Lesson 5
Youth
青年
First listen and then answer the following question:
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
How does the writer like to treat young people?
People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. If there is one -- which I take leave to doubt -- then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings -- people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain -- that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.
I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches about respect of elders -- as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.
FIELDEN HUGHES from Out of the Air, The Listener
New words and expression 生詞和短語
leave
n. 允許
fundamentals
n. 基本原則
glorious
adj. 光輝燦爛的
splendid
adj. 燦爛的
rub
n. 難題
identity
n. 身份
dreary
adj. 沉郁的
commitment
n. 信奉
mean
adj. 吝嗇，小氣
social climber
追求更高社會地位的，向上爬的人
devotion
n. 熱愛
cosmic
adj. 宇宙的
suburban
adj. 見識不廣的，偏狹的
conceited
adj. 自高自大的
presumptuous
adj. 自以為是的，放肆的
fatuous
adj. 愚蠢的
cliche
n. 陳詞濫調(diào)
Youth
青年
First listen and then answer the following question:
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
How does the writer like to treat young people?
People are always talking about 'the problem of youth'. If there is one -- which I take leave to doubt -- then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings -- people just like their elders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the rub is.
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain -- that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in seeking.
I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were, in some sense, cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous or fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches about respect of elders -- as if mere age were a reason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.
FIELDEN HUGHES from Out of the Air, The Listener
New words and expression 生詞和短語
leave
n. 允許
fundamentals
n. 基本原則
glorious
adj. 光輝燦爛的
splendid
adj. 燦爛的
rub
n. 難題
identity
n. 身份
dreary
adj. 沉郁的
commitment
n. 信奉
mean
adj. 吝嗇，小氣
social climber
追求更高社會地位的，向上爬的人
devotion
n. 熱愛
cosmic
adj. 宇宙的
suburban
adj. 見識不廣的，偏狹的
conceited
adj. 自高自大的
presumptuous
adj. 自以為是的，放肆的
fatuous
adj. 愚蠢的
cliche
n. 陳詞濫調(diào)