大問１
I was looking to return to New Orleans where I'd grown up. The move would uproot my wife and three children from California, and I felt a little bad about that. They needed a place to live, but places to live in New Orleans were hard to find. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, the real estate market there has been in confusion. Owners wanted to sell, buyers wanted to rent, and the result was a lot of For Sale signs.
At the bottom of every real estate ad was the name of the same agent. One woman ruled the market, it seemed, and her name was Eleanor Farnsworth. I called her and threw myself on her mercy. She thought my problem over and then said, "I only know of one place that would work for you." She'd suggested it to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jones, she said, before selling them their more modest place in the French Quarter.
That shouldn't have been a selling point; it should have been a warning. I should have asked the price. Instead, I asked the address. As soon as I saw it, I knew it — the mansion.
It wasn't just a mansion; it was the biggest mansion on the street. Two dining rooms, two full kitchens, ten bathrooms, seven bedrooms, an elevator, and each wardrobe as big as a master bedroom. The mansion had a pool. Because we moved in during the winter, we didn't pay much attention to it. Had we bothered to dip our fingers in, we would have discovered that it was not merely heated but was salt-water.
There's a moment in the life of American children when they realize that money is a tool used by adults to rank themselves, and the easiest way to establish those rankings is through their houses. At first, everyone's house appears more or less the same. But then one day someone's house is either so much humbler or so much grander than anything you've ever seen that you realize a house is not just a house. It's one of the tools people use to rank each other.
In all the finger-pointing about the American real estate crisis, little attention has been paid to its origin: a cultural tendency among Americans. Americans feel a deep urge to live in houses that are bigger than they can afford. This desire cuts so cleanly through the population that it touches just about everyone.
Consider, for example, the Garcias. Lilia and Jesus Garcia were behind on their mortgage payments and in danger of losing their homes. They had a nice house that they bought for $160,000. Given their joint income of $65,000, they could afford to borrow, about $160,000, against a home. But then, they stumbled upon their dream house. The new property had distinctly mansion like qualities. Its price, $535,000, was a stretch.
Then the market turned. They failed to make their mortgage payments and couldn't sell their original house. They owed the bank about $700,000 and were facing evictions. The mistake was that they held on to their former home as an investment. The moral: Americans are in their current situation because too many of them saw houses as money-making opportunities.
But the real moral is that when a middle-class couple buys a house they can’t afford defaults on their mortgage, and then explains it to someone, they can be confident that he or, she will overlook the reason for their financial distress: the peculiar willingness of Americans to risk it all for a house above their station's. People who buy something they can't afford usually hear a little voice that warns them away. But when the item in question is a house, all the signals in American life will drown out the little voice. Their friends tell them how impressed they are. Their family tells them that while theirs is indeed a big house, they have worked hard, and Americans who work hard deserve to own a dream house. More than any other possession, houses are what people use to say, "Look how well I'm doing"
After we started to live in the mansion, money became a real problem. It was suddenly going faster than it was coming in. When I'd filially asked the real estate agent what the mansion cost to rent, she’d said, “I have to see, but I think it's around thirteen." Thirteen: The extra figures are just assumed. One reason is that no one can bring themselves to actually utter the sentence: "Your rent will be $13,000 a month. "
When I told my mother what I'd be paying, she just said, "Oh, Michael," in the same tone she'd have used if I'd informed her that I'd just run over the neighbor with a truck or been diagnosed with cancer.
We'd been there only three weeks when the first bills arrived. Utilities were $2, 700. That turned out not to include water, which was another $1,000. Think of it: $1,000 a month for water you don't drink. The drinking water came in trucks from a spring-water company. How did we use so much water? The answer is we didn't. The Mansion did. The pool, the fountains, and the lawn sprinklers.
In summer, with the temperature outside rising to extreme levels, the mansion shut down its air conditioning system. Repair workers came and went, shaking their heads. There was nothing they could see that was wrong with even one of the mansion's massive air compressors. The problem was deep inside the walls, perhaps in the wiring! The living room was still at a comfortable temperature but, strangely, the bedrooms were now very hot. The public spaces continued to be nice and pleasant. Only its private spaces— bedrooms, bathrooms—were uninhabitable. Oddly, it could be hot and humid in one room and cool and dry in another on the same floor. For the first time inside a house, it occurred to me that it might rain.
And so we fled back to where we'd come from. This presents new problems. Even as my children grew bored with pretending they were richer than they are, they became accustomed to living as the rich do. On the way back to California, my wife drove Quinn, my nine-year-old daughter to Hearst Castle and stopped to take the guided tour. A few minutes into it, as they stood in one of its many bedrooms, the guide asked if someone had a question. My child raised her hand: The guide smiled and called on her.
"Why," Quinn asked, "is it so small?"
[Modified from-Michael Lewis, "The Mansion: A Subprime Parable," 2008]
http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/goods/real-estate/2008/09/18/Michael-Lewis-Mansion/index3.html
(1116 words)
埼玉大の担当は初めて。かなり長い英文を出されることは，以前埼玉大志望の生徒がおり，織り込み済み。この生徒はセンター試験だけではＣ判定ぐらいで合格可能性はありましたが，２次の英文には歯が立たないだろうと思っておりました。埼玉大の２次をあまく見ると，毎年痛い目にあっていると思われます。
今回はサブプライム問題にからんだアメリカの住宅事情。結構有名なエッセーのようでネットでも数多く取り上げられています。また，本に所収されている感じです。
大問２
①Colleen Szot is one of the most successful writers in the programming industry. In addition to writing several well-known "infomercials'" for a popular exercise machine, she recently created a program that broke a nearly twenty-year sales record for a home-shopping channel. Although her programs keep many of the elements common to most infomercials, Szot changed three words to a standard infomercial line that caused a huge increase in the number of people who purchased her product. Even more remarkable, these three words made it clear to potential customers that the process of ordering the product might well prove somewhat of a hassle. What were those three words, and how did they cause sales to jump?
②Szot changed the all too familiar line, "Operators are waiting, please call now," to, "If operators are busy, please call again." On the face of it, the change appears silly. After all, the message seems to convey that potential customers might have to waste their time calling the number again and again until they finally reach a sales representative. Yet, that surface view underestimates the power of the principle of social proof. When people are uncertain about a course of action, they tend to look outside themselves and to other people around them to guide their decisions and actions. In the Collen Szot example, consider the kind of mental image likely to be generated when you hear "operators are waiting": bored phone operators waiting by their silent telephones—an image indicating low demand and poor sales.
③Now consider how your perception of the popularity of the product would change when you heard the phrase "if operators are busy, please call again." Instead of those bored, inactive operators, you're probably imagining operators going from phone call to phone call without a break. In the case of the modified "if operators are busy, please call again" line, home viewers followed their perceptions of others' actions, even though those others were completely anonymous. After all, “If the phone lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this infomercial are calling, too.” ,
④Many classical findings in social psychology demonstrate the power of social proof to influence other people's actions. In an experiment conducted by scientist Stanley Milgram and colleagues, an assistant of the researchers stopped on a busy New York City street and gazed at the sky for sixty seconds. Most people simply passed by the man without even glancing to see what he was looking at. However when the researchers added four more sky gazers, the number of people on the street who joined them more than quadrupled.
