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I remember Max very well. He had a Ph. D. from Princeton. He was a Chaucerian. He was brilliant(eloquent, and professorial. He possessed everything respectable in a human being—a good mind, a sound professional ethic, a sense of learning's place in the universe. Max was truly an educator.
But there is one thing I haven't told you about Max: I hated his guts.
Max was my freshman-English teacher. And while he was, in a sense, everything I desired to be (that is, a gentleman and a scholar), he was also a man who fgrce-fed me for 15 weeks on literature and grammar (and what a foul stew it was!)
Today, I am a college teacher myself, and have discovered that very few students are encountering their own version of Max.
This is not to say that younger, ,up-and-coming professors are less erudite or well trained than Max was. On the contrary, the scarcity, of academic job opportunities has virtually assured that colleges can choose from among the best-trained young scholars in the world.
Neither am I suggesting that it is impossible for a student to find a genuinely loathsome professor. (I have enough personal evidence that the potential, for real, animosity between teacher and student does exist. We all have encountered the student who fantasized the most heinous retribution for that despicable faculty member who dared give him a C.)
What made Max unique was neither his mental prowess nor his propensity to be disliked. Rather, it was his aloofness.
Max didn't "care" about his students. He wasn't worried about whether they were passing his course. He didn't really seem concerned that most. of them never expresaed a passion for the subjects of his lectures. Arid, most of all, Max didn't 'give a damn how his students felt about him.
Chances are, most students are thankful that "Maxish" professors are an endangered species. Further, I'll wager that many professors are proud and pleased they are not Maxes (or Maxines). The reason is that, :today, c011ege teachers, individually and collectively, "care" about their students.
The explanation for the decline in Maxism is not really relewnt to my point, but one might nonetheless speculate that a general decline in college enrollment, and consequently in available teaching positions, has led some young professors to believe that. they here to be popular.
The college classroom has become, for some of these ".hungry" young men and women, a battleground in; their war against job insecurity. Their weapons are a strong response demonstrated by their students (in terms of attendance) coupled with ostensibly strong acceptance (in terms of student evaluations—which actually measure little more than the congeniality of the professor).
The knowledge that academics are more sympathetic to their students than Max was would be heartening, indeed, except for one very curious fact: Max was the best teacher I ever had. That's right. The very best teacher I ever had was the one who didn't give a damn about me or anyone else, the one who never tried to make me feel "comfortable," who didn' t even know my name.
Max could be best described as ______.

A. lenient and permissive
B. eager to please his students
C. disgusting and loathsome
D. strict and demanding

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A Nice Place to Visit
Having heard that Toronto was becoming one of the continent's noblest cities, we flew from New York to investigate. New Yorkers proud of their city's reputation and concerned about challenges to its stature have little to Worry about.
After three days in residence, our delegation noted an absence of shrieking police and fire sirens at 3 A.M.—or any other hour, for that matter. We spoke to the city authorities about this. What kind of city was it, we asked, that expected its citizens to sleep all night and rise refreshed in the morning? Where was the incentive to awaken gummy-eyed and exhausted, ready to scream at the first person one saw in the morning? How could Toronto possibly hope to maintain a robust urban divorce rate?
Our criticism went unheeded, such is the torpor with which Toronto pursues true urbanity. The fact appears to be that Toronto has very little grasp of what is required of a great city.
Consider the garbage picture. It seems never to have occurred to anybody in Toronto that garbage exists to be heaved into the streets. One can drive for miles without seeing so much as a banana peel in the gutter or a discarded newspaper whirling in the wind.
Nor has Toronto learned about dogs. A check with the authorities confirmed that, yes, there are indeed dogs resident in Toronto, but one would never realize it by walking the sidewalks. Our delegation was shocked by the presumption of a towr's calling itself a city, much less a great city, when it obviously knows nothing of either garbage or dogs.
The subway, on which Toronto prides itself, was a laughable imitation of the real thing. The subway cars were not only spotlessly clean, but also fully illuminated. So were the stations. To New Yorkers, it was embarrassing, and we hadn't the heart to tell the subway authorities that they were light-years away from greatness.
We did, however, tell them about spray paints and how effectively a few hundred children equipped with spray-paint cans could at least give their subway the big-city look.
It seems doubtful they are ready to take such hints. There is a disturbing distaste for vandalism in Toronto which will make it hard for the city to enter wholeheartedly into the vigour of the late twentieth century.
A board fence surrounding a huge excavation for a new high-rise building in the downtown district offers depressing evidence of Toronto's lack of big-city impulse. Embedded in the fence at intervals of about fifty feet are loudspeakers that play recorded music for passing pedestrians.
Not a single one of these loudspeakers has been mutilated. What's worse, not a single one has been stolen.
It was good to get back to the Big Apple. My coat pocket was bulging with candy wrappers from Toronto and—such is the lingering power of Toronto—it took me two or three hours back in New York before it seemed natural again to toss them into the street.
"The subway, on which Toronto prides itself, was a laughable imitation of the real thing." What does the author mean by "the real thing"?

A subway that is extremely clean and well illuminated.
B. A subway that has a magnificent look.
C. A subway littered with garbage and covered with spray paints.
D. A subway crowded with boisterous children.

The case against Mr. Sharon involved ______.

A. peace negotiations with Greece
B. land dispute with Greece
C. land development on a Greek island
D. his ability as a foreign minister

Israel's Attorney General has decided ______.

A. not to charge Sharon with corruption
B. to indict Sharon for corruption
C. to charge Sharon with the failure of the Greek Island Affair
D. not to indict Sharon for the failure of the Greek Island Affair

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文: President Bush said Thursday it is unrealistic to expect NATO to send more troops to Iraq. Speaking as he prepared to leave the G8 summit, the President said, however, that NATO countries could contribute in other ways. Earlier, speaking off the coast of Georgia where the site of the summit was, Sea Island, the President has suggested a role for NATO troops in Iraq that was met with some opposition by French President Jacques Chirac. The Group of Eight summit ended with participating countries agreeing among other things to fight AIDS and to promote democratic reforms across the larger Middle East.
According to the news, French President Chirac disagreed with President Bush on ______.

A. sending more NATO troops to Iraq
B. changing the way NATO acts in Iraq
C. contributing non-military NATO support for Iraq
D. playing a new role in Iraq proposed by President Bush

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