阅读理解
People always think about "the problem of youth". If there is one-which I take leave to doubt-it is
older people who create it, not the young themselves.Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that
the young are after all human beings-people just like their elders.There is only one difference between
an old man and a young one:the young man has a beautiful future before him while the old man a
splendid future behind him and maybe that is where the rub is.
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and unknown-that I was a new boy in a huge
school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem.
For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identify, and that is one of the things the young are
busily engaged in seeking.
I find young people exciting.They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dull promise to mean
ambitions or love of comfort.They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to
important things.All this seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things.It's as if they were in
some sense of cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban (乡村的) creatures.All that
is in my mind when I meet a young person.He may be too proud, illmannered, selfconfident or selfsatisfied, but I do not turn for protection to boring clich?s about respect for elders as if age were a reason for
respect.I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with them, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.
1. "The problem of youth" in Paragraph 1 means the problem________.
A. caused by young people
B. needed to be solved by young people
C. young people meet
D. created by the old for the young
2. The underlined word "rub" is closest in meaning to________.
A. fact
B. age
C. future
D. difficulty
3. One of the things the young are engaged in is that they want to________.
A. climb up the social ladder
B. have freedom
C. be known
D. make troubles
4. By saying "anxious social climbers", the writer refers to________.
A. some mean adults
B. ambitious young people
C. capable political leaders
D. people who pursue comfort