Cautious About the Principle of Zero-Tolerance in School We don t really know what we want. That’s the conclusion of a socia

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问题             Cautious About the Principle of Zero-Tolerance in School
    We don t really know what we want. That’s the conclusion of a social psychologist who decided to test just how committed parents and others are to zero-tolerance polices that many schools have adopted to fight drug use by teenagers.
    Colgate University psychologist Kevin Carlsmith concluded that people fail to recognize that a zero-tolerance policy that seems simple and effective in theory will violate their sense of justice when they see it in practice. And that’s exactly the response I’ve been getting to my column last week about Josh Anderson, the Fairdax high school junior who killed himself on the eve of a disciplinary hearing that was likely to have ended with his expulsion for being caught on campus with a small amount of marijuana.
    I’ve heard from hundreds of parents whose kids—like Josh—have gotten caught up in a punishment system that fails to distinguish between drug users and dealers.
    A Prince William County parent describes how his son faced expulsion after being found with less that one gram of marijuana.
    The boy was not permitted to graduate and had to repeat his senior year through home schooling because the county would not permit him to attend its schools. " It seems incredibly stupid to take a child with problems by removing support," the father writes.
    Carlsmith found that most people choose punishments designed more for retribution than to create deterrence against future wrongdoing. "A person focused on deterring future crime ought to be sensitive to the frequency of the crime, the likelihood of its detection, the publicity of the punishment, and so forth," the professor writes.
    The professor asked participants about a case like a real one in which a 13-year- old girl gave a Midol pill to a friend at school to relieve the friend’s menstrual cramps. The survey asked whether expulsion or student-parent conferences with a guidance counselor would be the better response than expel her. Once they heard the details of the Midol case, 88 percent of those who had earlier endorsed the idea of a zero-tolerance policy reversed themselves.
    We like the idea of zero tolerance and don’t realize how unfairly it can treat people until we are slapped in the face with disproportionate results.
    In the end, the psychologist concludes, "when it comes to introspection, we are all strangers to ourselves."
    In a fascinating postscript, Carlsmith asked whether a school with a zero-tolerance policy had a worse or less severe problem with drug use than a school with a more flexible approach. Those surveyed thought the zero-tolerance school had the more severe problem. Is that what the Fairfax school board really wants to communicate about its schools?
The word "retribution" (Line 2, Para. 5) most probably means______.

选项 A、severe punishment which is deserved
B、zero-tolerance policy
C、tolerance of wrongdoing
D、the frequency of a crime

答案A

解析 语义理解题。由题干定位到第五段的第一句Carlsmith found that most people choosepunishments designed more for retribution than to create deterrence against futurewrongdoing.本句的前后部分存在对比,推断语义时可结合两者进行理解。大多数人选择的惩罚方式都是把注意力更多地放在犯罪后的惩治上,而不是去阻止这类错误行为的发生。结合四个选项来看,能与“阻止这类错误行为的发生”相对立的只有[A]“应得的严重惩罚”,与原文相符。[B]“零容忍原则”、[C]“对错误行为的宽容”和[D]“犯罪发生的频率”均不符合上下文意思。
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