What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received a kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP—kitchen police—as my highest duty. )
All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so, too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by the people who make up the intelligence tests—people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence teste, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles—and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those thests, I'd prove myself a moron. And I'd be a moron, too. In the world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hanD.The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"
In dulgently, I lifted my fight hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, he used his voice and asked for them. " Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today. " "Did you catch many?" I askeD."Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you. " "Why is that?" I askeD."Because you're so goddamned educated, Doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart. "
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
By calling his assignment to KP as "my highest duty", the author suggests that______.
A. KP is an important position in the army every soldier desires
B. KP is a job of manual labor which does not require a special level of intelligence
C. KP is his most important job in the army
D. he is proud of his position as KP
While anti-slavery sentiment eventually dictated policy in both the United States and Great Britain, the course of abolition differed greatly in the two nations. In America, the institution of slavery was strongly defended in a debate that ultimately resulted in the Civil War of 1860. In Britain, by contrast, slavery was done away with by 1807 and barred throughout its colonial possessions by 1833. In analyzing Britain's course, historians have well documented the influences of economic change, humanitarian protest and reform. movement.
One factor that has been largely ignored by scholars, however, is the impetus that was provided by children's literature. This medium gained great popularity in Britain during the last half of the 18th century and provided direct access to young, impressionable minds. Consequently, children's literature constituted the perfect vehicle for spreading of humanitarian ideas and played a vital role in creating anti-slavery concerns.
In 1761, John Newberry's Tom Telescope included the first known reference to the slave trade in children's literature. Tom, the book's hero, took issue with a man who was fond of his household pet yet, as a slave merchant, thought "nothing of separating the husband from the wife, the parents from the children". Slavery was not only cruel and oppressive, Tom seemed to be saying, but it was also irrational and contrary to natural law. Written before much of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade were revealed, Torn Telescope contained an implicit message. Soon afterwards, writers and publishers were in a position to be more explicit. One of the leaders in this movement was the Society of Friends who, in 1787, published Little Truths. Passages in this work directly related conditions aboard slave ships: "children were in the ship, pressed like fishes in barrel ."
Around the turn of the 18th century, blacks were introduced for the first time as main characters in children's literature. An early example of this device is found in Thomas Day's immensely popular The History of Sandford and Merton, in which a black beggar miraculously rescues Harry Sandford from a raging bull. Significantly, Day says very little about the institution of slavery itself, but the reader is left with no doubt that it is inhuman and cruel.
While it would be misleading to assume that every children's book published between 1750 and 1850 contained anti-slavery sentiments, the numbers are significant enough to suggest that they played a vital role in shaping their attitudes toward blacks. At the same time, even when the capabilities of blacks were recognized, there was always a tendency to depict them as different rather than equal. Perhaps unwittingly, children's literature helped to form. a stereotype that — while successfully attacking slavery — also strengthened the 19th century Englishmen's sense of racial superiority.
The American Civil War was primarily caused by ______.
A. the sympathy of the slaves by the people
B. the strong opposition to abolish the slavery system
C. the defense of human rights
D. the influences of economic change, humanitarian protest and reform. movement