or Duke. But it is also true that, unlike most social problems, this one could actually be fixed. If a dozen or more top schools --- Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Williams --- denounced and dropped the practice, it would lose respectability and critical mass. If only one or two colleges do so, as Levin says, little would change.
9. What we have, for the moment, is the spectacle of some of America’s most prestigious education institutions engaged in behavior that can only be described as antisocial. They have subordinated students’ interests to their own. This is hypocritical and indifferent to any larger social good. The message they’re sending to students is, “Get used to it; this is the way the world works.” Colleges might argue that they’re providing something useful: an introductory course in cynicism. But no college has yet offered this defense, which would at least have the virtue of honesty.
(From Newsweek, January 28, 2002)
Background and Culture Notes
Let me tell you
The author: Robert J. Samuelson：A contributing editor of Newsweek, has written a column for the Washington Post since 1977. His column generally appears on Wednesdays.
SAT: In the U. S., the SAT is an examination which is often taken by students who wish to enter a college or university as undergraduates. SAT is an abbreviation for “Scholastic Aptitude Test”. In the U. K., SATs are a set of tasks given to seven-year-old school children in order to test their ability. SAT is an abbreviation for “Standard Assessment Task”.
Ivies: refers to Ivy League institutions. The Ivy League is committed to seeking individuals who are remarkable both as students and as athletes. The Ivy Group include many prestigious universities including Princeton, Yale, etc.
Exercises
- Understanding the text
A. Scanning
Find the answers to the following questions. Remember, you don’t need to read the entire text word by word but just scan the parts that will help you answer the questions.
- How many candidates applied for early admission in the year of 2000?
- What is the acceptance rate for early admission at Harvard?
- What are the names of universities that are mentioned by the author as the top schools in the U. S.?
- When did Lee Stetson go to the University of Pennsylvania?
- According to the College Board, approximately how many four-year schools are there in America?
6. How many students are admitted through early decision at YaleUniversity now?
B True or False Questions:
Read the Article carefully and decided whether the following statements areTrue or False or Not given enough information. Put a T or F or N in the blank besides each statement.
______1. The lives of Stephen and Suzie will be ruined by getting into wrong colleges.
______2. Nowadays universities and colleges in America resort more and more to early admissions.
______3. Researchers at Harvard found that applying early will help students improve their SAT scores by 100 points.
______4. Students applying early cannot make mature decisions.
______5. Students applying early may be rejected at least once.
______6. The author believes that colleges’ early admission policy is a kind of discrimination upon candidates.
______7. Improving colleges’ “yield” is one of the commendable reasons for employing early admissions.
______8. Colleges’ enrollment management can be improved by early admissions.
- Vocabulary Study
A. Word recognition.
- In paragraph 1 find the word which means
wild, excited or uncontrolled : ______
2. In paragraph 3 find the word which means
an aspect of something or someone that makes them less acceptable than they would otherwise be: ______
- In paragraph 3 find the equivalent of the word
disappointment: ______
- In paragraph 4 find the word which means
a difficult and unpleasant experience or situation: ______
- In paragraph 4 find the word which means more or less the same as
unfavorable: ______
- In paragraph 5 find the word which means
not completely: ______
- In paragraph 9 find a word that means
a grand and impressive event or performance: ______
- In paragraph 9 find a word that means
respected and admired by people: ______
- Understanding the Discourse
A. Questions and answers
Read the article carefully and answer the following questions:
1. This is a myth, but ...... (paragraph. 1)
What is this?
2. Their ordeal is over. (para. 4)
Whose ordeal?
3. ……unlike most social problems, this one could actually be fixed. (para. 8)
What could actually be fixed?
4. If a dozen or more top schools denounced and dropped the practice …… (para. 8)
What practice is it?
5. All this expediency comes at a growing moral cost. (para. 7)
What does this expediency refer to?
6. This is hypocritical and indifferent to any larger social good. (para. 9)
What does ‘this’ refer to ?
7. They have subordinated students’ interests to their own. (para. 9)
Who have?
8. Get used to it; this is the way the world works. (para. 9)
The world works in what kind of way?
B. Recognizing sources
When an article combines information from many sources, it is necessary to determine the source of each individual piece of information. The Following is a list of statements made in the article. Indicate if each one has been made by the author or one of his sources.
Example:
James Fallows The percentage of colleges resorting to early admission is increasing like a “racket”.
1. ______Early admission has adverse effects on high school students.
2. ______Early admission improves colleges’ percentage of students accepted who actually attend.
3. ______Early admission is a social problem which could be fixed.
4. ______Early admission could worsen the academic letdown.
5. ______Nowadays, the majority of students at Penn are admitted through early decision.
6. ______Colleges’ early-admissions policies can be described as anti-social.
C.. Diagram of text organization
Complete the following tree diagram with the information you learn from your reading.
As for College admissions, discussed in the text we have learned that there are two types of admissions:
Consequence of such practice
The author concludes that
Unit 2
A Culture of Plagiarism?
