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 own, 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, lie 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 ______.

As a Canadian immersion teacher, I was enthused to see the letter from John Whelpton about the Canadian immersion experience (South China Morning Post, June 11). I would like to take this opportunity to expand upon and challenge some of his views.
I agree that the Canadian immersion and bilingual schools have been successful in producing functionally bilingual students. In the province of Manitoba, there are French, Ukrainian, and German immersion schools; Hebrew bilingual schools; and a school for native Indian students. English immersion programs are popular for students from the province of Quebec as well as from countries such as Libya and Japan. However, Mr. Whelpton’s suggested condition that teachers in these schools must be fully bilingual may be unnecessary. For example, primary teachers can and do function with a smaller vocabulary than secondary teachers.
Secondly, it is doubtful that students will use English because they understand and accept the objective of "making English the language of the classroom" which is a rather sterile motive. One reason that Canadian immersion programs work is because of the commitment to Whole Language Learning, that is, children learn a language, (first or second), by using it to transmit or receive meaningful messages that are interesting, real and important.
They want to make their needs and desires known and to understand the world around them. Immersion programs integrate language and content in an activity-based, child-centered manner so that the child is motivated to use the second language as a tool to transmit and receive messages related to social and academic interests. In addition the second language is modeled throughout the school, is encouraged and rewarded, and thus becomes the language of choice. It is not necessary to "abandon" Cantonese; an immersion program should pro- vide some daily instruction in the first language.
Mr. Whelption’s third argument that all the students in one class need to be at approximately the same level of English proficiency when they switch to English is unrealistic and unprofitable. How does a teacher group children who have a huge vocabulary but poor grammar skills and others who have correct grammar but a poor vocabularyAlso, suppose the students have similar language abilities but different learning styles! The odds are that a teacher, at any point in time, will be teaching at a level that is too difficult for one-third, too easy for one-third and appropriate for the final one-third of the students. Hence the concept of cooperative learning: students in heterogeneous groups with a mixture of personalities, talents and weaknesses (a more realistic reflection of life) learn better as they cooperate, instead of compete, and depend on each other for support and information.
This type of learning environment frees the teacher from the traditional lecturing mode in favor of circulating, monitoring and challenging the students to make use of their different experiences to expand their knowledge and skills.
I support immersion programs not simply so that Hong Kong remains "competitive as an international business center", but because children who learn a second language partake in an educational experience that expands their horizons in addition to their cognitive, social and affective capabilities; important goals of education indeed. (530)

A. provides clues for people who are critical of us
B. indicates our likes and dislikes in choosing a career
C. has a direct influence on the way people regard us
D. is of particular importance when we get on in age