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 Twains 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 countrys educational system is 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.
Notes:intellect 才智,智能,理解力,思维能力;知识分子。entertainers 表演家。entrepreneurs 企业家。pervasive 弥漫的,渗透的,遍布的。intellectualism 主知主义。counterbalance 平衡力,起平衡作用的因素。distaste n. 厌恶,不喜欢。vulnerable adj. 脆弱的。populist adj. 民粹的。elitism 杰出人物统治论,高人一等的优越感。complementary 补充的,互补的。civil 公民的;文明的。transcendentalist 先验论的。rigorous 严格的,严厉的。a bellyful of 满腹的。innate 天生的,先天的。contemplative 沉思的。
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