閱讀教程四-重要文章

1、閱讀教程四 重要文章Unit one Animals and their rightsReading 1 Animal LiberationOur attitudes to animals begin to form when we are very young, and they are dominated by the fact that we begin to eat meat at an early age. Interestingly enough, many children at first refuse to eat animal flesh, and only become

2、accustomed to it after strenuous efforts by their parents, who mistakenly believe that it is necessary for good health. Whatever the childs initial reaction, though, the point to notice is that we eat animal flesh long before we are capable of understanding what we eat is the dead body of an animal.

3、 Thus we never make a conscious, informed decision, free from the bias that accompanies any long-established habit, reinforced by all the pressures of social conformity, to eat animal flesh. At the same time children have a natural love of animals, and our society encourages them to be affectionate

4、towards pets and cuddly, stuffed toy animals. Form these facts stems the most distinctive characteristic of the attitude of children in our society to animalsnamely, that there is not one unified attitude to animals, but two conflicting attitudes that coexist in one individual ,carefully segregated

5、so that the inherent contradiction between them rarely causes trouble.Not so long ago children were brought up on fairy tales in which animals, especially wolves, were pictured as cunning enemies of man. A characteristic happy ending would leave the wolf drowning in a pond, weighed down by stones wh

6、ich the ingenious hero had sewn in its belly while it was asleep. And in case children missed the implications of these stories they could all join hands and sing a nursery rhyme like:“Three blind mice, see how they run!They all ran after the farmers wifeWho cut off their tails with a carving knife.

7、Did you ever see such a thing in your lifeAs three blind mice?”For children brought up on these stories and rhymes there was no inconsistency between what they were taught and what they are. Today, however such stories have gone out of fashion, and on the surface all is sweetness and light, so far a

8、s childrens attitudes to animals are concerned. Thereby a problem has arisen: what about the animals we eat?One response to this problem is simple evasion. The childs affection for animals is directed towards animals that are not eaten: dogs, cats and other pets. There are the animals that an urban

9、or suburban child is most likely to see. Cuddly, stuffed toy animals are more likely to be bars or lions than pigs or cows. When farm animals are mentioned in picture books and stories, however, evasion may become a deliberate attempt to mislead the child about the nature of modern farms, and so scr

10、een him form reality. An example of this is the popular Hallmark book Farm Animals which presents the child with pictures of hens, turkeys, cows and pigs, all surrounded by their young, with not a cage, shed or stall in sight. The text tells us that pigs “enjoy a good meal, then roll in the mud and

11、let out a squeal!” while “Cows dont have a thing to do, but switch their tails, eat grass and moo.” British books, like The Farm in the best selling Ladybird series, covey the same impression of rural simplicity, showing the hen running freely in an orchard with her chicks, and all the other animals

12、 living with their offspring in spacious quarters. With this kind of early reading it is not surprising that children grow up believing that even if animals “must” die to provide human beings with food, they live happily until that time comes.Recognizing the importance of the attitude we form when y

13、oung, the Womens Liberation movement has suggested changes in the stories we read to our children. They want brave princesses to rescue helpless princes occasionally. To alter the stories about animals that we real to our children will not be easy, since cruelty is no t an ideal subject for children

14、s stories. Yet it should be possible to avoid the more gruesome details, and still give children picture books and stories that encourage respect for animals as independent beings, and not as cute little objects that exist for our amusement and tables; and as children grow older, they can be made aw

15、are that most animals live under conditions that are not very pleasant. The difficulty will be that non-vegetarian parents are going to be reluctant to let their children learn the full story, for fear that the childs affection for animals may disrupt family meals. Even now, one frequently hears tha

16、t, on learning that animals are killed to provide meat, a friends child has refused to eat meat. Unfortunately this instinctive rebellion is likely to meet strong resistance from non-vegetarian parents, and most children are unable to keep their refusal in the face of opposition from parents who pro

17、vide their meals and tell them that they will not grow up big and strong without meat. One hopes, as knowledge of nutrition spreads, more parents will realize that on this issue their children may be wiser than they are.Unit two Crime and PunishmentReading one The Death Penalty in the United State:

18、Old Enough to Kill, Old Enough to Die?In the United States, 37 states currently allow capital punishment for serious crimes such as murder. Americans have always argued about the death penalty. Today, there is a serious question about this issue: Should there be a minimum age limit for executing cri

19、minals? In other words, is it right for convicted murderers who kill when they are minors, i.e. , under the age of 18, to receive the death penalty? In most countries of the world, there is no capital punishment for minors. In the United States, though, each state makes its own decision. Of the 37 s

20、tates that allow the death penalty, 30 permit the execution of minors.In the state of South Carolina, a convicted murderer was given the death penalty for a crime he committed while he was a minor. In 1977, when he was 17 years old, James Terry Roach and two friends brutally murdered three people. R