⑤ Although there's little doubt that other people's behavior is a powerful source of social influence, when we ask people in our own studies whether other people's behavior influences their own they insist that it does not. But social psychologists know better. We know that people's ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor. Perhaps this is one reason that the people in the business of creating those little cards encouraging hotel guests to reuse their towels didn't think to use the principle of social proof to their advantage. In asking themselves, "What would motivate me?" they might well have discounted the very real influence that others would have on their behavior.
⑥ In our hotel experiment, we considered the finding that the majority of hotel guests who see the towel reuse signs do actually recycle their towels at least some time during their stay. What if we simply informed guests of this fact? With the cooperation of a hotel manager, we created two signs and placed them in hotel rooms. One was designed to reflect the type of basic environmental-protection message adopted throughout much of the hotel industry. It asked the guests to help save the environment and to show their respect for nature by participating in the program. A second sign used the social proof information by informing guests that the majority of guests at the hotel recycled their towels at least once during their stay. These signs were randomly assigned to the rooms in the hotel.
⑦ Guests who learned that the majority of other guests had reused their towels were 26 percent more likely than those who saw the basic environmental protection message to recycle their towels. That's a 26 percent increase in participation relative to the industry standard, which we achieved simply by changing a few words on the sign to convey what others were doing.
⑧ These findings show how being aware of the true power of social proof can pay big dividends in your attempts to persuade others to take a desired course of action.
[Modified from Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Robert Cialdini, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, 2008]
(806 words)
こちらも心理学の話のようで私の知らないsocial proof（個人の意見の妥当性を証明すること wiki)について。当たり前のことですが，確かに，自分だけの意見だと自分が間違っているのではないかと思い，一人でも賛成してくれれば，自分は間違えていない，と確信を持てる。自分たちの行動は周りにかなり影響されている。そのことに訴えれば，人々の行動に影響を与えることができる。なかなかおもしろい英文でした。
これまでで一番遅い問題。それが埼玉大学の前期というのも不思議ですが。これで本当に最後だと思われます。今年は出だしがおそく５校ぐらいで終わるかと思いましたが，結局８校。最近の平均になりました。
【５月１３日】
① Advertising is a
form of communication. It is usually
viewed via traditional media that include newspapers, magazines, television,
radio, and direct mail. With the dawn of
the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, banner and email are now commonly used
for advertising. In 2009, mobile and
Internet advertising grew by 18. 1% and 9. 2% respectively. Older media advertising saw declines: TV –10.
1%, radio –11. 7%, magazines –14. 8%, and newspapers –18. 7%.
② Advertising can be roughly divided
into two types. One is commercial
advertising, and the other is non-commercial advertising. The principal purpose of commercial
advertising is to drive consumer behavior with respect to certain
products. The advertising techniques
that are used to promote commercial goods and services can also be employed to
inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues such as
political ideas and environmental problems.
③ History tells us that ancient
Egyptians used paper to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign
displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Advertisements on paper were also common in
ancient Greece and Rome. Wall or rock
paintings are another example of an ancient advertising form, which is present
to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. Later, modern advertising developed with the
rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
④ In 2010, total spending on advertising was estimated at more than $500
billion in the world, and the United States accounted for around 40%. A leading research institute found that in
2010 U. S. advertisers spent more on Internet ads than on ads in newspapers. U. S. spending for online ads totaled nearly
$26 billion, compared to total spending of less than $23 billion on print
advertising in newspapers. Revenue from
on-line ads has been rising for years because people have left traditional
media and now use web sources for news and entertainment.
⑤ Advertising covers every aspect of
social life and plays other important roles in modern society. It is often argued that advertising can tell
us a lot about a country through the combination of substantial information and
colorful expressive forms. It is
possible to learn a lot about a country's economy, culture, and well-known
locations from advertising. A Japanese
advertisement, for example, may feature acquaintances bowing to each other,
while we may see a family enjoying a barbecue in a typical American
advertisement. Through advertisements,
we can understand what people from different countries look like, what they eat
and also what they do in their spare time. (434 words)
文字通り今年度最後の担当。昨年より国立，私立に加えて「追加掲載編」という冊子が発刊されるようになったため，その原稿です。
これはこれまでは掲載できなかった大学。また，著作権の関係で（？）大学の入試問題公表が遅れたり，出版までの処理も複雑化したためと思われます。
ということで，これまででもっとも遅い解答作成となりました。英文はおそらく書き下ろし。まとまりはあまりありません。①はネット広告が対等したとありますが，②では広告を営利，非営利に分類，③で広告の歴史的外観 ④で①に戻り，ネットが主流に そして⑤ではこれとは全く関係のない広告はその国の文化を映し出す，というもの。それぞれの段落で一つの英文が書けるくらい大きなテーマ。それが，広告というテーマ以外には共通項がなく，全くもって英文としてはだめ出しを出したくなるようなまとまりのなさ。生徒がこのような英文を書いてきたら，間違いなく，どれかにテーマを絞って書き直すように指示をだすと思います。
【2012年5月3日】
大問１
Although our world is growing smaller through the Internet, the global economy, and improved transportation, people still have difficulty communicating with one another. Thousands of languages are spoken around the world today. Some people think that the answer to the problems in global communication is the use of an artificial international language that allows people who speak different native languages to communicate with one another. One such language is Esperanto.
Esperanto was the vision of Ludovic Zamenhof, a Polish doctor who wanted to construct a simple language that could be learned and spoken by people all over the world. He worked for many years to make his dream a reality, and in 1887 he published a small booklet, Lingvo Internacia (International Language), under the pseudonym' Dr. Esperanto, which means "one who hopes." His pseudonym was soon adopted as the name of his language. He did not intend for Esperanto to replace any of the world's languages but for it to serve as an additional second language.
Esperanto has had an interesting history. In 1904, the first group of Esperanto speakers met in France. They tested the oral use of the language and found that Esperanto was a good way to communicate. In the years that followed, Esperanto began to spread around Europe. Over the years, Esperanto has had its ups and downs. According to journalist J. D. Reed, "The use of Esperanto probably reached its peak in the 1920s, when idealists embraced it as one small step toward peace. Some intellectuals viewed it as a solution to the language problem, which they felt contributed to political misunderstandings. In some British schools, in fact, youngsters could study Esperanto. But interest died down after World War II, partly because governments did not support the language, and partly because English was fast becoming the language of business and travel. Esperantists have urged the United Nations to adopt their language, but the U. N. has its hands full with six official languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian). "
For a while, people worried that Esperanto would die out; however, it has survived, and today Esperanto is spoken all over the world. Esperanto speakers can be found in 90 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million people worldwide speak Esperanto. And Esperanto is taught as a second language in schools in China, Hungary, and Bulgaria. International meetings of Esperanto speakers are held every year. Over 2,300 participants from 62 countries attended the 90th World Esperanto Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July 2005. (429 words)
問題受領が４月１８日ともう新年度が始まって２週間も経ったときで，完全に虚を突かれました。
題材は国際語の試み，エスペラント語の変遷ということで，残念ながら年寄りには新味はありませんが，エスペラントが完全に過去のものになってしまった（ように私には思えますが）現在では，受験生が読む分にはもしかしたら新鮮みがあったかもしれません。
私には記憶に残らない英文と言うことになりそうです。
大問 ２
Reading of any sort is an activity. We cannot read without moving our eyes or without using our minds. However, reading can be more active or less active, and the more active the reading is, the better it is. One reader is better than another if the range of his activity in reading is greater and if he uses more effort. He is a better reader if he expects more from himself and from the book before him.
