TEXT B Dwight attended Lincoln
elementary school, directly across the street from his home. The curriculum
emphasized rote learning. "The darkness of the classrooms on a winter day and
the monotonous hum of recitation," Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, "... are my
sole surviving memories. I was either a lackluster student or involved in a
lackluster program." He came to life for the spelling bee and arithmetic.
Spelling contests aroused in him his competitive drive and his hatred of
careless mistakes—he became a self-confessed martinet on the subject of
orthography. Arithmetic appealed to him because it was logical and
straightforward—an answer was either right or wrong. The subject
that really excited him, however, was one that he pursued on his owns military
history. He became so engrossed in it, in fact, that he neglected his chores and
his schoolwork. His first hero was Hannibal. Then he became a student of the
American Revolution, and George Washington excited his admiration. He
talked history to his classmates so frequently that his senior yearbook
predicted that he would become a professor of history at Yale (it also predicted
that Edgar would become a two-term President of the United States).
During Dwight’s high school years his interests were, in order of
importance, sports, work, studies, and girls. He was shy around the girls and in
any case wanted to impress his male classmates as a regular fellow, just one of
the gang. Paying too much attention to the girls was considered somewhat sissy.
He was careless of his dress, his hair was usually uncombed, and he was a
terrible dancer on the few occasions he tried the dance floor.
Studies came easily to him and he made good to excellent grades without
exerting himself. He got all Bs in his freshman year, when the subjects
were English, physical geography, algebra, and German. He did a bit better the
next year, and as a junior and senior he was an A or A-plus student in English,
history, and geometry. His sole B was in Latin. Sports,
especially football and baseball, were the center of his life. He expended far
more energy on sports than he put .into his studies. He was a good, but not
outstanding, athlete. He was well coordinated, but slow of foot. He weighed only
150 pounds. His chief asset was his will to win. He loved the challenge of
the games themselves, enjoyed the competition with older and bigger boys,
bubbled over with pleasure at hitting a single to drive in the winning run or at
throwing the other team’s star halfback for a loss. It was in
sports that he first discovered his talents as a leader and an organizer. As a
boy, he provided the energy and leadership that led to a Saturday-afternoon game
of football or baseball. Later, he was the one who organized the Abilene
High School Athletic Association, which operated independently of the school
system. Little Ike wrote to schools in the area to make up a schedule, and
solved the problem of transportation by hustling his team onto freight trains
for a free ride from Abilene to the site of the contest. He also
organized camping and hunting trips. He got the boys together, collected the
money, hired the livery rig to take them to the camping site, bought the food,
and did the cooking. The central importance of sports, hunting,
and fishing to Little Ike cannot be overemphasized. He literally could not
imagine life without them. As can be inferred from the passage, at Lincoln elementary school, Dwight ______.
A.benefited a lot from rote learning B.was an average student C.studied very hard in spite of the dull courses D.was good at sports