M.G. Piety
1. It's often said that plagiarism is subjective— that what is plagiarism to one person is not necessarily plagiarism to another. This seems confused. Philosophers distinguish between what they identify as ontological and epistemological issues. Ontology (本体论) is concerned with what is and epistemology (认识论) is concerned with what we know. There is nearly always a fact about whether a particular passage of text was plagiarized. Regardless of whether the plagiarism was conscious or unconscious, there is a fact about whether it has been taken from another author. The difficulty is that our judgments on that score are not always correct. Plagiarism can thus appear subjective in that different people will identify it differently. That does not mean, however, that it is subjective. It is context sensitive at best, which means it is unnecessary, in certain contexts, to cite the source of an idea because the audience is familiar with the source. The absence of a citation, in such an instance would not therefore encourage a reader to take the author as the origin of the idea.
2. Plagiarism requires no nefarious motivation. To plagiarize is simply "to use without due credit the ideas, expressions, or productions of (another)," and this is remarkably easy to do unintentionally. Ignorance of the author, however is no excuse. We've all done it, at some point or other, without meaning to; just as we've all lost our tempers or exercised poor judgment. We will never be able to eliminate plagiarism entirely, either our own or others. However, that does not mean we should be unconcerned with authorial integrity.
Why Students Plagiarize
3. Citing sources would seem precisely the practice we need in this "Atomistic Age." It would help people to feel more a part of the human community, help them appreciate that we are all grappling with the same sorts of questions and that there is even accumulated human wisdom which can help us navigate the rough waters of our own existence. Citing sources can even begin to look like a panacea for the spiritual isolation and alienation of postmodern man. So why does it appear it is becoming increasingly rare? Here are some possible reasons I have come up with after approximately eight years of teaching: ignorance, fear and moral bankruptcy.
Ignorance
4. It is often difficult for students to distinguish the myriad of views they are bombarded with in the environment of the university from ones they have come to on their own. This, in any case, appears to have been the situation of the young Max Weber. When an older cousin suggested that some of Weber's views were not his own, Weber responded that, as far as he knew, he had not taken any of his views from books, but added somewhat defensively that "probably everything stemmed from books."
5. The young Helen Keller faced similar, graver charges when accused of plagiarizing an entire story, "The Frost King." Keller did not remember having been exposed to the latter story but admitted in her biography that much of her earliest writing included material taken from other authors.
- "Those early compositions," she explains, were mental gymnastics. I was learning, as all young and inexperienced persons learn, by assimilation and imitation, to put ideas into words. Everything I found in books that pleased me I retained in my memory, consciously or unconsciously, and adapted it.
7. Students are often rewarded in grade school, and some even in high school, for such "assimilation and imitation." Some understand that they can't appropriate text verbatim but assume this problem is addressed if they simply rephrase the bits they borrow.
8. Ignorance is not the most serious cause of plagiarism. It is perhaps the most problematic in that when text is paraphrased out of ignorance, the original is often impossible to find. What makes ignorance fairly innocuous is that no matter how widespread, it is also fairly easily corrected. Instructors can briefly explain what constitutes plagiarism in their syllabi, discuss the topic early in the semester and distribute examples of plagiarism. If every instructor did this in every course, ignorance would soon be eliminated.
Fear
9. Knowledge will not eliminate plagiarism, however, because there is a more serious cause — fear. This fear takes several forms:
Fear of doing poorly because of a poor command of English.
Fear of disappointing parents or teachers.
Fear of being exposed to peers as less smart.
Fear of simply not being smart enough.
Fear of reducing a GPA.
One can get the impression that foreign students are particularly prone to plagiarism due to poor English skills. They may be tempted to "borrow" material from native speakers. I have had a least one of my many foreign students plagiarize for this reason and I cannot rule out that others have done it for the same reason. The good news is that the gap between the command of English exhibited by foreign students and by American students is narrowing. The bad news is that it is narrowing in the wrong direction. Americans are increasingly tempted to plagiarize out of fear that their language skills are inadequate to the assignment.
10. Academics sometimes suggest that we should be "understanding" of foreign students, because they may come from cultures where plagiarism is viewed less seriously than in ours. I am suspicious that there is any culture that views plagiarism in general as morally acceptable. Different cultures do appear, however, to take a more or less lenient view of it. Yet this problem is easily addressed. We can address it in the same way we can address the domestic ignorance problem. An instructor can make clear early in the term both what constitutes plagiarism and what the penalties will be.
11. However, foreign students are sometimes prone to a type of fear to which American students appear less prone: fear of disappointing parents, teachers or peers. Social bonds in this country have never been so tight as they are in countries with more unified or coherent cultural traditions. It is thus hard for many American educators to appreciate that a student would cheat for any reason other than personal advancement. Students may also cheat simply to save face socially, or to avoid ostracism from polite society.
12. But if American students are less prone than some of their foreign counterparts to the desire for approval, they are subject to another, perhaps even more insidious social influence — indifference. Americans are often indifferent to both the intellectual and economic plight of the individual. Our culture, as a whole, routinely sends the message that a person must prove he is worthy of our concern. We undermine the intellectual confidence of young people. Our individualistic society indulges in the cult of personality. Whatever lip service we pay to "human equality," we consistently send the message that unless you are a genius, we are not really interested in your views. Children often copy "research" papers almost verbatim from encyclopedias and they are actually encouraged in this practice every time they receive good grades for essays where the prose is obviously far too sophisticated to have been written by a child. This causes young people to fear that they are not smart, that their views are unimportant and that they must cull the thoughts of others for something worthwhile to say.