No reading can be completely inactive. But many people compare reading with writing and speaking, both of which clearly require action; and they decide that reading and listening are entirely inactive. They realize that the writer or speaker must use effort, but they think that no work need be done by the reader or listener. Reading and listening are thought of as receiving something from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending, the way one would receive a gift. However, the reader or listener is much more like a person who catches a ball.
Catching a ball is as much of an activity as throwing it. The thrower is the sender, because his activity starts the motion of the ball. The catcher is the receiver, because his activity stops it. Both are active, though the activities are different. If anything is inactive, it is the ball. Like the ball, the thing that is written and read is the inactive object common to the two activities that begin and end the process.
The thrower and catcher are successful, however, only if they cooperate. This is also true of the writer and reader. The writer wants to be understood, although it sometimes might not seem so. When the reader understands what is written, the writer's skill and the reader's skill meet in a common purpose.
It is true that all writers, like all throwers, are not the same. Some writers know exactly what they want to say, and they say it clearly. Others are more difficult to understand. A piece of writing, however, is not a simple object. Very little of what the writer has said may be understood by the reader—or all of it. The amount the reader understands will usually depend on the amount of his activity, and on the skill with which he performs the different mental acts required. (391 words)
読書は作者と読者の共同作業，一読して英文の古さがみてとれます。
これまた，ほとんど記憶に残りそうにない英文でした。
【4月22日】
大問１
It's the single most famous story of
scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside
Cambridge, England—he was avoiding the city because of the *plague — when he
saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit
fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the
apple hitting Newton on the head. ) This
ordinary observation led Newton to devise the concept of universal gravitation,
which explained everything from the falling apple to the orbit of the moon.
There is something appealing about such
narratives. They reduce the scientific
process to a moment of sudden inspiration: there is no sweat or toil, just a
new idea, produced by a genius. Everybody
knows that things fall — it took Newton to explain why.
Unfortunately, the
story of the apple is almost certainly false; *Voltaire probably made it up. Even if Newton started thinking about gravity
in 1666, it took him years of painstaking work before he understood it. He filled entire notebooks with his rough
ideas and spent weeks recording the exact movements of a *pendulum. The discovery of gravity, in other words,
wasn't a flash of insight — it required decades of effort, which is one of the
reasons Newton didn't publish his theory until 1687, in the "Principia. "
Although biographers have long celebrated
Newton's intellect — he also pioneered *calculus — it's clear that his achievements
aren't solely a byproduct of his piercing intelligence. Newton also had an astonishing ability to persist in the face of
obstacles, to stick with the same puzzling mystery—why did the apple
fall, but the moon remain in the sky? — until he found the answer.
In recent years, psychologists have come up
with a term to describe this
mental trait: grit. Although the
idea itself isn't new —"Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent
perspiration," Thomas Edison famously remarked —the researchers are quick to point out that
grit isn't simply about
the willingness to work hard. Instead,
it's about setting a specific long-term goal and doing whatever it takes until
the goal has been reached. It's always
much easier to give up, but people with grit can keep going.
While stories of grit have long been
associated with self-help manuals and life coaches — Samuel Smiles, the author
of the influential Victorian text "Self-Help" preached the virtue of
perseverance — these new scientific studies rely on new techniques for reliably
measuring grit in individuals. As a
result, they're able to compare the relative importance of grit, intelligence,
and innate talent when it comes to determining lifetime achievement. Although this field of study is only a few
years old, it's already made important progress toward identifying the mental traits that allow
some people to accomplish their goals, while others struggle and quit. Grit, it turns out, is an essential (and
often overlooked) component of success.
"I'd bet that there isn't a single highly
successful person who hasn't depended on grit," says Angela Duckworth, a
psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who helped pioneer the study of
grit. "Nobody is talented enough
not to have to work hard, that’s what grit allows you to do. " The hope among scientists is that a
better understanding of grit will allow educators to teach the skill in schools
and lead to a generation of grittier children.
Parents, of course, have a big role to play as well, since there's
evidence that even casual comments — such as how a child is praised — can
significantly influence the manner in which kids respond to challenges. And it's not just educators and parents who
are interested in grit: the United States Army has supported much of the
research, as it searches for new methods of identifying who is best suited for
the stress of the battlefield.
The new focus on grit is part of a larger
scientific attempt to study the personality traits that best predict achievement
in the real world. While researchers
have long focused on measurements of intelligence, such as the IQ test, as the
crucial marker of future success, these scientists point out that most of the
variation in individual achievement has nothing to do with being smart. Instead, it largely depends on personality
traits such as grit and conscientiousness.
It's not that intelligence isn't really important—Newton was clearly a
genius — but that having a high IQ is not nearly enough. (745 words)
(Adapted from Jonah Lehrer,
"The Truth About Grit")
問題を受領したのが３月２３日。３月２５日に第３回東海地区高校生英語ディベート大会があり，朝４時の出発。その後は学年発足準備ということで，圧倒的に時間なし。問題は訳が２題，語の定義，空所補充。問題量が少なかったので，幸い。内容的にはずいぶん前にはやったEQの延長線上のもの。
EQと同じ，人間の資質。gritは感覚的にはずいぶん経験してきました。「やればできるのに」自分もかつて，高校時代の時に自分のことを同じように言ったことがあります。その時の友人がこれに対して，「やればできるではダメだ」といったことを言われました。「やればできる」は言い訳に感じられたことと思います。以後「やればできる」とは言ったことはありません。友人の言葉を思い出して。生徒には何回も言ったことがあります「やればできる」と。しかし，「やれない」のです。同じ能力があっても，あるいはそれ以上の能力があって，続けることができなければ，なんともならない。自分が身をもって感じたことで，gritのあるかないかが「成功」の分かれ目，というのはしごくわかりやすい内容でした。
大問2
(a) History
Emphasizing declassified files from World War
II and published interpretations, this seminar will address a seemingly simple set of
questions. Why did the United States
drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities in August, 1945? Were there viable alternatives, and,
if so, why were they not pursued? What did the 1945 use of atomic bombs mean
then and later? These questions will lead us to ask how postwar interpreters, including
World War II officials, explained and justified or criticized the bombings, and
why. Using approaches from history,
international relations, American studies, political science, and ethics, we
will investigate these questions and their answers; the underlying conceptions;
and the roles of evidence, logic, models of explanation, ethical values, and
cultural/social influences in the continuing dialogue on the atomic bomb. We will analyze the issues from multiple
perspectives, asking why and how various answers were developed, examined, and
reformulated; why certain facts were accepted or rejected in this process; and
how the atomic bombings have been
understood. (164 words)
(b) Materials Science and Engineering
Japanese technology has been regarded as
leading the world in many areas (e. g. , microelectronics, consumer
electronics, steel). On the other hand,
many innovations originate in the West, particularly in the United States (e.g.,
microprocessors, computers). This course
explores the role the research laboratory plays in typical Japanese companies,
and examines the importance of innovation versus product development. We will study the structure of a Japanese
company from the perspective of Japanese society. This will lead us to examine the underlying
philosophy of the research environment, the expectations placed on individual
researchers to achieve company goals, and possible changes in the lifetime
employment system. Recently, the great
American research laboratories (e. g., Bell Labs, IBM Research) have been closed
down in favor of more practical development.
