2015年12月美国东部写作考题回忆：Is it dangerous to believe in role models or heroes?
考题分析
本题为英雄，偶像类题目。在冲分班的课程中反复讲练过。可站在正反两面展开论述，均能达到不错的效果。围绕heroes和role models的特点展开，一方面，偶像崇拜可能会带来积极的影响，比如激励个人进步，给集体带来正面模范作用等；另一方面，历史上也有出现过因崇拜导致盲目跟从错误决策，从而对集体或个人带来一定的危害。考生在考试过程中择其中一方展开论述即可。
类似的题目有：
Is there a value in celebrating certain individuals as heroes? (2007.6)
Should we admire heroes but not celebrities? (2007.10)
Is society’s admiration for famous people beneficial or harmful? (2005.10)
范文
A role model or a hero was a mortal who had done something so far beyond the normal scope of human experience that he left an immortal memory behind him when he died, and thus received admiration. Such great benefactors of humankind are in deed worthy of respect. People who believe in their role models or heroes would always imitate their behaviors or try to catch up with their moral standards. The admiration for such people has been inspiring human beings hence galvanize the society to move forward. In another word, for people with conscious minds, finding somebody to worship is not dangerous at all, but a strong motivation for improvements. The truth of this notion lies everywhere in the history.
The illustration of this idea first comes from the story of Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, whose story demonstrates that admiration for the heroes are beneficial, instead of harmful first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. It was the admiration for President John Kennedy that has detached Bill Clinton from his poor and depressed childhood. As a Boys Nation Senator to visit the White House, his horizon was expanded by the extraordinary view of the president’s life. Therefore, trying to emulate the pattern of top politicians, he worked hard to gain greater academic success, and has finally managed to get a bachelor degree of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, then a degree of Jurisdiction Doctor in Yale Law School. As has been noted, his ambition of becoming a politician, stemming from his belief in his hero John Kennedy, has led him to the third youngest President of the United States. If he hadn’t believed in his role model, he wouldn’t have become such a prominent leader in the US history.
In this way, we can see that people largely define their ideals by the role models they choose, and their morality, such as courage, honor, and justice, largely define those followers. So from a social scope, heroes are symbols for the crowd of all the qualities people would like to possess and all the ambitions they would like to satisfy. This concept can be seen from historical events such as the overwhelming admiration of Princess Diana, the first public figure photographed touching people infected with HIV. Those who had regarded her as their role model and believed in her have followed her step of completely changing the public opinions towards AIDS sufferers in the subsequent years. In the same way, those who have set Nelson Mandela as their role model believed in his courage, therefore his efforts in struggle for independence have led them to follow, and committed revolutionary battle for freedom of their own nations. It is because the ideals to which people aspire do so much to determine the ways in which they behave that they all have a vested interest in each person having heroes.
As can be seen from these examples, moral contributions of heroes, as the expansion of human's sense of possibility, are indeed worthy of believed in. It is not dangerous to believe in heroes and role models as long as rationality is playing its role in people's social lives.
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