1992/02（追試）
1992/02（追試）
“No,” said the workman, “they won’t stay up.” I’d asked him to put black-and-white floor tiles on a wall, but he insisted that they would soon fall off. Liter I thought it over, decided there was no good reason why the tiles should come down, and put them up myself.
I thought of that incident when my sister phoned, in tears. The head of the child-care center where she takes her little boy had complained, “If you were handling this child correctly, he wouldn’t cry when you left him.”
“Nonsense.” I told her. “He’s a fine, happy boy and you know it.”
“But she is an expert in child care,” Carolyn protested. “She must know.”
“Even experts can be wrong,” I said. I told her of an incident that had happened to an editor I know. One cold morning a warning light in her car came on. She quickly stopped at a service station. “Don’t worry about it,” the mechanic who checked her car told her. “The light will go off as soon as the car gets warmed up.” She knew the car, and knew the warning light had never lit up on any other cold morning – but the expert had said it was OK, so she drove on.
It turned out that the radiator was frozen; she almost ruined the car. “I learned my lesson,” she told me. “I should have paid attention to my own sense of the situation instead of listening to someone who was supposed to know.”
“And that’s what you’re doing with your son,” I said to Carolyn.
I was scolding her, but I was sympathetic too. The world has become so complicated that we’re no longer sure of our ability to understand and deal with it. But common sense is as useful now as it ever was. No amount of expert knowledge can take the place of an intimate understanding of a person or a situation. At times you just have to trust your own judgment.
It almost cost me my life to learn that. I was reading a book one day, scratching the back of my head, when I noticed that, in one particular spot, the scratching echoed inside my head. I rushed off to my doctor.
“So you think you’ve got a hole in your head?” he joked. “It’s nothing – just a nerve.”
Two years later, and after seeing four doctors, I was still being told it was nothing. To the fifth doctor, I said almost in despair, “But I live in this body. I know something’s different.”
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll take an X-ray and prove it to you,” he said.
Well, there it was, of course, a tumor as big as a golf ball. After the operation, a young doctor stopped by my bed. “It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” he said. “Most patients die of these tumors because we don’t know they’re there until it is too late.”
I’m really not so smart. I believe experts too easily. I shouldn’t have listened to those first four doctors. It’s hard to question opinions given with absolute certainty. Experts always sound so sure of themselves,
We should not, however, put too much faith in experts. When it’s an area we really know about – our bodies, our families, our houses – we ought to listen to what the experts say, but be prepared to make up our own minds about their advice. Our guess is probably as good as theirs, and sometimes a lot better, as I can tell just by looking at my black-and-white tile wall. Eight years later, it’s still standing and still looks great.
- What happened to the tiles that the writer put on the wall?
① Nothing happened: they remained where they were.
② The workman took them off soon afterwards.
③ They came down very soon after she had put them up.
④ They stayed up for a while, but then fell off, - Why was the writer’s sister crying over the phone?
① Because an expert told her that she was not bringing up her son properly.
② Because she was angry about the way the head of the child-care center treated her son.
③ Because she was scolded by the writer for not following the advice of an expert.
④ Because she was worried that her son disliked the head of the child-care center. - How did the editor almost ruin her car?
① By failing to notice the warning light.
② By not listening to the advice of an expert.
③ By not trusting her own judgment.
④ By warming up her car too quickly. - Why did the writer feel some sympathy toward her sister?
① Because she knew how difficult it is to handle little boys in such a complicated world.
② Because she realized it is difficult for people to have confidence in themselves today.
③ Because the child-care center was not taking good care of her sister’s child.
④ Because the writer felt that her sister was losing her common sense. - How did the writer find out that she had a tumor?
① It was discovered during the operation she had.
② She managed to get the fifth doctor to take an X-ray.
③ The fifth doctor recommended that she have an X-ray taken.
④ The young doctor took an X-ray and found it. - What is the main point in this passage?
① Experts are not always right. We sometimes have to trust our own judgment.
② Our own judgment is usually better than that of experts.
③ We should only listen to experts in areas we know little about.
④ We shouldn’t trust experts in areas we know about.
