Directions:
Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of
the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Curiosity Is an Increasingly Rare Virtue
Most of the breakthrough
discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history, from flints (打火石) for starting a fire to
self-driving cars, have something in common: They are the result of curiosity.
But the journalist Ian Leslie, in his newly-published book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It,
insists that curiosity is a much overlooked human virtue, crucial to our
success, and we are losing it.
Leslie presents
considerable evidence for the claim that the society as a whole is growing less
curious. In the U.S. and Europe, for example, the rise of the Internet, among
other social and technological changes, has led to a declining consumption of
news from outside the reader's borders. Indeed, Google, for which Leslie
expresses admiration, is also his frequent whipping
boy (替罪羊): we seek only the information we want. But not
everything is to be blamed on technology. The decline in interest in literary
fiction is also one of the causes identified by Leslie.
Why is this a problem?
Because without curiosity we will lose the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship (企业家精神). Worse still, that lack of curiosity produces a relative lack of
knowledge, and the lack of knowledge is difficult if not impossible to
compensate for later on.
Fortunately, some
strategies can be employed to develop curiosity: If you just accept the world
as it is without trying to dig deeper, you will certainly lose the 'holy
curiosity'. Of course, one effective way to dig deeper beneath the surface is
asking questions: What is that? Why is it made that way? Who invented it? How
does it work? ...And if you see learning as a burden, there's no way you will
want to dig deeper into anything. That will just make the burden heavier. But
if you think of learning as something fun, you will naturally want to dig
deeper.
