52. The following factors may account for
the phenomenon except _____.
A. that living prices have risen a lot.
B. that it’s difficult to land a job.
C. that education has already cost them a lot
D. that parents can help them more
D
Violin prodigies
(神童), I learned, have come in distinct waves
from distinct regions. Most of the great performers of the late 19th and early
20th centuries were born and brought up in Russia
and Eastern Europe. I asked Isaac Stern, one
of the world’s greatest violinists the reason for this phenomenon. “It is very
clear,” he told me. “They were all Jews
and Jews at the time were severely oppressed and ill-treated in that part of
the world. They were not allowed into the professional fields, but they were
allowed to achieve excellence on a concert stage.” As a result, every Jewish
parent’s dream was to have a child in the music school because it was a
passport to the West.
Another element in the emergence of prodigies, I
found, is a society that values excellence in a certain field to nurture (培育) talent. Nowadays, the most nurturing
societies seem to be in the Far East. “In Japan,
a most competitive society, with stronger discipline than ours,” says Isaac Stern,
children are ready to test their limits every day in many fields, including
music. When Western music came to Japan after World War II, that
music not only became part of their daily lives, but it became a discipline as
well. The Koreans and Chinese as we know, are just as highly motivated as the
Japanese.
That’s a good thing, because even prodigies must work
hard. Next to hard work, biological inheritance plays an important role in the
making of a prodigy. J. S. Bach, for example, was the top of several
generations of musicians, and four of his sons had significant careers in
music.