Some Japanese companies, by contrast, have invested in research
institutions while maintaining their product-development laboratories. As the Japanese economy experiences
recession, the balance of these philosophies is being reconsidered. Local representatives of Japanese companies,
such as Sony and NEC, will be invited to class to help us learn about the
attitudes of Japanese researchers and the relationship between Japanese
companies and Japanese society. (187
words)
(C) Music
North American taiko, taken here to refer to
the performance-ensemble drumming using the taiko, or Japanese drum, is a
newcomer to the American music scene. Emergence
of the first North American taiko groups coincided with increased activism in
the Japanese American community, and to some it is symbolic of Japanese
American identity. To others, North
American taiko is associated with Japanese American Buddhism, and to yet
others, taiko is a performance art rooted in Japan. In this course, we will explore the musical,
cultural, historical, and political perspectives of taiko through drumming
(hands-on experience), readings, class discussion, and workshops. With taiko as the focal point, we will learn
about Japanese music and Japanese American history, and explore relations
between performance, cultural expression, community, and identity. No prior experience with taiko is necessary. The instructors for this course are faculty
co-advisors for our university's taiko group and have been invited presenters
at the North American taiko conference. (156
words)
(Adapted from Introductory Seminars: Course Catalog
(2010-2011), Stanford University)
こちらの問題は大変おもしろい形式です。文系，理系，芸術の３分野の講座案内を読み，その要約を２つ。残りの一つはそれを受講したい理由を述べる，という問題。Standord大の案内だそうですが，結構難しいです。しかし，内容はそうはいっても講座案内なので，内容はそれなり。むしろ，受講希望理由を書くのが大変そうです。
東北大学は大問が４つで，そのうち，３つが英作文がらみ。英語の表現力，発進力をかなり求められている感じ。
いずれにしろ忙しい日程で解いたので，おそらくこのページに書いた感想もすぐ忘れそうです。
（３月２９日）
大問 １
There are many
things that human beings do to make our lives better. For example, most people consider activities
such as sports or studying to be valuable because they produce good results. Doing sports gives us a chance to improve our
health through exercise, and can also help us build friendships. As for intellectual pursuits, it is hard to
deny that each of us needs to develop an understanding of the world around us,
and the ability to use our brains to find solutions to all sorts of problems. While there are many important activities such
as these, I believe that none of them is superior to music. Music leads to cooperation, offers
different modes of participation, and provides people with
opportunities for individual choice.
One important
aspect of musical activities is that they focus more on cooperation than
competition. In a musical group, the
members are not trying to do something better than each other. Rather, they are trying to work together to
create something beautiful. In a
classical orchestra, it is mainly the conductor's job to make sure that all of
the individual parts fit together right, while rock musicians must listen to
each other to make sure that the sounds match. In either case, however, all of the
participants rely on each other and work towards an outcome where all can be
successful. This contrasts with
activities such as team sports, where there is always a winning and losing side
after a match or game. In sports,
success for one side means failure for the other, but when a musical
performance is successful there are no losers, only winners.
Another good
thing about music is that one can become involved with it in many different ways. One need not become a professional musician in
order to play music. Some people are
satisfied by playing in a musical group in their community, while others may
find pleasure in just being able to play a few songs on the guitar. And, of course, one needn't become any sort of
musician in order to experience music. Anyone who has the ability to hear can enjoy
the positive effects of music by simply listening. Music has the power to relax people, and to
stimulate our emotions. Also, music is
part of cultural experiences and religious ceremonies around the world. Through music we can learn about other
cultures, and increase our understanding of them. People often refer to music as a language, and
I think that is true in a sense. Even if
we know very little about another culture, there is often something that speaks
to us in music from a foreign land. It
is as if there is some shared, secret understanding about what it means to be
human that can be found expressed in music — something beyond culture, words,
and even emotions.
Finally, music
invites us to make our own decisions. . Unlike an academic subject such as mathematics,
music never limits us to only one correct answer. There are as many different ways to perform a
piece as there are musicians. The degree
of freedom of expression may depend on the type of music, but even a relatively
conservative type of music, such as classical, welcomes different
interpretations of the same piece. For
the music listener, as well, there is a great deal of freedom. Each person is able to choose the groups,
musicians, or composers which interest him or her the most. These choices are often direct expressions of
who people see themselves to be, what they think, or how life feels to them. It is hard to think of a way in which
individuality is expressed more clearly than it is through music.
In praising
music, I am certainly not suggesting that everyone must somehow develop a deep
relationship with it. People should
organize their lives around things that are important to them, and for some
people music is not one of these things. Yet, we should always be aware of the unique
possibilities of music. It invites each
of us to participate in whatever way suits us best, through whatever type of
music we are attracted to. Through that
participation we can strengthen human relationships.
(700 words)
少しネットで検索したところ全くヒットせず。書き下ろしか，まったく古い英文か。英文の内容のまとまりから判断すると書き下ろしかもしれません。それにしても，題材は極めて穏当な大学入試の英文の典型例。
音楽の持つ特徴を論じたものですが，新味といったものは（全く）ないので，おそらく，この英文を担当したことさえ忘れてしまうでしょう。
大問２
She had defeated
him again. She always told him he could
do what he wanted, and then argued with him until what he wanted was what she
wanted anyway. It was beginning to make
him angry.
"Mum! That's not fair. "
She replied with
a laugh. "That's what life is,
Marcus. You have to work out what you
believe in, and then you have to stick to it. It's hard, but it's not unfair. And at least it's easy to understand. "
There was
something wrong with this, but he didn't know what. All he knew was that not everyone thought like
this. When they talked in class about
things like smoking, everyone agreed it was bad, but then lots of kids smoked;
when they talked about violent films, everyone said they disapproved of them,
but they still watched them. They thought one thing and did another. In Marcus's house it was different. He and his mother decided what was bad and
then they never touched it or did it again. He could see how that made sense: he thought
stealing was wrong and killing was
wrong, and he didn't steal things or kill people. So was that all there was to it? He wasn't sure.
