plishment， had good things to say about their precollegiate schooling if they had not been placed in advanced programs. Anecdotal （ 名人轶事 ） reports support this. Pablo Picasso， Charles Darwin， Mark Twain， Oliver Gold smith， and William Butler Yeats all disliked school. So did Winston Churchill， who almost failed out of Harrow， an elite British school. About Oliver Goldsmith， one of his teachers remarked， “Never was so dull a boy.” Often these children realize that they know more than their teachers， and their teachers often feel that these children are arrogant， inattentive， or unmotivated. Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school because their， gifts were not scholastic. Maybe we can account for Picasso in this way. But most fared poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. Yeats described the lack of fit between his mind and school： “Because I had found it difficult to attend to anything less interesting than my own thoughts， I was difficult to teach. ” As noted earlier， gifted children of all kinds tend to be strong-willed nonconformists. Nonconformity and stubbornness （and Yeats's level of arrogance and self-absorption） are likely to lead to Conflicts with teachers. When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what was important to the development of their abilities， they are far more likely to mention their families than their schools or teachers. A writing prodigy （神童） studied by David Feldman and Lynn Goldsmith was taught far more about writing by his journalist father than his English teacher. High-IQ children， in Australia studied by Miraca Gross had much more positive feelings about their families than their schools. About half of the mathematicians studied by Benjamin Bloom had little good to say about school. They all did well in school and took honors classes when available， and some skipped grades. 26. The main point the author is making about schools is that . A） they should satisfy the needs of students from different family backgrounds B） they are often incapable of catering to the needs of talented students C） they should organize their classes according to the students' ability D） they should enroll as many gifted students as possible 27. The author quotes the remarks of one of Oliver Goldsmith's teachers . A） to provide support for his argument B） to illustrate the strong will of some gifted children C） to explain how dull students can also be successful D） to show how poor Oliver's performance was at school 28. Pablo Picasso is listed among the many gifted children who . A） paid no attention to their teachers in class B） contradicted their teachers much too often C） could not cope with their studies at school successfully D） behaved arrogantly and stubbornly in the presence of their teachers 29. Many gifted people attributed their success. A） mainly to parental help and their education at home B） both to school instruction and to their parents' coaching C） more to their parents' encouragement than to school training D） less to their systematic education than to their talent 30. The root cause of many gifted students having bad memories of their school years is that . A） their nonconformity brought them a lot of trouble B） they were seldom praised by their teachers C） school courses failed to inspire or motivate them D） teachers were usually far stricter than their parents Passage Three Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage. When we worry about who might be spying on our private lives， we usually think about the Federal agents. But the private sector outdoes the government every time. It's Linda Tripp， not the FBI， who is facing charges under Maryland's laws against secret telephone taping. It's our banks， not the Internal Revenue Service （IRS）， that pass our private financial data to telemarketing firms. Consumer activists are pressing Congress for better privacy laws without much result so far. The legislators lean toward letting business people track our financial habits virtually at will. As an example of what's going on， consider U.S. Bancorp， which was recently sued for deceptive practices by the state of Minnesota. According to the lawsuit， the bank supplied a telemarketer called MemberWorks with sensitive customer data such as names， phone numbers， bank-account and credit-card numbers， Social Security numbers， account balances and credit limits. With these customer lists in hand， MemberWorks started dialing for dollars - selling dental plans， videogames， computer software and other products and services. Customers who accepted a “free trial offer” had， 30 days to cancel. If the deadline passed， they were charged automatically through their bank or credit-card accounts. U.
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