-
2018
年
12
月英语
四级阅读理解：男孩女孩
,
孰为第二性
The New Gender Gap
When
the
leaders
of
the
Class
of
2003
assemble
in
Lawrence
High’s
fluorescent
-lit1 meeting rooms, most of
the boys are nowhere
to be seen. The
senior class president? A girl. The vice
-president?
Girl.
Head
of
student
government?
Girl.
Captain
of
the
math
team,
chief
of
the
yearbook,
and
editor
of
the
newspaper?
Girls.
The
female
lock
on
power
at
Lawrence
is
emblematic
of
a
stunning
gender
reversal
in
American
education.
From
kindergarten
to
graduate school, boys are
fast becoming the second sex.
It may still be
a man’s world . But it is no longer, in any way, a
boy’s.
From
his
first
days
in
school,
an
average
boy
is
already
developmentally two
years behind the girls
in reading and
writing.
Yet he’s often expected to
learn the same things in the same way in
the same amount of time. While every
nerve in his body tells him to
run,
he
has
to
sit
still
and
listen
for
almost
eight
hours
a
day.
Biologically, he needs
about four recesses
a day, but he’s
lucky if he
gets
one,
since
some
lawsuit-leery
schools
have
banned
them
altogether. Hug a girl, and he could be
labeled a toucherand swiftly
suspended
a
result
of
what
some
say
is
an
increasingly
anti-boy
culture that pathologizes their
behavior.
Overall, more boys and girls are in
college than a generation ago.
But
when
adjusted
for
population
growth,
the
percentage
of
boys
entering
college
,
master’s
programs,
and
most
doctoral
programs
except
for
PhDs2
in
fields
like
engineering
and
computer
science
has
mostly stalled out,
whereas
for women it has
continued to rise
across
the
board.
The
trend
is
most
pronounced
among
Hispanics,
African
Americans, and those from low-income families.
Instead
of
catering
to
boys’learning
styles,
others
argue,
many
schools are force-fitting them into an
unnatural mold. The reigning
sit-still-
and-
listen paradigm isn’t ideal for
either sex.
Experts say educators
should focus on helping boys feel less like
misfits.
Experts
are
designing
new
developmentally
appropriate,
child-initiated
learning
that
concentrates
on
problem-solving,
not
just
test-
taking.
This
approach
benefits
both
sexes
but
especially
boys, given that
they tend to learn best through action, not just
talk.
Activities
ar
e
geared
toward
the
child’s
interest
level
and
temperament.
Boys,
for
example,
can
learn
math
through
counting
pinecones,
biology
through
mucking
around
in
a
pond.
They
can
read Harry Potter instead of Little
House on the Prairie , and write
about
aliens
attacking
a
hospital
rather
than
about
how
to
care
for
people in the hospital.
Indeed,
brain
research
shows
that
boys
are
actually
more
empathic,
expressive,
and
emotive
at
birth
than
girls.
But
the
boy
code , which bathes them in a culture
of stoicism and reticence, often
socializes those aptitudes out of them
by the second grade .We now
have
executives
paying
10
,
000
a
week
to
learn
emotional
intelligence,says are actually the
skills boys are born
with.
A new world has
opened up for girls, but unless a symmetrical
effort is made to help boys find their
footing, it may turn out that it’s
a
lonely place to be.
练习题：
Ⅰ
.
Complete the following sentences with the words
given: