英语报刊阅读50篇.pdf

Hard to help the elderly nowWhat will you do when you see an old person falling to the ground?Your first reaction may be helping him/her up.Hold on,you may get yourself into trouble.The old man or woman may grasp you by your arm and claim that you pushed him/her down.If the old person has broken his/her arms or legs,you will have to pay handsomely.That is not a bizarre scenario one has made up.It happens often.Then,you may ask,who will dare to help a fallen old person in streets?Thats right.Nowadays,few will do.Take an event that happened not long ago.In a downtown plaza in Nanjing,a man of about 70 fell to the ground,foaming at the mouth.He fainted several times while trying to call for emergency rescuers with his mobile phone.Passers-by watched but none moved to help.They informed an urban administrative officer nearby.People did not act to help the old man for fear of being accused of causing his fall.Once the old man or his relatives raised such an accusation,the helper will find it difficult to prove otherwise.This,again,is not exaggeration.People have learned a lesson from a case well known throughout the country.It happened in the same city of Nanjing.One day in July 2007,an old woman surnamed Xu broke her shin when getting off a bus.Peng Yu,a young man who was also alighting from the bus,helped the woman to a hospital and gave 200 yuan to her relatives for initial treatment.Xu claimed that she fell because Peng bumped into her.Peng said he did not collide with Xu,but that he helped her purely out of fellow feeling.A passer-by,who had seen what happened,proved Pengs innocence in court when the case was heard.The court,however,ruled that Peng was partly responsible and ordered him to pay 45,876 yuan,or 40 percent of the losses the old woman suffered.The court based the verdict on said Pengs action went against common because he could have well left the scene if h not caused the woman to fall,but he didnt c to do so.The court said,Reasoning from logic,was most likely the one who collided with tl woman,for Peng admitted he was the fi descend from the bus and it was not possible culprit other than Peng to escape the scene eThe court said if Peng had been intent on doing a good deed,a more reasoned move would be catching the culprit rather than helping the fallen woman up.The second reason the court based its verdict on was that Peng had paid 200 yuan for the medical treatment.If he had not collided with the woman,he would not have paid the money.Chen,the witness,was present at the court and insisted that Peng was innocent.But the court did not take his word for it.The obviously absurd ruling of the Nanjing court set an extremely bad precedent.It encourages possible extortion by receivers of help in accidents and punishes people who help them,and scares away those who may be inclined to help.In fact,there have been many media reports of similar cases in other cities.The consequence is that few people would rescue a stranger lying on the ground injured or in a coma.I believe that on-lookers in the case mentioned first in this article wanted to help the old man but they dared not.Many people,as is demonstrated by those who wrote comments on the abovementioned cases,have raised the question:What happened to our social ethics?Who will help our senior citizens who may faint and fall on the street?A 75-year-old man apparently knows how to save himself under such circumstances.A few months ago,the man in Xiaguan,Nanjing,fell from a bus and collapsed.Before he lost consciousness,he yelled:I fell by myself.Nobody is responsible.On hearing that,several passers-by moved to help him.What an irony.Kids Should Study Less,Play MoreMy granddaughter,10,was very happy the day before yesterday because her mother and the mother of one of her classmates took them to a park and a Pizza Hut to celebrate Childrens Day.For a whole day,the two girls played heartily no homework,no extra-curricular skills training.The happy life lasted only for one day.Yesterday,the routine resumed:doing homework till late at night and brushing up lessons learned at last weekends English and Olympic mathematics courses.Every time I went to my daughters house in the evening,I saw my granddaughter sitting by the small desk in her room doing math exercises or writing a composition assigned by her teacher.On the white wall behind the desk is some graffiti she wrote.One sentence reads:Why is the exercise endless?Poor girl!But she is not the only unfortunate kid.Nearly all schoolchildren,at least in cities,suffer from the heavy burden of studies.Although teachers have stopped giving after-school homework to primary school children-thanks to an order of the Ministry of Education,parents have been forcing their kids to attend various kinds of extra-curricular training courses-learning English,painting,music instrument,weiqi(go),Olympic mathematics,and so on,every Saturday and Sunday.Are these extra-curricular courses really necessary in childrens