But of all the
things that made him different from other kids, he could see this was the most
important. He wore clothes that were
laughed at because he and his mother had had this talk about fashion and they
had agreed that fashion was stupid. He
listened to music that was old-fashioned because they had had this talk about
modern pop music and they had agreed it was just a way for record companies to
make a lot of money. In the same way, he
wasn't allowed to play violent computer games, or eat hamburgers, or do this or
that or the other. And he had agreed
with her about all of it, except he hadn't agreed really; he had just lost the
arguments.
"Why don't you just tell me what to do? Why do we
always have to talk about it?"
"Because I want to teach you to think for yourself. "
"Was that your plan?"
"What plan?"
"When you said the other day that you knew what you
were doing. "
"About what?"
"About being a mum. "
"Did I say that?"
"Yeah. "
"Oh. OK. Well, of course I want you to think for yourself.
All parents want that. "
"But all that happens is we have an
argument and I lose, and I do what you want me to do. We might as well save time. Just tell me what I'm not allowed, and leave
it at that. "
"So what's
brought all this on?"
"I've been
thinking for myself. "
"Good for
you. "
"I've been
thinking for myself, and I want to go round to Will's house after school. "
"You've
already lost that argument. "
"I need to
see someone else who's not you. "
"What about
my friend Suzie?"
"She's like
you. Will's not like you. "
"No. He's a liar, and he's lazy, and
—"
"He
understands about school. He knows
things. "
"He knows
things! Marcus, he doesn't even know how to live like a grown-up. "
"You see
what I mean?" He was getting really frustrated now. "I'm thinking for myself and you just. .
. it just doesn't work. You win anyway. "
"Because
you're not backing it up. It's not
enough to tell me that you're thinking for yourself. You've got to show me, too. "
"How do I
show you?"
"Give me a
good reason. "
He could give
her a reason. It wouldn't be the right
reason, and he would feel bad saying it, and he was pretty sure it would make
her cry. But it was a good reason, a
reason that would shut her up, and if that was how you had to win arguments,
then he would use it.
"Because I need a father"
It shut her up,
and it made her cry. It did the job. Sure enough, he felt really bad, so bad that
he couldn't keep himself from saying something to make up for it, though he
knew it would only hurt her more.
"He could be a good
husband for you, too. Who knows?" (703 words)
こちらはうって変わって小説。出典も銘記されていました。全く知りませんでしたが，結構有名な作品のようです。わずか700語前後の英文ですが，この少年と母親とWilはどうなっていくんだろう，とちょっと先の展開が気になるような内容でした。
その後DVDにもなっているようで，概要が分かります。
(3月１６日）
大問１
Critics and
defenders both assert that the English political system is not logical; and the
statement is true in the sense that the system was not designed by an a priori* method. But on the other hand the very fact that it
has grown up by a continual series of adaptations to existing needs has brought
each part of the system more into harmony with the rest than is the case in any
other government. In this it is like a
living organism. There are, no doubt,
many small irregularities and survivals that spoil the unity for the purpose of
description; but these, like survivals of structure in animals, do not
interfere seriously with the action of the whole. It may be said that in politics the French
have tended in the past to draw logical conclusions from correct premises, and
that their results have often been wrong, while the English draw illogical
conclusions from incorrect premises, and the results are commonly right. The fact being that all abstract propositions
in politics are at best approximations*, an attempt to reason from them usually
magnifies the inaccuracy. But in England
the institutions have been developed from experience rather than theory,
although they have often been explained afterwards by a somewhat artificial and
inappropriate process of reasoning. In
this sense French political principles may be said to be the more logical, the
English government—not the theories about it—the more scientific.
(241 words)
中央大学，法学部は以前にやったことがありますが，いやに英文が難しかった印象があります。今回もかなりの難文。検索をかけたらやっとヒットしましたが，やく１００年前のイギリス政治に関する本。（ハーバード大学の学長を長く務めたその筋の有名人？）いずれにしろ，現在の高校生にこのような英文を読ませ，かつ訳させる意味があるのか。なんか，大正時代の入試問題のようです。当時の受験生も同じ英文と格闘してことでしょう。インターネットのおかげで，書籍を購入せずともguternbergプロジェクトで英文は読むことができるようです。決して読みたいとは思いませんが。
大問７
① Suppose
you were asked to participate in a blind taste-test of five different brands of
strawberry jam. After tasting all of the
jams, but before being asked to rate their quality,
you spend a couple of minutes writing down your reasons for liking and
disliking each jam. Then you rate each
one on a scale from 1 to 9. How
accurate would your ratings be, assuming we judged accuracy by ( comparing your ratings with) those given by a panel of
experts assembled by Consumer Reports magazine?
② When
psychologists Timothy Wilson and Jonathan Schooler conducted this experiment
with college students as their subjects, they found that the ratings the
students gave to the jams had almost no resemblance to those given by the
experts. They should have been able to
tell ( which ones were good ) and which ones
were not—the jams varied widely in quality and included those ranked 1st, 11th,
24th, 32nd, and 44th best out of 45 that Consumer Reports had reviewed. Did the students have no taste for jam? Did
their preferences differ from the experts'? Not at all. In a separate condition of the experiment,
rather than ( writing the reasons) they liked
and disliked each jam, each subject wrote about something entirely unrelated:
their reasons (for choosing their college major).
The subjects then rated the jams, and
despite not having thought about them at all after tasting them, they made
ratings that were much closer to those of the experts.
③ Why does
thinking about jams make our decisions about them worse? There are two reasons.
First, (thinking
about the jams) doesn't give us any more information about them—once we
taste them, we have all the information (we are going
to get). Second, and we think
more important, is the fact that jam preferences result mainly from emotional
responses, not logical analysis. Emotional responses tend to happen
automatically and rapidly, in contrast to the slower, careful processing (underlying analytic reasoning). A decision about how something tastes is an
intuitive judgment that can't be improved by giving it a lot of thought. Thinking about it only generates irrelevant
information that essentially blocks our intuitive, emotional reaction.
④ Although
taste preferences rely (more on emotion than logic),
deciding whether to launch a major new product seems to be a good occasion for
setting emotion aside and spending some time on analysis. But the distinction isn't always so obvious. In general, when there are few objective
grounds (for determining whether a decision is right or
wrong) , intuition can't be beat. But even when there are objective criteria,
spontaneous responses are sometimes superior to analytical ones.
(442 words)
こちらはうって変わってわかりやすい英文。このくらいの英文にとどめて欲しいものです。どうも，書き下ろしのようで，この味覚実験そのものは結構有名なようで，様々なところで取り上げられているようですが，この英文にあたるものは見あたりませんでした。流用はしているでしょうが。結論はごく常識的。「頭で考えるより，体で感じろ」ということでしょう。ところで，素人の感覚と専門家の感覚で，専門家（これが結構一杯いるので信用してもいいでしょうが）の判断が正しいと言える根拠は何なのか？専門家は理論づけて判断しているのではないか，という素朴な疑問を持ちました。
大問８
① In the Ptolemaic system, and in the creation
myth of the Bible, human beings were assigned a central position in the
universe from which they were thrown out by Copernicus. Ever since, scientists eager to drive the
lesson home have urged us, resolutely
and repeatedly, to abandon all sentimental egoism, and to see ourselves objectively in the
true perspective of time and space. What
precisely does this mean? Imagine a
two-hour film which represents faithfully the history of the universe: the rise
of human beings from the first beginnings of man to the achievements of the
twenty-first century would be covered in it by a single second. Or, if we decided to examine the universe
"objectively" in the sense of paying equal attention to portions of
equal mass, this would result in a lifelong preoccupation with interstellar
dust, relieved only at brief intervals by a survey of the dazzlingly bright
moment of a star's birth or death—not in a thousand million lifetimes would the
turn come for giving human beings even a second's notice.
