雅思阅读真题 The Nature of Genius（天才的本质）

教育心理类・天才的本质（The Nature of Genius）

来源：剑桥雅思 8 Test 3 Passage 2 | 题型：人名观点匹配 + 判断题 | 难度：中等偏难一原版真题原文

The Nature of Genius

A

There has always been an interest in geniuses and prodigies. The word 'genius', from the Latin gens (= family) and the term 'genius', meaning 'begetter', comes from the early Roman cult of a divinity as the head of the family. In its earliest form, genius was concerned with the ability of the head of the family, the paterfamilias, to perpetuate himself. Gradually, genius came to represent a person's characteristics and thence an individual's highest attributes derived from his 'genius' or guiding spirit. Today, people still look to stars or genes, astrology or genetics, in the hope of finding the source of exceptional abilities or personal characteristics.

B

The concept of genius and of gifts has become part of our folk culture, and attitudes are ambivalent towards them. We envy gifted people and distrust them too. In the mythology of giftedness, it is popularly believed that if you are intelligent, high achievers are abnormal people with strange habits and odd characteristics. Change the observers and the vantage points, clear away some of the mist, and a different lot of peaks appear. Genius is a term we apply to those whom we recognise for their outstanding achievements and who stand near the end of the continuum of human abilities which reaches back through the mundane and mediocre to the incapable. There is still much truth in Dr Samuel Johnson's observation, "The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction". We may disagree with the 'general', for we doubt if all musicians of genius could have become scientists of genius or vice versa. But there is no doubt that the idea of shared, underlying powers fits many cases.

C

The nineteenth century saw considerable interest in the nature of genius, and produced not a few studies of famous prodigies. Perhaps for us today, two of the most significant aspects of most of these studies of genius are the frequency with which early encouragement by parents and teachers was crucial in developing abilities, and the frequency with which prodigies were 'one-sided' – that is, very highly developed in one area but below average in others. However, the difficulty with the evidence produced by these studies, fascinating as they are in collecting anecdotes and apparent similarities, is that they are not what we would today call norm-referenced. In other words, when, for instance, information is collated about early illnesses, methods of upbringing, schooling, etc., we must also take into account information from other historical sources about how common or exceptional these were at the time. For instance, infant mortality was high and life expectancy much shorter than today, home tutoring was common among the wealthy, and the majority of people were very poorly educated. We must also ask whether the stories of prodigies are always accurate. We should remember that in some cases, the remarkable legends about their lives were largely invented after their deaths, as in the case of the mathematician Pythagoras.

D

What we appreciate, enjoy or marvel at in the works of genius or the achievements of prodigies are the manifestations of skills or abilities which are similar to, but so much superior to, our own. But that their minds are not different from our own is demonstrated by the fact that the hard-won discoveries of scientists like Kepler or Einstein become the commonplace knowledge of schoolchildren and the once outrageous shapes and colours of an artist like Paul Klee so soon appear on the fabrics we wear. This does not minimise the supremacy of their achievements, which outstrip our own as the sub-four-minute milers outstrip our jogging.

E

To think of geniuses and the gifted as having uniquely different brains is only reasonable if we accept that each human brain is uniquely different. The purpose of instruction is to make us even more different from one another, and in the process of being educated, we can learn from the achievements of those more gifted than ourselves. But before we try to emulate geniuses or encourage our children to do so we should note that some of the things we learn from them may prove unpalatable. We may envy their achievements and fame, but we should also recognise the price they may have paid in terms of perseverance, single-mindedness, dedication, restrictions on their personal lives, the demands upon their energies and time, and how often they had to display great courage to preserve their integrity or to make their way to the top.

F

Genius and giftedness are relative descriptive terms of no real substance. We would be more realistic and more encouraging to everyone if we accept that genius is simply the highest point on a continuum of ability, that it arises from a very fortunate combination of genes, upbringing, opportunity and effort, and that the abilities of geniuses are not fundamentally different from our own. There is no special gene for genius; it is the product of the interaction between the human capacity to learn and the circumstances in which people grow up and work.

Questions 14-18

Match each statement with the correct person, A-E.Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

List of PeopleA Samuel JohnsonB Nineteenth-century studies of geniusC People's common beliefD Kepler and EinsteinE Pythagoras

Questions 19-26

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?In boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet, write

• YES
   if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
• NO
   if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
• NOT GIVEN
   if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this