第二步：精读重点段落

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

As the importance of intellectual capital grows, privilege has become increasingly heritable.

• privilege[ˈprɪvəlɪdʒ]  n.特权
• heritable[ˈherɪtəbl]  adj.可继承的

第三段
Now they are beginning to find out, because today’s rich increasingly pass on to their children an asset that cannot be frittered away in a few nights at a casino. It is far more useful than wealth, and invulnerable to inheritance tax. It is brains.

• fritter away 挥霍一空
• invulnerable [ɪnˈvʌlnərəbl]   adj. 无懈可击的，不受伤害的

第四段
Intellectual capital drives the knowledge economy, so those who have lots of it get a fat slice of the pie. And it is increasingly heritable. Far more than in previous generations, clever, successful men marry clever, successful women. Such “assortative mating” increases inequality by 25%, by one estimate, since two-degree households typically enjoy two large incomes. Power couples conceive bright children and bring them up in stable homes—only 9% of college-educated mothers who give birth each year are unmarried, compared with 61% of high-school dropouts. They stimulate them relentlessly: children of professionals hear 32m more words by the age of four than those parents on welfare. They move to pricey neighbourhoods with good schools, spend a packet on flute lessons and pull strings to get junior into a top-notch college.

• assortative mating  门当户对
• conceive[kənˈsi:v]    v.怀孕，构想
• relentlessly [rɪ'lentləslɪ] adv.不懈地
• pricey [ˈpraɪsi]    adj.  价格高的，昂贵的;
• top-notch college  顶级大学

第七段
The solution is not to discourage rich people from investing in their children, but to do a lot more to help clever kids who failed to pick posh parents. The moment to start is in early childhood, when the brain is most malleable and the right kind of stimulation has the largest effect. There is no substitute for parents who talk and read to their babies, but good nurseries can help, especially for the most struggling families; and America scores poorly by international standards. Improving early child care in the poorest American neighbourhoods yields returns of ten to one or more; few other government investments pay off so handsomely.

•  malleable[ˈmæliəbl]  adj.可塑的

（Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦）

American’s New Aristocracy

As the importance of intellectual capital grows, privilege has become increasingly heritable.

• privilege  n.特权
• heritable  adj.可继承的

第一段
When the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination line up on stage for their first debate in August, there may be three contenders whose fathers also ran for president. Whoever wins may face the wife of a former president next year. It is odd that a country founded on the principle of hostility to inherited status should be so tolerant of dynasties. Because America never had kings or lords, it sometimes seems less inclined to worry about signs that its elite is calcifying.

• nomination   n.提名
• contender    n.参选者
• hostility     n.仇视
• dynasty     n.家族政治, 朝代
• calcify      vi.固化

第二段
Tomas Jefferson drew a distinction between a natural aristocracy of the virtuous and talented, which was a blessing to a nation, and an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, which would slowly strangle it. Jefferson himself was a hybrid of these tow types — a brilliant lawyer who inherited 11,000 acres and 135 slaves from his father-in-law — but the distinction proved durable. When the robber barons accumulated fortunes that made European princes envious, the combination of their own philanthropy, their children’s extravagance and federal trust-busting meant that Americans never discovered where the elite could reliably reproduce themselves.

• Aristocracy    n.贵族
• Virtuous      adj.高尚
• Artificial      adj.人造的
• Strangle       vt.扼杀
• robber barons   强盗式资本家
• philanthropy    n.行善
• extravagance    n.过度奢侈

第三段
Now they are beginning to find out, because today’s rich increasingly pass on to their children an asset that cannot be frittered away in a few nights at a casino. It is far more useful than wealth, and invulnerable to inheritance tax. It is brains.

• fritter away 挥霍一空

Matches made in New Haven
纽黑文的“门当户对”

第四段
Intellectual capital drives the knowledge economy, so those who have lots of it get a fat slice of the pie. And it is increasingly heritable. Far more than in previous generations, clever, successful men marry clever, successful women. Such “assortative mating” increases inequality by 25%, by one estimate, since two-degree households typically enjoy two large incomes. Power couples conceive bright children and bring them up in stable homes — only 9% of college-educated mothers who give birth each year are unmarried, compared with 61% of high-school dropouts. They stimulate them relentlessly: children of professionals hear 32m more words by the age of four than those parents on welfare. They move to pricey neighbourhoods with good schools, spend a packet on flute lessons and pull strings to get junior into a top-notch college.

• assortative mating  门当户对
• relentlessly     adv.不懈地
• top-notch college 顶级大学

第五段
The universities that mould the American elite seek out talented recruits from all backgrounds, and clever poor children who make it to the Ivy League may have their fees waived entirely. But middle-class students have to rack up huge debts to attend college, especially if they want a post-graduate degree, which many desirable jobs now require. The link between parental income and a child’s academic success has grown stronger, as clever people become richer and splash out on their daughter’s Mandarin tutor, and education matters more than it used to, because the demand for brainpower has soared. A young college graduate earns 63% more than a high-school graduate if both work full-time — and the high-school graduate is much less likely to work at all. For those at the top of the pile, moving straight from the best universities into the best jobs, the potential rewards are greater than they have ever been.

• Mould     vt.影响
• Mandarin   n.中文

第六段
None of this is peculiar to America, but the trend is most visible there. This is partly because the gap between rich and poor is bigger than anywhere else in the rich world — a problem Barack Obama alluded to repeatedly in his state-of-the-union address on January 20th. It is also because its education system favours the well-off more than anywhere else in the rich world. Thanks to hyperlocal funding, America is one of only three advanced countries where the government spends more on schools in rich areas than in poor ones. Its university fees have risen 17 times as fast as median incomes since 1980s, partly to pay for pointless bureaucracy and flashy buildings. And many universities offer “legacy” preferences, favoring the children of alumni in admissions.

• peculiar   adj.独有
• alluded    vt.提及
• hyperlocal  adj.绝大多数来自地方的
• legacy     n. 赠与

Nurseries, not tumbrels

• Nurseries   n.幼教

第七段
The solution is not to discourage rich people from investing in their children, but to do a lot more to help clever kids who failed to pick posh parents. The moment to start is in early childhood, when the brain is most malleable and the right kind of stimulation has the largest effect. There is no substitute for parents who talk and read to their babies, but good nurseries can help, especially for the most struggling families; and America scores poorly by international standards. Improving early child care in the poorest American neighbourhoods yields returns of ten to one or more; few other government investments pay off so handsomely.

• malleable  adj.可塑的

第八段
Many schools are in the grip of one of the most anti-meritocratic forces in America: the teachers’ unions, which resist any hint that good teaching should be rewarded or bad teachers fired. To fix this, and the scandal of inequitable funding, the system should become both more and less local. Per-pupil funding should be set at the state level and tilted to favor the poor. Dollars should follow pupils, through a big expansion of voucher schemes or charter schools. In this way, good schools that attract more pupils will grow; bad ones will close or be taken over. Unions and their Democratic Party allies will howl, but experiments in cities such as battered New Orleans have shown that school choice works.

• anti-meritocratic  adj.反精英的
• battered     adj.落破的,破旧的

第九段
Finally, America’s universities need an injection of meritocracy. Only a handful, such as Caltech, admits applicants solely on academic merit. All should. And colleges should make more effort to offer value for money. With cheaper online courses gaining momentum, traditional institutions must cut costs or perish. The state can help by demanding more transparency from universities about the return that graduates earn on their degrees.

• meritocracy   n.精英教育制度
• momentum    n.势头
• transparency   n.透明度

第十段
Loosening the link between birth and success would make America richer — far too much talent is currently wasted. It might also make the nation more cohesive. If Americans suspect that the game is rigged, they may be tempted to vote for demagogues of the right or left — especially if the grown-up alternative is another Clinton or yet another Bush.

• cohesive     adj. 有凝聚力的
• demagogues  n.煽动者