前程百利小编为大家带来托福阅读材料。美国军事学院(The United States Military Academy)，常被称为西点(West Point)军校。西点军校是美国第一所军事学校，也是爱国者联盟院校之一。但是从作者的态度上看出了另一种事实。文章的难词已经标示出来，希望大家可以学习到相关知识，并通过不断的阅读练习提高自己的托福阅读能力。
Most Americans are familiar with the prestige(声望) that surrounds the United States military service academies(美国联邦军事院校，指由联邦政府直接运作、专门为美国军队培养军官的五所军事院校，包括The United States Military Academy, 即人们常说的西点军校、The United States Naval Academy 海军学院、the United States Coast Guard Academy 海警学院、the United States Merchant Marine Academy 商船学院、the United States Air Force Academy 空军学院;西点军校的本名是陆军学校，因为所在地是West Point，才被称作西点军校). Various names and phrases, spoken like solemn(严肃的) incantations(咒语), attest to(证明) their sacrosanct(神圣不可违的) status: the Point, the Long Gray Line, Annapolis ,cadets. Their graduates constitute a who’s who of American greatness, including Ulysses Grant, Jimmy Carter, novelist James Salter and sci-fi(science fiction的缩写，科幻小说) writer Robert Heinlein, to name a few. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in a 1962 address at West Point, typified the veneration when he told the cadets(军校学生) that they were “the leaven(潜移默化地发挥影响的因素) which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense.”
The service academies — the U.S. Military Academy for the Army (WestPoint), the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy — promise to educate and mold future officers charged with leading the enlisted members of the military.
But they are not the hallowed(神圣的) arbiters(权威人士) of quality promised by their myths. Their traditions mask(遮盖) bloated government money-sucks that consistently underperform(表现平平). They are centers of nepotism(任人唯亲) that turn below-average students into average officers. They a re indulgences(奢侈) that taxpayers, who fund them, can no longer afford. They’ve outlived their use(失去作用), and it’s time to shut them down.
The most compelling and obvious argument is the financial one. It officially costs about $205,000 to produce a West Point graduate, although a 2003 Government Accountability Office study put the price tag at more than $300,000; officers at the Air Force and Naval academies are minted for $322,000 and $275,000, respectively. According to at least one measurement, that’s about four times as much as it costs to produce an officer through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which trains officers-to-be while they attend civilian colleges.
One reason for the expense is that attendance at the academies isfree for cadets. In fact, since they’re technically members of the armedforces, the students get paid for going to school. As Bruce Fleming, aheretical professor at the Naval Academy, wrote for Salon, they receive “agovernment-sponsored guarantee of a golden ticket to life(人生的黄金入场券): college at taxpayerexpense with no student debts(学生贷款), the highest salary of any set of graduates, and guaranteedemployment and . . . health benefits for at least five years, frequently wellbeyond.”
Perhaps risking your life in patriotic service merits(值得) lavish(慷慨的) treatment. During my own Army service, not having to worry about housing or medical care surely allowed me to concentrate on my duties as a soldier. But graduates of the academies, which cover every possible expense for four years, make up only 20 percent of officers serving in the military. The rest are from the ROTC and Officer Candidate School, which is for college grads and enlisted personnel who want an officer’s commission(委任状). Are those other officers less deserving of a “golden ticket”?
No, because they are not merely more numerous — they are also equally (or more) effective as officers. No evidence shows that officers who attended civilian colleges, or any one of the U.S. Senior Military Colleges such as the Citadel, are lesser leaders than their service-academy colleagues .Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning defense journalist, put it succinctly(简要地说): “After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out(出众) compared to other officers.” After all, perhaps the most preeminent(卓越的) Army leader in recent times, Colin Powell, is a product of the ROTC, not West Point.
This parity(平等) in skill has been slowly expressing itself in a rising number of promotions for ROTC officers over the past few decades. Thirty years ago, most Army three-star generals had graduated from West Point. As of 1997 (the last year for which data is available),only a third had. A study of naval officer ascension using data from 2003concluded that, on average, there were no real differences in promotion rates between Naval Academy officers and ROTC officers. Of course, these arguments from statistics can’t be definitive, but they do indicate that ROTC officers are able to compete with their peers. Nearly half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serving over the past decade bypassed the service academies.
These days, too, a little thrift wouldn’t hurt. The F-35 fighter jet, the most expensive boondoggle in weapons history, is six years late, has already cost taxpayers nearly $400 billion and still doesn’t work; in the a test budget, Congress allocated $120 million for M1 Abrams tanks the Army says it doesn’t want or need; the Daily Beast recently called the 2016 budget a Christmas present for military contractors. According to the Project on Government Oversight, it includes billions of dollars in spending that the Pentagon didn’t request.
Former defense secretary(国防部长) Robert Gates, who embodies bipartisan consensus(体现了两党地共识), said at the Federal Innovation Summit last summer that “what is needed most of all are leaders who are prepared to challenge conventional thinking, break crockery, stop doing what doesn’t work well or at all, and set a new course.” Well, here’s our chance.
Some arguments in favor of the service academies cite the rigorous selection process(选拔程序). But we really have no idea how elite(精英) their students are. Admittance requires a nomination(提名) from a member of Congress, the vice president, a secretary of the respective military branch or other high-level officials. These nominations are doled out(发放) in a process with vague guidelines and nonspecific criteria(模糊的标准), making political patronage(政治赞助) inevitable. The academies admit recruits according to Title10, U.S. Code, Section 6954 — which, for guidance, merely says how many cadets can be admitted, who can nominate them and where they can come from. According to an investigation by USA Today, nepotism often governs the nominations, with many going to well-connected families or big-name donors.
Fleming has complained in numerous media outlets(媒体报导) about the low quality ofthe students he teaches at the Naval Academy, and he says three Freedom of Information Act requests about the admissions process haven’t gotten him any closer to understanding why some students are admitted over others.
Gore Vidal(戈尔.维达尔，美国作家、评论家，出身于显赫的政治家庭) (born at West Point and connected to the institution by heritage) depicted the service academies as loathsome(讨厌的) breeding grounds for a permanent military-elite class of “ring knockers,” as he wrote in the New York Review of Books in 1973. That’s exactly why people have been trying to shut the academies down since at least 1830, when folk hero and Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett tried to pass a bill abolishing West Point. Another attempt was made in 1863, when Sen. B.F. Wade(R-Ohio) said in the bill’s defense, “I do not believe that there can be found ,on the whole face of the Earth . . . any institution that has turned out so many false, ungrateful men as have emanated from(发源) this institution.”
As an enlisted Army infantryman(步兵), I served under platoon leaders(排长) who attended both West Point and ROTC. All were competent and professional. But the best graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara. What made him singular(非凡的) was his bravery and his resourcefulness(足智多谋). He was willing, in small ways, to deviate from(偏离) standard operating procedure when the situation called for it. He also connected to the enlisted guys in an extraordinary way.
The service academies are institutions with deep roots, but bravery and resourcefulness are eminently(特别) more American than any particular school. Our country deserves more officers like my platoon leader, and we can have them without the financial and social burden of the service academies.
以上就是前程百利小编为大家带来的托福阅读材料，平时的阅读练习是托福考试阅读备考的重要一环。希望大家利用好每份材料，尽可能多地从中获取知识。预祝大家托福考试取得好成绩。
