If you are a parent of young children who browses parenting websites, you will at some point be invited, through targeted advertising, to enrol your child in a Global Maths Skill Assessment — “to see how they compare to peers globally”. You may be urged to consider the possibility — no, probability — that they are “gifted” in some way, if not in maths, then in music or art. It’s window-dressing (门面粉饰) for subscription (订阅) services, but the other day, a line caught my eye that I haven’t been able to forget. “Talent isn’t everything; the important thing is to teach your child to be kind.”
This positioning of “kindness” as the opposite of “talent” is common once you start looking for it. Kindness is, everywhere: the consolation (安慰) prize, the award for perfect attendance. A few years ago, none of this would have struck me as noteworthy. I believed a tendency towards kindness wasn’t something we were born with, but instead something entirely reliant on cultivation. These days I wonder about that, and about our determination to see it that way.
It brings us to the problem of kindness; not only the fact that, in plenty of settings, it can be a code for weakness or neediness, but the fact that the word itself has been emptied out through misuse. Real kindness is not this. Kindness, I try to tell my children, is strength. My child who is always kind to others is frequently confused by the unfriendliness of others, at which point I have to bite my tongue. “Jessica was rude to you because she’s silly” is not what I’m going to teach my seven-year-old.
Can you teach someone to be kind? Of course, but also only sort of, not entirely. You can discipline them with reason and rewards in the same way you can send them to piano every week and eventually they’ll learn to play Twinkle Twinkle. The fact remains that some people are kinder than others not as a result of external forces but from some inborn ability. The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop said, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Two thousand years later, it remains a hard sell.
43. Parenting websites often make use of various assessments of children’s talent to ________.
A.increase the click-through rate | B.promote their targeted training |
C.remind parents of their children’s talent | D.have parents subscribe their services |
44. In the second paragraph, the writer mentions “
the consolation prize” to show ________.
A.kindness is viewed as the opposite of talent |
B.consolation prize is a kind gesture that should be promoted |
C.kind deeds are no easy to find |
D.kindness deserves to be noticed in the contemporary society |
45. What does the underlined phrase “
bite my tongue” in Paragraph 3 mean?
A.Say nothing. | B.Let out my anger. |
C.Harm oneself accidentally. | D.Explain something in pain. |
46. According to the passage, which of the following statements does the writer most probably agree with?
A.Every child is talented, either in maths, music, art or kindness. |
B.Kindness is your strength to talk back when offended. |
C.Kindness is not something that can be easily taught. |
D.Teaching can bring about children’s tendency towards kindness. |