21、oachs lawyer fought the decision to execute him. The young murderer remained on death row (a separate part of prison for convicted criminals who are sentenced to die) for ten years while his lawyer appealed to the governor. The lawyer argued that it is wrong to execute a person for a crime committed

22、 while he was a minor. In the United States, the governor of a state has the power to change a sentence from the death penalty to life in prison. Nonetheless, the governor of South Carolina refused to stop the execution. Roach was finally executed by electrocution in 1986. This is not the first time

23、 a minor was executed in South Carolina. In 1944, a 14-year-old boy died in that states electric chair.In Indiana, a 16-year-old girl is on death row for a crime she committed when she was 15. Paula Cooper and three friends stabbed an elderly woman to death. They robbed the old woman to get money to

24、 play video games. Coopers lawyer has appealed to the governor of Indiana to stop the execution because the convicted killer is very young and because she was abused in childhood. The Indiana governor, who favors the death penalty, said that he must let the courts to do their job. Surprisingly, the

25、grandson of the murdered woman agrees with the girls lawyer. A deeply religious man, the grandson opposes the execution, too, and writes to his grandmothers murderer in prison on a regular basis.Although no one believes that either of these killers deserves sympathy, some people believe that capital

26、 punishment is too severe for convicted murders who are minors. They feel that it is wrong to treat minors the same as adults in these case. Opponents of the death penalty in general think it is wrong to take one life for anther. They argue that capital punishment does not protect the victim or the

27、victims family. Opponents also suggest that occasionally innocent people may be executed for crimes they did not commit.On the other hand, people who agree with the death penalty argue that it prevents repeat crimes and, therefore, future victims. These proponents of capital punishment believe that

28、fear of the death penalty deters crime. That is, fewer people will commit murder because they fear the death penalty.The laws concerning capital punishment are changing every day. Recently, Indiana raised its minimum age limit for the death penalty to 16. Before that, the age limit in that state was

29、 10. Perhaps other states will change their laws in the future, but in the meantime, the controversy continues.Unit three Gun Ownership and CensorshipReading three: Arming Myself with a Gun Is Not the AnswerWhen my father died 15 years ago, my brother and I inherited the old Midwestern farmhouse our

30、 grandparents had purchased in the 1930s. I was the one who decided to give up my harried existence as a teacher in New York City and make a life in this idyllic village, population 350, in northern Michigan.A full-time job in the English department of a nearby college quickly followed. I settled in

31、to small-town life, charmed by a community where your neighbors are also your friends and no one worries about locking a door. Eventually I forgot about the big-city stress of crowds, noise and crime.I felt safe enough to keep my phone number listed so colleagues and students could reach me after ho

32、urs. I was totally unprepared when I returned home one evening to an answering machine filled with incoherent and horribly threatening messages. I could identify the voiceit belonged to a former student of mine. Shocked and frightened, I called 911, and an officer arrived in time to pick up the phon

33、e and hear the man threaten to rape and kill me. The cop recognized the caller as the stalker in a similar incident that had been reported a few years before, and immediately rushed me out of the house. I soon learned that my would-be assailant had been arrested, according to police, drunk, armed wi

34、th a 19-inch double-edged knife and just minutes from my door.It was revealed in court testimony that my stalker was a schizophrenic who had fallen through the cracks of the mental-health system. In spite of my 10-year personal-protection order, I live with the fear that he will return unsupervised

35、to my community. Time and again, colleagues and friends have argued me to get a gun to protect myself.And why shouldnt I? This part of rural Michigan is home to an avid gun culture. Nov.15, the opening day of deer-hunting season, is all but an official holiday. It is not uncommon to see the bumper s

36、ticker CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT displayed, along with a gun rack, on the back of local pickup trucks.A good friend recommended several different handguns. This assistant prosecutor on the case told me Id have no problem getting a concealed-weapons permit. A female deputy offered to teach me h

37、ow to shoot.But I havent gotten a gun, and I am not going to. When I questioned them, my friends and colleagues had to admit that theyve used guns only for recreational purposes, never for self-defense. The assistant prosecutor said that he would never carry a concealed weapon himself. And an ex-cop

38、 told me that no matter how much you train, the greatest danger is of hurting yourself.The truth is when you keep a gun for self-protection, you live with constant paranoia. For me, owning a gun and practicing at a target range would be allowing my sense of victimization to corrupt my deepest values

39、.Contrary to all the pro-gun arguments, I dont believe guns are innocent objects. If they were, “gunnies” wouldnt display them as badges of security and freedom. When someone waves a gun around, he or she is advertising the power to snuff out life. But guns are no deterrent. Like nuclear weapons, th