② It goes
without saying that no one—scientists included—looks at the universe this way,
whatever lip service is given to "objectivity". Nor should this surprise us. For as human beings, we must inevitably see
the universe from a center lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms
of a human language shaped by the necessities of human relations; so that any
attempt rigorously to eliminate our human evaluation from our picture of the
world must lead to absurdity.
③ What is
the true lesson of the Copernican revolution? Why did Copernicus exchange his
actual earthly station for an imaginary solar standpoint? The only
justification for this lay in the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived
from the heavenly panorama as seen from the sun instead of the earth. Copernicus gave preference to man's delight in
abstract theory, at the price of rejecting the
evidence of our senses which present us with the irresistible fact of
the sun, the moon, and the stars rising daily in the east to travel across the
sky toward their setting in the west. In
a literal sense, therefore, the new Copernican system was as human-centered as
the Ptolemaic view, the difference being merely that it preferred to satisfy a
different human inclination.
④ It
becomes legitimate
to regard the Copernican system as more
"objective" than the Ptolemaic only if we accept this very
shift in the nature of intellectual satisfaction as the standard of greater
objectivity. This would imply that, of
two forms of knowledge, we should consider as more objective that which relies
to a greater measure on theory instead of on the more immediate evidence of our senses. So that, the theory being placed like a screen
between our senses and the things of which our senses otherwise would gain a
more immediate impression, we would rely increasingly on theoretical guidance
for the interpretation of our experience, and would correspondingly reduce the status of our
raw impressions to that of unreliable or altogether misleading appearances. (510 words)
こちらも１番と同じくかなり古い英文。
言っていることは興味深いです。受験生には分かりにくかったろうと思います。ただし，設問は典型的な模試の記述レベル。全統記述と格闘していれば，ほぼいつもの感じでできたでしょう。すなわち，かなりできない。マークだけなので，合格者は60%ぐらい取れたかもしれません。いずれにしろ，なぜ，このようなたたけば誇りが出そうな英文が出題されるのか。
【2012年3月４日】
大問１
The Dutch East
India Company — the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC,
in Dutch — is to
capitalism what Benjamin Franklin's kite is to electronics: the
beginning of something significant that could not have been predicted at the
time. The world's first large
joint-stock company, the VOC was formed in 1602 when the Dutch Republic forced
the many trading companies that were beginning to take advantage of the Asian
trade boom to combine into a single organization. Commercial ventures that did not join the VOC
would not be allowed to trade in Asia. In return, the government would not interfere
in the new company's business, other than to expect a small tax payment. The merchants reluctantly accepted the
arrangement, and the VOC emerged as a federation of six regional groups. What seemed an impractical compromise turned
out to be a brilliant innovation. The
VOC combined flexibility with strength, giving the Dutch a huge advantage in
the competition to dominate maritime trade in Asia.
In the company's
first ten years of operations 8,500 men left the Netherlands on VOC ships. In every decade that followed, that total
progressively increased. By the 1650s,
over 40,000 were departing every ten years. Most were young men who preferred a post with the
East India Company to
staying home and making do
with limited opportunities. Asia
for them represented the hope of making better lives elsewhere.
However, to go
was not always to come back. Indeed, the
odds were against it. Of every three men
who took ship to Asia, two did not return. Some died on the journey out, and many more
fell victim to diseases against which they had no immunity after they arrived. But death was not the only factor that kept
men from returning. Many chose to stay
in Asia, some to avoid paying the cost of success or the shame of failure when
they got home, others because they were able to make new lives overseas and had
no desire to return to what they had left behind. Despite the heavy toll on the company's men,
the VOC prospered, and with it the Netherlands.
The ability of
the VOC to run and sustain commercial operations on a global scale depended in
no small part on new technologies accompanying maritime trade. The English philosopher Francis Bacon in 1620
drew attention to three "mechanical discoveries" that, in his view,
"have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world."
One such discovery was the magnetic
compass, enabling
navigators to sail out of sight of land and still guess where they were. The second was paper, which permitted
merchants to keep detailed financial records and maintain communication over
long distances. The third was gunpowder.
Without the technological advances made by arms
manufacturers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European traders
abroad would have found it difficult to overcome local opposition to undesired
trade arrangements, or to protect their goods. The VOC took advantage of these innovations to
build a network of trade that stretched all the way from Amsterdam to Nagasaki.
Bacon was
famously unaware that all three discoveries came from China. Had he been told they were of Chinese origin, he would not have
been surprised. Thanks to Marco Polo's
colorful descriptions in his Travels, China held a fascination for Europeans,
who thought of it as a place of power and wealth beyond any known scale. This led many to believe that the quickest
route to China and East Asia must also be the quickest route to their own
wealth and power. The urge to obtain
this wealth was a powerful force that helped shape the history of the
seventeenth century, in both Europe and Asia.
Following the
creation of the VOC and other joint-stock companies, more people began to
travel greater distances, for longer periods, than at any other time in human history. They began to engage in business with people
whose languages they did not know and whose cultures they knew little about. Their world — and it was fast becoming our
world — would never be the same. (679 words)
授業で教材として扱うにはうれしくなるような A is to B what C is to DとはHadで始まる仮定法，withoutの仮定法，意味は最上級の比較級など満載。英文レベルは「センター」としても良かったのですが，一文一文が長く，結構理解に苦しみそうなので，「やや難」としました。ただ，このレベルの英文は「センターレベル」の表記が多いかもしれません。
出典は第１文，The Dutch East India Company — the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC, in Dutch — is to capitalism what Benjamin Franklin's kite is to electronicsから検索。そのまま確認することはできませんでしたが，おそらく次の本からでしょう。あまり読みたいと思いませんが，フェルメールとその時代，というのは多少興味を引きます。
Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and
the Dawn of the Global World
大問２
① Lucas and Aniyah are building a house in Central
Park. It is small, even by Manhattan
standards, but the two six-year-olds seem pleased with their handiwork. The house has a window (a hole torn in
cardboard) and a flat-screen television (a black square of fabric). Lucas's father
observes the project from a nearby bench. "It's amazing what you can do with boxes
and junk," he says.
② That could almost be the slogan of the child
psychologists who helped organize the Central Park event, and who are seeking
to counter the notion that education happens only when students are seated at
their desks, writing furiously
in their notebooks. Play, they argue, is
a form of learning too.
