2. 职称英语
  3. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s story seemed rather extraordinary. Here was a

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s story seemed rather extraordinary. Here was a

游客2025-01-11  25
问题    The Archbishop of Canterbury’s story seemed rather extraordinary. Here was a deeply moral, responsible, successful family man whose whisky salesman father had been an alcoholic with few scruples and little sense of discipline. He forced his presumed son into midnight flits from creditors and couldn’t even be honest about his real name: Weiler. Justin Welby, it seemed, was saved by a loving grandmother, caring mother and a great education at Eton. Nurture had won. The Most Rev Justin Welby had obviously inherited few of his father’s predispositions. Only now we learn that his real father was Sir Anthony Browne, a member of the establishment and private secretary to Winston Churchill. So maybe it was all in the genes after all.
   The nature v nurture discussion is becoming increasingly heated. On the one hand there is the clinical psychologist Oliver James who recently published his book Not in Your Genes. He is convinced that when it comes to conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, genes play little or no part, "there is just a mass of evidence that something has gone horribly wrong in the family". James is adamant that children are a product of the state of their parents’ marriage, their birth order and gender, the amount of love they receive and the hopes and fears their parents project on them. No one is made bright or dim by their genes, he insists: parenting is everything. So if you have a schizophrenic child it’s all your fault. This is a depressing point of view to say the least.
   On the other hand there is the opinion of some geneticists. They are so determined that it is only our genes that shape our lives that they believe parents will one day have to choose their babies’ attributes: not just eye colour but mental disposition. Through IVF parents can already screen for inherited diseases. Hank Greely, a Stanford professor in law and biosciences, writes in his new book The End of Sex that there will soon be a brave new world where mothers can choose an embryo based on certain genetic characteristics. That would help us to engineer genes we pass down to our descendants.
   This is equally worrying. It is a form of eugenics. The Francis Crick Institute says its gene-editing research has nothing to do with eugenics: and British law prohibits pregnancies from gene-edited embryos. Others, though, may not be as scrupulous. Neurobiology lecturer Adam Perkins has pondered whether there is a group of people more likely to live on welfare as a result of genetic predispositions. Perhaps as parents we will soon feel an obligation only to produce children who will be naturally thin, clever, hard-working and mentally stable. From the point of view of a mother, both the "nurture" view and the "nature" one are deeply demoralising. The assumption is that unless you give your child the right genes and bring them up perfectly, you will have failed.
   From a child’s viewpoint these two arguments are also devastating. Both assume that children have no control over their own fate and destroy a child’ s hope that ultimately what matters is not their genetic make-up or their upbringing but what they decide to do with their life. If parents cannot help, schools must show children how to take responsibility for shaping their own future rather than allowing them to feel victimised by their history and family circumstances.
   Most successful people have overcome a series of genetic or environmental obstacles. David Blunkett showed you can beat both. Born blind, he was sent by the council to a boarding school at four and his father died when he was 12. He still regularly gets his face smashed when people in front of him go too fast through revolving doors but he never complains. He has been an impressive politician and a wonderful father. Oliver James will keep writing books suggesting that it is your parents who bring you up: and gene research will keep edging towards designer babies. Yet as the archbishop says, it doesn’t actually matter what he inherited from his father and there is no point in blaming his childhood. As adults we can and must choose how to shape our lives [br] Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、Children will remain helpless victims of our environment or biological make-up.
B、Schools should play a major role in helping children shape their own future.
C、People will be successful after overcoming genetic or environmental obstacles.
D、People can choose how to achieve success despite genetic or family circumstances.
答案 D
解析
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