单项选择题

共用题干题

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< TD vAlign=top width="100%"> There is an immense and justified pride
in what our colleges have done. At the same time there is a growing uneasiness
about their product. The young men and women who carry away our degrees are a
very attractive lot - in looks, in bodily fitness, in kindliness, energy,
courage and buoyancy. But what of their intellectual equipment That too is in
some ways admirable; for in spite of President Lowell’s remark that the
university should be a repository of great learning, since the freshmen always
bring a stock with them and the seniors take little away, the fact is that our
graduates have every chance to be well informed, and usually are so. Yet the
uneasiness persists. When it becomes articulate, it takes the form of wishes
that these attractive young products of ours had more intellectual depth and
force, more at-homeness in the world of ideas, more of the firm, clear, quiet
thoughtfulness that is so potent and so needed a guard against besetting humbug
and quackery. The complaint commonly resolves itself into a bill of three
particulars. First, granting that our graduates know a good deal, their
knowledge lies about in fragments and never gets welded together into the stuff
of a tempered and mobile mind. Secondly, our university graduates have been so
busy boring holes for themselves, acquiring special knowledge and skills, that
in later life they have astonishingly little in common in the way of ideas,
standards, or principles. Thirdly, it is alleged that the past two decades have
revealed a singular want of clarity about the great ends of living, attachment
to which gives significance and direction to a life. Here are three grave
charges against American education,, and I want to discuss them briefly. My
argument will be simple, perhaps too simple. What I shall contend is that there
is a great deal of truth in each of them, and that the remedy for each is the
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The main subject of this passage is （）.