40、ey only ensure greater devastation when conflict breaks out or the inevitable human error occurs.I never needed a weapon in the years prior to my terrifying experience. And while I learned not to flinch at the sight of men and women in fluorescent orange carrying rifles into the woods at the start o

41、f deer season, owning a gun for play or protection didnt occur to me. But Ive learned firsthand that even small, close-knit communities are subject to the kind of social problemslike disintegrating families and substance abusethat can propel a troubled person toward violence, so I now carry pepper s

42、pray and my cell phone at all times.In Michiganand elsewhereas federal funding for state mental-health care continues to shrink and state psychiatric hospitals are forced to close, the numbers of untreated, incarcerated and homeless mentally ill are rising. People with serious mental illness and vio

43、lent tendencies need 24-hour care. It costs less to house them in group homes with trained counselors than it does to keep them in prisons or hospitals. But until states fund more of this kind of care, people like my stalker will continue to return unsupervised to our communities.And people like me

44、will be forced to consider getting guns to protect ourselves. I am lucky. I survived, though not unchanged. I know my fear cannot be managed with a gun. The only reasonable response is to do what I can to help fix the mental-health system. Awareness, education and proper funding will save more lives

45、 and relieve more fear than all the guns we can buy.Unit four Life or Death (Euthanasia)Reading two: In Defense of Voluntary EuthanasiaA few short years ago, I lay at the point of death. A congestive heart failure was treated for diagnostic purposes by an angiogram that triggered a stroke. Violent a

46、nd painful hiccups, uninterrupted for several days and nights, prevented the ingestion of food. My left side and one of my vocal cords became paralyzed. Some form of pleurisy set in, and I felt I was drowning in a sea of slime. At one point, my heart stopped beating; just as I lost consciousness, it

47、 was thumped back into action again. In one of my lucid intervals during those days of agony, I asked my physician to discontinue all life-supporting services or show me how to do it. He refused and predicted that someday I would appreciate the unwisdom of my request.A month later, I was discharged

48、from the hospital. In six months, I regained the use of my limbs, and although my voice still lacks its old resonance and carrying power I no longer croak like a frog. There remain some minor disabilities and I am restricted to a rigorous, low sodium diet. I have resumed my writing and research.My e

49、xperience can be and has been cited as an argument against honoring requests of stricken patients to be gently eased out of their pain and life. I cannot agree. There are two main reasons. As an octogenarian, there is a reasonable likelihood that I may suffer another “cardiovascular accident” or wor

50、se. I may not even be in a position to ask for the surcease of pain. It seems to me that I have already paid my dues to deathindeed, although time has softened my memories they are vivid enough to justify my saying that I suffered enough to warrant dying several times over. Why run the risk of more?

51、Secondly, I dread imposing on my family and friends another grim round of misery similar to the one my first attack occasioned.My wife and children endured enough for one lifetime. I know that for them the long days and nights of waiting, the disruption of their professional duties and their own fam

52、ilial responsibilities counted for nothing in their anxiety for me. In their joy at my recovery they have been forgotten. Nevertheless, to visit another prolonged spell of helpless suffering on them as my life ebbs away, or even worse, if I linger on into a comatose senility, seem s altogether gratu

53、itous.But what, it may be asked, of the joy and satisfaction of living, of basking in the sunshine, listening to music, watching ones grandchildren growing into adolescence, following the news about the fate of freedom in a trouble world, playing with ideas, writing ones testament of wisdom and foll

54、y for posterity? It not all that one endured, together with the risk of its recurrence, an acceptable price for the multiple satisfactions that are still open even to a person of advanced years?Apparently those who cling to life no matter what think so. I do not.The zest and intensity of these exper

55、iences are no longer what they used to be. I am not vain enough to delude myself that I can in the few remaining years make an important discovery useful for mankind or can lead a social movement of do anything that will be historically eventful, not less eventful-making. My autobiography, which des

56、cribes a record of intellectual and political experiences of some historical value, already much too long, could be posthumously published. I have had my fill of joys and sorrows and am not greedy for more life. I have always thought that a test of whether one had found happiness in ones life is whe

57、ther one would be willing to relive itwhether, if it were possible, one would accept the opportunity to be born again.Having lived a full and relatively happy life, I would cheerfully accept the chance to be reborn, but certainly not be reborn again as an infirm octogenarian. To some extent, my view

58、s reflect what I have seen happen to the aged and stricken who have been so unfortunate as to survive crippling paralysis. They suffer, and impose suffering on others, unable even to make a request that their torment be ended.I am mindful too of the burdens placed upon the community, with its rapidl

59、y diminishing resources, to provide the adequate and costly services necessary to sustain the lives of those whose days and night s are spent on mattress graves of pain. A better use could be made of these resources to increase the opportunities and qualities of life for the young. I am not denying the moral obligation the community has to look after its disabled and aged. There are times, however, when an individual may find it pointless to insist on the fu