单选题：A. 12th-grader wrote a college admissions essay about wantin

A. 12th-grader wrote a college admissions essay about wanting to pursue a career in oceanography. Let's call her Isabella. A few months ago, we edited it in my classroomduring lunch. The writing was good, but plenty of 17-year-old's fantasies aboutswimming with whales. Her essay was distinctive for another reason: Her career goalswere not the highlight of the essay. They were just a means of framing her statementof purpose, something surprisingly few personal statements actually get around tomaking.
B.The essay's core concerned the rhetoric ( 花言巧语 ) that educators had used tomotivate her and her peers--other minority students from low-income communities.She'd been encouraged to think of college foremost as a path to socio-economicmobility. Since elementary school, teachers had rhapsodized ( 写狂想曲 ) about theopportunities that four years of higher education could unlock. Administrators hadrepeatedly mentioned statistics about the gulf in earnings between college graduatesand those with only high-school diplomas. She'd been told to think about her family,their hopes for her, what they hadn't had and what she could have if she remaineddiligent. She'd been promised that good grades and a ticket to a good college wouldlead to a good job, one that would guarantee her financial independence and enableher to give back to those hard-working people who had placed their faith in her.
C.Thankfully, Isabella condemned this characterization as shortsighted and simplistic.My guess is that only students like her ever have to hear it.
D.The black and Latino kids I teach live in Inglewood and West Adams in Los Angeles.Their parents are house-cleaners, truck drivers, and non-union carpenters. Whenadministrators, counselors, and teachers repeat again and again that a college degreewill alleviate economic hardship, they don't mean to suggest that there is no otherpoint to higher education. Yet by focusing on this one potential benefit, educatorsrisk distracting them from the others, emphasizing the value of the fruits of theiracademic labor and skipping past the importance of the labor itself. The message isthat intellectual curiosity plays second fiddle to ( 居次位 ) financial security.
E.While Isabella's essay acknowledged her lack of economic advantages and portrayedwith sensitivity her parents' struggles, she was eager to focus first on nurturing herintellectual passion. She detailed how her curiosity about sea urchins ( 海单 )and other marine life had led to a passion she wants to sustain through college anda subsequent career. College will ferry her to her intellectual destiny, not afinancial windfall ( 意外之财 ) She'll make her life's work what she wants to do,not just what she is able to do.
F. My students are understandably preoccupied with money. They don't have the privilege to not worry about it. They fantasize about what their future wealth will permit them to enjoy. They dream about specific models of cars in certain colors andhuge houses in particular neighborhoods and ample meals at their favorite restaurantsany time they wish. Many rejoiced over the East Coast liberal arts colleges they visiton the special trips that my school is thoughtful enough to arrange. Colleges likeSwarthmore and Haverford fly students like Isabella out during college applicationseason. A few are accepted but most attend state schools, which, especially inCalifornia, can provide excellent educational opportunities. The irony, though, isthat many of these students aspire to go to a liberal-arts school but don't necessarilyunderstand its significance. They're drawn to sleepy quads (四方院长 ) , weatheredbrick, and cascading ivy, but they are resolutely pre-professional in spirit,
G.In contrast, at the private school I attended for the last two years of high school, myclassmates thought about what they wanted to learn in college, not only what theywanted to become. Some knew medical or law school loomed in the future, but theythought about the work in a different way. My privileged classmates enjoyed money,from what I could tell. A few were keen on their cars and clothes, but most appearedto take it for granted. They didn't talk about it. Instead, a future doctor talked aboutworking at the CDC to fight public health epidemics. A future lawyer envisionedstarting a defense firm to provide a service to the hometown community. Most of uswanted to do something special.
H. My students' fantasies of the actual work they'd do in a well-paid professionalcapacity are vague by comparison--practicing law without knowing the differencebetween civil and criminal litigation or how to prepare for law school, doing businesswithout an understanding of the concrete details of entrepreneurship. While thevagueness stems from the lack of models in their communities, it also comes from thelack of imagination with which mentors have addressed their professed college plans.
Students hear that being a doctor is great because doctors can make money, enjoyrespect, and have a great life. They don't hear that being a doctor is great becausedoctors possess the expertise to do great things.
I.The rhetoric echoes the oft-cited work of Jean Anyon, an education researcher whodied in September 2014. Studying elementary schools, Anyon looked at how schoolscan condition kids for positions in life. She saw that schools teaching the children ofaffluent families prepared those kids to take on leadership roles and nurtured theircapacity for confident self-expression and argument. Schools teaching children fromlow-income families focused on keeping students busy and managing behavior.A middle-class school deemphasized individual expression and in-depth analysisand rewarded the dutiful completion of specified memorizing tasks. In each case,according to Anyon, a "hidden curriculum" has prepared students for a future rolein society. Some students learn to take orders and others learn to chart a course ofaction and delegate responsibility. School can either remain inequity through socialreproduction or have a transformative effect and help students transcend ( 超越) it.
J. The rhetoric Isabella has heard about the purpose of college has a hidden messageas well. When school environments casually yet consistently deemphasize theintellectual benefits of higher education, students become less imaginative about theirfutures. According to ACT's College Choice Report from November 2013,32 percentof students pick a college major that doesn't really interest them. The same studysuggests that students are less likely to graduate when they do this. As high schooleducators know, good students have less trouble getting into selective schools thanthey do graduating from them--especially first-generation minority college studentslike Isabella and her classmates,
K.College should be "sold" to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectualawakening. All students should learn that privilege is connected to the pursuit ofpassions. People are privileged to follow their hearts in life, to spend their timecrafting an identity instead of simply surviving. Access to higher education meansthat your values and interests can govern your choices. It makes sense that privileged18-year-olds who have already learned that lesson are attracted to liberal-arts colleges.I would prefer not to live in a country in which rhetoric about the purpose of collegeurges kids from privileged backgrounds to be innovators and creators while thepoor kids who do very well in school are taught to be educated, capable employees.
Isabella figured it out on her own---much as she's managed to ace her classes withoutacademic help outside of school. To achieve this goal more broadly, though, we needto forwardly teach our most marginalized students that cultivating an intellectuallycurious frame of mind is as essential to leading an invigorating working life asambition and work ethic.
Anyon found in her study that elementary schools tend to lead students to get readyfor a certain future.