③ But how clear are the research findings regarding play? Some experts argue that play is a human right
and that adults should leave kids alone. Others accept that play allows children to
blow off steam, but are doubtful of its cognitive value. A third group proposes a mix of free play,
adult-guided play and traditional classroom instruction. Every discussion about play, however,
eventually comes around to the ideas of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky.
④ Vygotsky viewed play as a critical part of
childhood, arguing that it allowed a child to stand "a head taller than
himself." His biggest theoretical contribution may have been the Zone of
Proximal Development: the idea that children are capable of a range of achievement
during each stage of their lives. In the
right environment, and with the right guidance, children can perform at the top
of that range.
⑤ A recent research project, in which building
blocks were given to three groups of children, shows how guided play can
encourage child development. In one
group, the blocks had already been assembled into an airport. A second group was given blocks, and adults
helped the children follow directions to build an airport. A third group was given blocks and told to do
whatever it wanted. The researchers then
listened to the language children were
using as they played. Those who were building an airport with an
adult used the most imaginative and spatial language (such as
"below," "on top," "next to"); the kids who were
playing with the preassembled airport used the least.
⑥ Play isn't just about vocabulary. A 2007 study published in Science looked at how 4- and 5-year-olds who were attending a
school that used a play-based, Vygotsky-inspired curriculum measured up to children
in a more typical preschool. The
students in the play-based school scored better on cognitive flexibility,
self-control and working memory,
attributes that have been consistently linked to academic achievement. The results were so convincing that the
experiment was halted earlier than planned so that children in the typical
preschool could be switched to the play-based curriculum. The authors conclude: "Although play is
often thought frivolous, it may be essential. "
⑦ With evidence like that, you might think that
the kind of guided play that Vygotsky favored would be widely promoted. In fact, according to those who support play,
it's fast disappearing, as the idea of learning becomes identical with
standardized testing. Required to spend
more time in the classroom, children have fewer opportunities to interact and
to learn on their own. Recess has, in
many school districts, vanished from the schedule. After school, parents transport their kids
from activity to activity, depriving them of unstructured time alone or with friends.
⑧ This is regrettable, according to researchers,
not just because play reduces stress and helps children develop social skills,
but because it makes them sharper and better-behaved. So, ironically, by shortchanging them on play in favor of
study, we may actually be inhibiting
the development of young children like Lucas and Aniyah.
(616 words)
こちらはおきまりの教育問題。遊びが知能の発達に役立つ，という定番テーマ。記事としては新しく2011年２月のThe Chronicle of Higher EducationというWebの記事からです。
レベル的にはセンターということで，異存ありません。 ただ，おもしろみはなかったので，きっとすぐに忘れてしまいそう。
【2012年2月28日】
大問１
① All around us, even in a recession, we see a level of individual wealth
unequaled since the early years of the twentieth century. Conspicuous
consumption of redundant
consumer goods—houses, jewelry, cars, clothing, high-tech toys—has greatly expanded over the past
generation. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and a handful of other
countries, financial transactions have largely displaced the production of goods
or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place
upon different kinds of economic activity. The wealthy, like the poor, have
always been with us. But relative to everyone else, they are today wealthier
and more conspicuous than at any other time in living memory. Private privilege
is easy to understand and describe. It is rather harder to convey the depths
of public squalor
into which we have fallen.
② To understand the depths to which we have sunk, we must first appreciate
the scale of the changes that have overtaken us. From the late nineteenth century until the 1970s,
the advanced societies of the West were all becoming less unequal. Thanks to
progressive taxation, government subsidies for the poor, the provision of social services, and
guarantees against acute misfortune, modern democracies were reducing extremes
of wealth and poverty. To be sure, great differences remained. The essentially
egalitarian countries of Scandinavia and the considerably more diverse
societies of southern Europe remained distinctive; and the English-speaking
lands of North America and the British Empire continued to reflect long-standing class distinctions. But each in
its own way was affected by the growing intolerance of immoderate inequality, initiating public
provision to compensate for private inadequacy.
③Over the past thirty years we have thrown all this away. To be sure,
"we" varies with country. The greatest extremes of private privilege
and public indifference
have resurfaced in
the US and the UK.: epicenters of
enthusiasm for deregulated market capitalism. Although countries as far apart as New Zealand
and Denmark, France and Brazil have expressed periodic interest in
deregulation, none has matched Britain or the United States in their unwavering thirty-year
commitment to the unraveling
of decades of social legislation and economic oversight.
④ In 2005, 21. 2 percent of US national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and
benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred
times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's
family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the
bottom 40 percent of the US population: 120 million people. The UK too is now more unequal—in incomes,
wealth, health, education, and
opportunities—than at any time since the 1920s. There are more poor children in the UK than in
any other country of the European Union. Since 1973, inequality in take-home pay
increased more in the UK than anywhere except the US. Most of the new jobs created in Britain in the
years 1977-2007 were either at the very high or the very low end of the pay
scale.
⑤ The consequences are clear. There
has been a collapse in intergenerational mobility: in contrast to their parents
and grandparents, children today in the UK, as in the US, have very little
expectation of improving upon the condition into which they were born. The poor stay poor. Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming
majority translates
into ill health, missed educational opportunities, and—increasingly— the
familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling, and minor
criminality. The unemployed or
underemployed lose whatever skills they have acquired and become chronically superfluous to the
economy. Anxiety and stress, not to
mention illness and early death, frequently follow.
⑥ Income disparity exacerbates the problems. Thus the incidence of mental illness
correlates closely to income in the US and the UK, whereas the two indicators
are quite unrelated in all continental European countries. Even trust, the faith we have in our fellow
citizens, corresponds negatively with differences in income: between 1983 and
2001, mistrustfulness
increased markedly in the US, the UK, and Ireland—three countries in which the
dogma of unregulated individual self-interest was most assiduously applied to public policy. In no other country was a comparable increase
in mutual mistrust to be found.
⑦ Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly
corresponds to social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reason why infant mortality, life
expectancy, criminality, the prison population, mental illness, unemployment,
obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, illegal drug use, economic
insecurity, personal indebtedness, and anxiety are so much more marked in the
US and the UK than they are in continental Europe. The wider the spread between the wealthy few
and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement that
appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is
but how unequal it is. Thus Sweden and
Finland, two of the world's wealthiest countries by per capita income or GDP,
have a very narrow gap separating their richest from their poorest citizens—and
they consistently lead the world in indicators of measurable well-being. Conversely, the US, despite its huge aggregate wealth, always
comes low on such measures. America
spends vast sums on health care, but life expectancy in the US remains below
Bosnia and just above Albania.
