1 . In the college admissions war, we parents are the true fighters. We’re pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of their first choice. I’ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids’ college background as a _______ demonstrating how well we’ve raised them. But we are _______ to acknowledge that our obsession is more about us than them. So we’ve come up with various _______ that turn out to be half-truth’s prejudices or myths. It actually doesn’t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.

We have a full-blown prestige(声望) panic: we worry that there won’t be enough prizes to go around. _______ parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Behind the hysteria is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is _______ and mostly wrong. We haven’t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don’t systematically employ better _______ approaches than less selective schools. On two measures - professors’ feedback and the number of essay exams-selective schools do slightly worse.

By some studies, selective schools do _______ their graduates’ lifetime earnings. The gain is considered at 2-4% for every 100-point increase in a school’s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical coincidence. _______, a well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools.

_______ count more than colleges. Getting into Yale may ________ intelligence, talent and ambition. But it’s not the only indicator and its ________ is declining. The reason: so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college is not life’s only competition. In the next competition - the job market and graduate school - the ________ may change. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph. D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees from prestigious universities didn’t.

So, parents, ________. The risks have been vastly exaggerated. Up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a ________ society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for ________. One study found that all things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappointing.

2 . Organizations and societies rely on fines and rewards to control people’s self-interest for the sake of the common good. The________of a ticket keeps drivers in line, and the promise of a bonus inspires high performance. But incentives(刺激) can also ________, discouraging the very behavior they’re meant to encourage.

A generation ago, Richard Titmuss claimed that paying people to donate blood ________ the supply. Economists were suspicious, pointing out a lack of experimental evidence. But since then, new data and models have boosted a sea change in how economists think about incentives -- showing, among other things, that Titmuss was right so often that businesses should ________.

Experimental economists have found that offering to pay women for donating blood ________ the number willing to donate by almost half, and that letting them contribute the payment to charity ________ the effect. Dozens of recent experiments show that rewarding self-interest with economic incentives can backfire when they ________ what Adam Smith called “the moral sentiments(道德情操).” The psychology is not understood by blackboard economists, but it will be no surprise to people in business: When we take a job or buy a car, we are not only trying to get stuff -- we are also trying to be a certain kind of person. People desire to be respected by others and to be seen as moral and ________. And they don’t want to be taken for fools. Rewarding blood donations may backfire because it suggests that the donor is________ interested in being selfless and helpful than in making a dollar. Incentives also run into trouble when they signal that the employer mistrusts the employee or is ________. Close supervision of workers coupled with pay for________ is textbook economics--and a prescription for making employees unhappy.

Perhaps most important, incentives affect what our actions signal, whether we’re being self-interested or civic-minded, manipulated or trusted, and they can imply --- sometimes wrongly --- what motivates us. Fines or public criticism that ________ our moral sentiments by signaling social disapproval(think of littering)can be highly effective. But incentives go wrong when they ________ or cut down our moral sensibilities.

This does not mean it’s impossible to appeal to self-interested and moral motivations at the same time --- just that efforts to do so often fail. ________, policies support socially valued ends not only by controlling self-interest but also by encouraging public-spiritedness. The small tax on plastic grocery bags enacted in Ireland in 2002 that resulted in their virtual elimination appears to have had such an effect. It punished offenders monetarily while conveying a ________ message. Carrying a plastic bag joined wearing a fur coat in the group of anti-social anachronisms(不合潮流的人或物).

4 . Doubling as educational centers and conservation centers, museums play an important role in the protection of ________. Although these institutions ________ in size and specialty, the task of most museums is around the display and care of their collections.

Today, many museums are among the most visited ________ in the world. In order to figure out how this important cultural phenomenon came to be, it is ________ important to understand its origins and trace how its role has developed over time.

The word museum ________ from “mouseion”, the Greek term for “a holy place for the Muses”. In classical Greek mythology, the nine Muses are the goddesses of the arts and sciences, making them perfect protectors for these ________ institutions.

Earliest museums were private collections and were only accessible to a narrow circle of people. They displayed ________ and curious natural objects and works of art. Some of them even ________ “wonder rooms” or “cabinets of curiosities”.

In 1683, an Englishman named Elias Ashmole donated the contents of his wonder room to Oxford University, forming the ________ of the Ashmolean Museum. Believing that “the knowledge of Nature is very necessary to human life and health,” Ashmole wanted to ________ the public through his unprecedented (前所未有的) donation. Following his footsteps, many like-minded collectors across Europe shifted their focus from ________ use to public access in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries. During this time, world-class museums began to make their art collections accessible to the public. The opening of these institutions ________ a string of similar movements in the 19^th century.

Today, the importance of public institutions is stronger than ever before. ________ taking care of collections and making them accessible to the public, many museums are using new technologies to improve their public programs, ________ their collections, and share their research. With these modern methods, museums are able to ________ audiences in new ways and extend their tasks beyond their walls.