education?The answer is definitely No.Take the so-called Olympic mathematics.These courses are very difficult for the children to grasp.Often,they are difficult even for adults.4Early last month,when well-known Russian mathematician Andrei Okunkov visited Nanjing,a local journalist showed him a question from a local Olympic math course.The winner of the prestigious Fields Medal thought for quite a few minutes before giving up.Sorry,I feel a little bit muddled,he said.In the past,there have been reports of university professors and doctors failing to solve such questions.These cases prove beyond doubt the absurdity of such courses for children.Parents know it,but they still want their kids to undergo such courses.They have to,they say.When other children attend such courses,my child cannot be left out.That is the mentality of most parents.After the authorities banned schools from giving homework to children,schools started all kinds of extra-curricular courses.Some non-school organizations and teachers also began running such classes privately.They urged the parents:Dont let your kid lose the race at the starting line.Though there is no unified examination for primary school students to enter middle school and the government has decreed that they should be admitted to schools near their home,parents want their kids to attend better quality schools.These schools will test the applicants with higher-level examinations.And,whether a child can land a seat in a better quality school matters greatly for university admission.Most parents want their kids to study out-of-school courses to be competitive.In such a situation,it is unrealistic to urge parents to stop sending their children to such courses.The only effective way is to ban these courses by law.A few days ago,Wuhan,the capital of Hubei province,planned to pass a law prohibiting parents from tracking their kids Internet browsing for the protection of the minors privacy.Most netizens opposed the idea after it was reported online.Whether right or wrong,I think a more urgent and practical necessity is a law banning all kinds of extra-curricular courses.This is essential to free our kids from the ridiculously heavy burden of study and allow them more time to play.Public Mood Is Never to Be IgnoredTwo incidents that happened recently have caused a sensation across the country.On May 10,three government workers of Yesanguan township in Badong county,Hubei province,visited an entertainment venue and asked for special service from a waitress.When the girl refused,one of the three men-an official-hit her on her head with a wad of money saying Think I dont have enough money?while another man said providing special service was her job.The girl argued against the humiliation and tried twice to leave the room but the official pushed her back on the sofa.The girl took up a knife to stab the official to death and injured the other man before surrendering to the police.The media reports about the event soon caught nationwide attention and the number of online comments reached hundreds of thousands in just a few days.Ninety-nine percent of the comments expressed sympathy for the girl.Many appealed for lenient treatment for her;some even claimed she was innocent and called her a heroine against rapists.The latest statement announced by the local police,however,differed greatly from the media reports and was so carefully couched that the officials appeared not that guilty.The other event took place in Hangzhou,Zhejiang province,on May 8,when a speeding car hit and killed a pedestrian at the zebra crossing.The driver was suspected to be racing with fellow young drivers,all believed to be children of rich families.Photos posted online showed the indifference of the driver and his friends at the scene of the accident.Their attitude aroused public anger,which was further fueled by a police statement announcing that the speed of the car was 70 km per hour,20 km above the limit.Witnesses said the speed must be much higher for the pedestrian had been thrown 5 meters in the air and 20 meters away from the car.The police later changed their statement about the speed but their decision that the driver would be charged with causing traffic disturbances rather than endangering public security caused more public outcry.In both cases,the authorities attitude differed from the public sentiment.Of course,the authorities should be cautious in stating the facts and the cases should be tried by courts before the nature of the incidents are determined.But the authorities should take public sentiment seriously and reflect on why the public were so unanimous in their judgment of the events.The public sympathized with the waitress in the Hubei case because of,I assume,at least two reasons.First,the Yesanguan township official and his colleagues did intend to force the girl to have sex with them and insulted her before he was killed.The public thought the girl was defending herself.Second,there had recently been