⑧ As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the purpose of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed—not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well. Today's schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job. How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else? Perhaps we might start by reminding ourselves and our children that it wasn't always this way. Thinking "economistically," as we have done now for thirty years, is not intrinsic to humans. There was a time when we ordered our lives differently. (1090)
【Adapted from Tony Judt, ill fares the Land (2010)】
本年度最初は早稲田。学部によってかなり特徴のある問題。法学部は数年前に一度やって，かなり難しかった経験あり。この英文はその時よりは易しいですが，かなりの難易度。一応難易は最難度の「難」としました。ハイライトした単語は知らない，というよりは，訳を書くときに辞書で確認した単語。結構たくさんありました。
内容は示唆的。最近の格差社会を時間系列でグローバルにとらえて説明したもので，日本で顕在化してきた格差社会。例えば，東大生の親の平均年収が一番高い，といった指摘がされて久しく。タレント，運動選手からありとあらゆる職種が封建時代のように家督になりつつある日本社会。こうした格差の固定化について，端的に説明されており，受験生には大変でしょうが，読み物としては読み応えがありました。
大問２
① The two of us met over a decade ago when Chris was a graduate student in
the Harvard University psychology department and Dan had just arrived as a new
assistant professor. Chris's office was
down the hall from Dan's lab, and we soon discovered our mutual interest in how
we perceive, remember, and think about our visual world. In a class that Dan taught in research methods
with Chris as his teaching assistant, the students assisted us in conducting
some experiments as part of their class-work, one of which has become famous. It was based on an ingenious series of studies of visual
attention and awareness conducted by the pioneering cognitive psychologist
Ulric Neisser in the 1970s. Neisser had
moved to Cornell University when Dan was in his final year of graduate school
there, and their many conversations inspired Dan to build on Neisser's earlier groundbreaking research.
② With our students as actors and a temporarily vacant floor of the
psychology building as a set, we made a short film of two teams of people
moving around and passing basketballs. One team wore white shirts and the other wore
black. Dan manned the camera and directed, while Chris
coordinated the action and kept track of which scenes we needed to shoot. We then digitally edited the film, and our
students fanned out across the Harvard campus to run the experiment. They asked volunteers to silently count the
number of passes made by the players wearing white, while ignoring any passes
by the players wearing black. The video
lasted less than a minute. Immediately after the video ended, our
students asked the subjects to report how many passes they'd counted. The correct answer was thirty-four—or maybe thirty-five. To be honest, it doesn't matter. The pass-counting task was intended to keep
people engaged in doing something that demanded their attention to the action
on the screen, but we weren't really interested in pass-counting ability. We were actually testing something else:
halfway through the video, a female student wearing a black full-body gorilla suit walked into the scene,
stopped in the middle of the players, faced the camera, thumped her chest, and
then walked off, spending about nine seconds on screen.
③ After asking subjects about the passes, amazingly, we found that roughly
half of the subjects in our study did not notice the gorilla! Since then, the
experiment has been repeated many times, under different conditions, with
diverse audiences, and in multiple countries, but the results are always the
same: about half the people fail to see the gorilla. How could people not see a gorilla walk
directly in front of them, turn to face them, beat its chest, and walk away?
What made the gorilla invisible? This error of perception results from a lack
of attention to an unexpected object, so it goes by the scientific name of
"inattentional blindness. " The name distinguishes it from forms of
blindness resulting from a damaged visual system; here, people don't see the
gorilla, but not because of a problem with their eyes. When people devote their attention to a
particular area or aspect of their visual world, they tend not to notice
unexpected objects, even when those objects are salient, potentially important, and appear right
where they are looking. In other words, the
subjects were concentrating so hard on counting the passes that they were
"blind" to the gorilla right in front of their eves.
④ What interested us most, however, was not inattentional blindness in
general or the gorilla study in particular. The fact that people miss things is important,
but what impressed us even more was the surprise that people showed when they
realized what they had missed. When they
watched the video again, this time without counting passes, they all saw the
gorilla easily, and they were shocked. Some spontaneously said, "I missed
that?!" or "No way!" One man said, "I know that the gorilla
didn't come through there the first time. " Other subjects accused us of
switching the tape while they weren't looking.
⑤ The gorilla study illustrates, perhaps more dramatically than any other,
the powerful and pervasive
influence of the "illusion of attention": we experience far less of
our visual world than we think we do. If
we were fully aware of the limits to attention, the illusion would vanish. It is true that we vividly experience some
aspects of our world, particularly those that are the focus of our attention. But this rich experience inevitably leads to
the erroneous belief that we process all of the detailed information around us.
In essence, we know how vividly we see some aspects
of our world, but we are completely unaware of those aspects of our world that
fall outside of that current focus of attention. Our vivid visual experience masks a striking mental
blindness—we assume that visually distinctive or unusual objects will draw our
attention, but in reality they often go completely unnoticed.
⑥ Who notices the unexpected, then? The effect is so striking—and the
balance between the number who notice and the number who don't—that people
often assume that some important aspect of our personality determines whether
or not we notice the gorilla. Despite
the intuitive appeal of the gorilla video as a key to determine personality
types, there is almost no evidence that individual differences in attention or
other abilities affect inattentional blindness. For example, many people who have experienced
the gorilla experiment see it as a sort of intelligence or ability test;
however, the original study conducted on Harvard undergraduates gave the same
results at less prestigious institutions and with subjects who weren't students.
Similarly, according to an online survey
by Nokia, 60 percent of women and men think that women are better at
multitasking, suggesting that women would be more likely to notice the gorilla
than men. Unfortunately, there is little
experimental evidence to support the popular belief about multitasking, and we
haven't found any evidence that men are more prone than women to miss the
gorilla.
⑦ If this illusion of attention is so pervasive, how has our species
survived to write about it? Why weren't
our would-be ancestors all eaten by unnoticed predators? In part, inattentional
blindness and the accompanying illusion of attention are a consequence of
modern society. Although our ancestors
must have had similar limitations on awareness, in a less complex world, there
was less to be aware of, where fewer objects or events needed immediate
attention. In contrast, the advance of
technology has given us devices that require greater amounts of attention, more
and more often, with shorter and shorter lead times. Our neurological circuits for vision and
attention are built for pedestrian speeds, not for driving speeds. When you are walking, a delay of a few seconds
in noticing an unexpected event is likely inconsequential. When you are driving, though, delay of even
one-tenth of a second in noticing an unexpected event can kill you (or someone
else). Technology can help us to
overcome the limits on our abilities, but only if we recognize that any
technological aid will have limits too. If we misunderstand the limits of technology,
these aids can actually make us less likely to notice what is around us. In this sense, we tend to generalize our
illusion of attention to
the aids that we use to overcome the limits on our attention. We must remember, however, that only becoming
aware of the illusion of attention can help us to take steps to avoid missing
what we need to see.
(1,270 words)
[Adapted from Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla (2010). ]
２番目はやはり興味深い文。普段ほとんど本を読まないし，新刊についてうとい私はこうした大学入試問題からヒントを得ることも多いのです。もう，大昔になりますが，やはり早稲田の理工学部を担当したとき，ダイオキシンの問題を摘発した名著「奪われし未来」
大変おもしろく読んで，後に問題集の英文として採用もしました。ある時おもしろからとALTに貸してあげたらどこかになくしてしまってそれっきり，ということになりましたが，早稲田の入試問題に感謝
今回のこの英文も大変おもしろかったです。結構話題になったようで，武田鉄矢のラジオ番組でも取り上げられていました。【武田鉄矢 今朝の三枚おろし 2011年5月】
久しぶりに次の本を注文してしまいました。
【2012年2月25日】