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One often hears it said that travel broadens themind: if you stay in your own country the whole time, your ideas remain narrow; whereas if you travelabroad you see new customs, eat new foods, do newthings, and come back home with a broader mind.
But does this always — or even usually — happen?An acquaintance2 of mine who lives in England andhad never been outside it until last summer, decided to go over3 to France for a trip. When hereturned, I asked him how he liked it.“Terrible, ”was his answer.“ I couldn’t get a nice cup of teaanywhere . 4 Thank goodness I’m back. ”I asked him whether he hadn’t had any good foodwhile he was there .“Oh, the dinners were all right, ”he said.“I found a little place where theymade quite good fish and chips. Not as good as ours, mind you5, but they were passable. Butthe breakfasts were terrible: no bacon or kippers. I had fried eggs and chi
ps, but it was quite a6 business getting them to make them. They expected me to eat rolls. And when I asked formarmalade , they brought strawberry jam. And do you know, they insisted that it wasmarmalade? The trouble is they don’t know English. ”
2021年四六级成绩查询入口 I thought it useless to explain that we borrowed the word‘marmalade ’from French, and that itmeans, in that language, any kind of jam. So I said,“But didn’t you eat any of the famousFrench food?”“What? Me?”he said.“Of course not! Give me good old English food every time!None of these fancy bits for me! ”Obviously travel had not broadened his mind.
This does not, of course, happen only to Englishmen in France: all nationalities, in all foreigncountries, can be found judging what they see, hear, taste and smell according to their ownhabits and customs. People who are better educated and who have read a lot about foreigncountries tend to be more adaptable7 and tolerant8, but this is because their minds havealready been broadened before they start travelling. In fact, it is easier to be broad-mindedabout foreign habits and customs, if one’s acquaintance with these things is limited to booksand films. The American smiles tolerantly over the absence of central heati
ng in most Englishhomes when he is himself comfortably seated in his armchair in his centrally heated house inChicago; the English man reads about the sanitary arrangements in a certain tropical country,and the inhabitants of the latter read about London fogs, and each side manages to bedetached and broad-minded. 9 But actual physical contact with things one is unaccustomed tois much more difficult to bear philosophically.
Perhaps the ideal would be if travel could succeed in making people tolerant of the habits andcustoms of others without abandoning their own. The criterion for judging a foreigner couldbe: Does he try to be polite and considerate to others? Instead of: Is he like me?
阅读自测
Ⅰ. True o r Fa lse :
1. It is often said that if you travel abroad to see many new things, your mind will bebroadened.
2. The Englishman had a happy life when he travelled to France .
3. The word‘marmalade’is originally a French word, which means any kind of jam.
4. In the view of the author, people often judge things according to their own habits andcustoms.
5. The author thinks that people who are better educated and read a lot are easily to betolerant.
6. Tea , bacon, kippers, chips are all typical English food.
【参考答案】
Ⅰ. 1. T 2. F 3 . T 4 . T 5 . T 6 . T
Faced with rapid change and the fear anduncertainty1 that go with it, individuals as well asnations sometimes seek to return to the ways of thepast as a solution. in the early 1980s the idea ofreturning to the ways of the past had a strongappeal 2 to many americans who increasingly viewedtheir past as being better than their future. Twofamous experts have ob
served that until the 1970 s americans generally believed that thepresent was a better time for their country than the past and that the future would be betterthan the present; by 1978, however, public opinion polls3 showed that many americans hadcome to believe that just the opposite 4 was true: the past had been better for the countrythan the present, and the present was better than the future would be.
The popular appeal of returning to the ways of the past as a solution to the problems of the1980s was demonstrated when ronald reagan5 was elected president of the united states in1980 . time magazine chose president reagan as its "man of the year" and said of him, "intellectually, emotionally, reagan lives in the past."
One of president reagan’s basic beliefs is that the united states should return as much aspossible to its pre-19307 ways. in those times business institutions were strong andgovernment institutions were weak. reagan believes that the american values of individualfreedom and competition are strengthened by business and weakened by government.therefore, his programs as president have been designed to greatly strengthen
business andreduce the size and power of the national government. by moving in this way toward thepractices of the past, president reagan believed that the standard of living of americans wouldbegin to improve once more in the 1980s as it had done throughout most of the nation’shistory.
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