quite a number of reports of government officials violating women.For instance,in the child prostitution case in Xishui,Guizhou province,a few government workers were involved in forcing underage girls into sex.And media revelation of officials visiting brothels seems to have never ended.In the Hangzhou case,the public hoped to charge the suspect with a more severe crime because of,also,two reasons.First,the suspects and his friends action of racing on streets has caused danger to the public.Second,wealthy people violating laws and escaping punishment by spending money has become quite common in many places.The public strongly resent dirty deals between power and wealth.In both cases,public opinion may not be totally reasonable and may have been influenced by intuition.But they are not without reason.Legal authorities should be very careful when investigating the facts and giving a verdict.Any inaccurate conclusion about the facts and incorrect verdict may infuriate the public.They are watching and waiting for the result.Heroism loses value amid moral decayA sense of justice is the minimum standard for morality in any society.If that sense is corrupted,the society is in danger of moral deterioration.Our society seems to be showing signs of a weakening sense of justice,as revealed by the following incident.Last Friday,in Chongqing,a policeman was stabbed to death while trying to control a knife-wielding criminal single-handedly.No passers-by offered help even as he desperately sought it.I was not mainly targeting these passers-by when I lamented the loss of a sense of justice;I was referring to some people who posted comments online disdaining or even cursing the policeman.And when a newspaper com-mentator expressed indignation at the unscrupulous words of these people,they turned on the writer blaming him for unscrupulously defending the police.I dont know how these people developed so strong a fury against the police in general.Most likely they have suffered the condescending manner of some policemen or were wronged or bullied by some ill-natured officers.But that does not excuse their cursing the policeman,who sacrificed his life fighting a dangerous criminal who was later found to have killed four pedestrians before he was spotted by the officer.Zhou Xin was a police officer from a community station in Fuling district,Chongqing municipality.He was going to an eatery for lunch,not wearing his uniform,when he saw the thug with a dagger.Realizing the man was posing a threat to the public,Zhou ordered him to surrender the knife.But the man thrust at him instead.A fight ensued and the policeman was stabbed three times by the thug,who was much taller and stronger.During the fight,Zhou asked pedestrians for help but none of them did anything.If it is understandable that these pedestrians dare not join the fight for fear of being wounded,it is totally unacceptable that some appeared to be glad at Zhous death.How could they be so heartless?No matter how reasonable they may be in resenting police for some unpleasant experiences,how could they delight in a courageous crime-fighters death?No matter how many other policemen have done something wrong,no one has the right to insult an officer like Zhou,who fought for the safety of the people.Zhou was a hero,an unmistakable hero!Respecting heroes is a good tradition in any nations culture.The Chinese nation particularly worships heroism.In its thousands of years of struggles against foreign invasions and natural calamities,the Chinese people have greatly admired those who sacrificed their personal interests and even lives for the good of the nation and society.This is a valuable tradition.However,for some years,these values have been challenged by some people,who disparage the promotion of heroism as ideological brainwashing and even inhumane.Many people no longer revere heroes.Theyre even reticent about saying they were moved by some heroic behavior.Even the above-mentioned article rapping the netizens who jeered the Chongqing police officer said:You may not laud the hero,but you should not be so apathetic as becoming unscrupulous.Such a compromising attitude just reflects the social mentality of shunning heroism.Why has our society become this way?Americans even took their returned POWs in the Iraqi wars as national heroes.Why do we dare not acclaim a policeman who heroically fought a brutal criminal?What happened to our sense of right and wrong?Something must have gone wrong with our society.Of course,things have not deteriorated to the extent that heroism is completely dead.The fact that tens of thousands of common people voluntarily went to the funeral of Zhou Xin proved that the broad masses still admire heroism out of a sense of justice.Those people who vilified the hero were only a small part of society.But their online comments are a bad influence.They should be vociferously repudiated.So far they havent been.Jobs 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