高中英语学科知识与能力模拟测试一

请阅读 Passage1,完成第21~25小题。

Passage 1

Americans today don't place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes,entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education- not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficult to find.
“Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual”,says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance”, Ravitch'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.
But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas
and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy, Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris,"We will become a second-rate country, We will have a less civil society”.
“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 U.S. politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history,
says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells
of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous
book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "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”.Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized-going to school and learning to read, so he can preserve his innate goodness.
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines.
School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter 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”.

请阅读 Passage2,完成第26-30小题。

Passage 2

As Egyptian high school students take their final exams this month, the government is facing a wave of criticism and mockery after copies of at least two test papers-and their answers-were leaked on Facebook.
The leaks, which caused one of the tests to be cancelled, have resulted in a barrage of criticism of the Education Ministry, as well as the police and military officers who guard the wax-sealed boxes that the exams are kept in before students take them.
The exams were leaked on a Facebook page by someone, or a group, called Chao Ming. For the past 4 years, Chao Ming posted answers during testing, allowing cheating by students flouring a ban on cellphones. This year is believed to be the first time that Chao Ming has posted copies of the exams and answers before testing takes place.
Chao Ming has spawned a host of imitators who use Facebook and other online platforms to help students cheat--and taunt the authorities.
The scandal has highlighted disgruntlement with the declining quality of public education in Egypt, but has also drawn contrasts between the government's bumbling efforts to stanch the leaks and its harsh crackdown on free speech and political freedoms in Egypt.
The regime can't protect a couple of papers, Mina Salib, a political activist in Alexandria,wrote in a facebook post that was widely liked,"Excuse me, but how are they supposed to protect a country?”
About 570000 Egyptian high school students are taking the exams, known as Thanaweya Amma tests, which determine admission to state-run universities and institutes. The pressure to succeed is intense, and many describe the tests as a nerve-racking experience that often leaves students crying outside exam centers.
This year's tests started on June 5 and were due to end on June 28. The Facebook leaks led to the cancellation of a theology exam, which will be held again on June 29.
The police arrested Mohanad Ahmed, an 18-year-old high school student from Alexandria,who later appeared on the television confessing to running"Chao Ming helps Thanaweya Amma cheat”,the series of Facebook pages that posted the exams. But many students and parents have questions whether Mr. Ahmed is the originator of the leaks because of widespread doubts about the official narrative.
Experts say the quality of state education in Egypt has declined in recent years because of overcrowded classrooms, poorly trained teachers and exams based on rote learning. At the same time, the importance of the Thanaweya Amma tests has increased because greater economic hardship in the country has put private colleges beyond the reach of many Egyptians.
In Parliament on June 11,the education minister,EL-Hilali, blamed the leaks on the use of electronic devices such as credit cards that can function as telephone, surgically inserted headphones and high-tech reading glasses.
Mr. Sherbini proposed cutting internet access across Egypt for an hour before all exams,to counter future leaks, and disrupting cellphone signals in examination halls, according to several lawmakers present at the session.
Cellphone are forbidden in Egyptian exam halls, but the Education Ministry acknowledges that the ban is hard to enforce. “They hide the phones in sensitive areas,” Bashir Hassan, the ministry’s spokesman, said. "No one is going to search those areas, so what are we supposed to do about it?”
Police and education officials said 25 people had been arrested in connection with the leaks and for helping with cheating in general. They include seven Education Ministry employees and four officials from the country's seat of Sunni scholarship, Al-Azhar. If convicted, they could be sentenced to a year in prison and fined up to about $5600.