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1、Hard to help the elderly nowWhat will you do when you see an old person falling to the ground?Your firstreaction may be helping him/her up.Hold on,you may get yourself into trouble.Theold man or woman may grasp you by your arm and claim that you pushed him/herdown.If the old person has broken his/he
2、r arms or legs,you will have to payhandsomely.That is not a bizarre scenario one has made up.It happens often.uThenn,youmay ask,who will dare to help a fallen old person in streets?!,That*s right.Nowadays,few will do.Take an event that happened not long ago.In a downtown plaza in Nanjing,a man of ab
3、out 70 fell to the ground,foaming atthe mouth.He fainted several times while trying to call fbr emergency rescuers withhis mobile phone.Passers-by watched but none moved to help.They informed anurban administrative officer nearby.People did not act to help the old man for fear of being accused of ca
4、using hisfall.Once the old man or his relatives raised such an accusation,the helper will find itdifficult to prove otherwise.This,again,is not exaggeration.People have learned alesson from a case well known throughout the country.It happened in the same city of Nanjing.One day in July 2007,an old w
5、omansumamed Xu broke her shin when getting off a bus.Peng Yu,a young man who wasalso alighting from the bus,helped the woman to a hospital and gave 200 yuan to herrelatives for initial treatment.Xu claimed that she fell because Peng bumped into her.Peng said he did not collide with Xu,but that he he
6、lped her purely out of fellowfeeling.A passer-by,who had seen what happened,proved Peng*s innocence in courtwhen the case was heard.The court,however,ruled that Peng was partly responsibleand ordered him to pay 45,876 yuan,or 40 percent of the losses the old womansuffered.The court based the verdict
7、 on its reasoning.Itsaid Pengs action went against common sensebecause he could have well left the scene if he had 卢卜!二n、ot cause d the wom一an to fall,.butf he didnt ch。oose 寡 S恒力B 茂甯、The court said,Reasoning from logic,Pengwas most likely the one who collided with the old 7A 7/woman,for Peng admitt
8、ed he was the first todescend from the bus and it was not possible for 邑culprit other than Peng to escape the scene easily1.The court said if Peng had been intent on doing a good deed,a more reasoned movewould be catching the culprit rather than helping the fallen woman up”.The second reason the cou
9、rt based its verdict on was that Peng had paid 200yuan for the medical treatment.nIf he had not collided with the woman,he would nothave paid the moneyu.Chen,the witness,was present at the court and insisted thatPeng was innocent.But the court did not take his word for it.The obviously absurd ruling
10、 of the Nanjing court set an extremely bad precedent.It encourages possible extortion by receivers of help in accidents and punishes peoplewho help them,and scares away those who may be inclined to help.In fact,therehave been many media reports of similar cases in other cities.The consequence is tha
11、tfew people would rescue a stranger lying on the ground injured or in a coma.I believethat on-lookers in the case mentioned first in this article wanted to help the old manbut they dared not.Many people,as is demonstrated by those who wrote comments on theabovementioned cases,have raised the questio
12、n:What happened to our social ethics?Who will help our senior citizens who may faint and fall on the street?A 75-year-old man apparently knows how to save himself under suchcircumstances.A few months ago,the man in Xiaguan,Nanjing,fell from a bus andcollapsed.Before he lost consciousness,he yelled:M
13、I fell by myself.Nobody isresponsible.n On hearing that,several passers-by moved to help him.What an irony.Kids Should Study Less,Play MoreMy granddaughter,10,was very happy the day before yesterday because hermother and the mother of one of her classmates took them to a park and a Pizza Hut toceleb
14、rate Childrens Day.For a whole day,the two girls played heartily nohomework,no extra-curricular skills training.The happy life lasted only for one day.Yesterday,the routine resumed:doinghomework till late at night and brushing up lessons learned at last weekends Englishand Olympic mathematics”course
15、s.Every time I went to my daughters house in the evening,I saw mygranddaughter sitting by the small desk in her room doing math exercises or writing acomposition assigned by her teacher.On the white wall behind the desk is somegraffiti she wrote.One sentence reads:Why is the exercise endless?Poor gi
16、rl!But she is not the only unfortunate kid.Nearly all schoolchildren,at least incities,suffer from the heavy burden of studies.Although teachers have stoppedgiving after-school homework to primary school children-thanks to an order of theMinistry of Education,parents have been forcing their kids to
17、attend various kinds ofextra-curricular training courses-learning English,painting,music instrument,weiqi(go),Olympic mathematics0,and so on,every Saturday and Sunday.Arethese extra-curricular courses reallynecessary in childrens education?The answer isdefinitely No”.Take the so-called Olympicmathem
18、atics.These courses are very difficult forthe children to grasp.Often,they are difficult evenfor adults.Early last month,when well-known Russian mathematician Andrei Okunkovvisited Nanjing,a local journalist showed him a question from a local Olympicmath course.The winner of the prestigious Fields M
19、edal thought for quite a fewminutes before giving up.Sorry,I feel a little bit muddled,he said.In the past,there have been reports of university professors and doctors failing tosolve such questions.These cases prove beyond doubt the absurdity of such coursesfor children.Parents know it,but they sti
20、ll want their kids to undergo such courses.They have to”，they say.When other children attend such courses,my child cannotbe left out.That is the mentality of most parents.After the authorities banned schools fromgiving homework to children,schools started all kinds of extra-curricular courses.Some n
21、on-school organizations and teachers also began running such classes privately.They urged the parents:Dont let your kid lose the race at the starting line.”Though there is no unified examination for primary school students to entermiddle school and the government has decreed that they should be admi
22、tted toschools near their home,parents want their kids to attend better quality1 schools.These schools will test the applicants with higher-level examinations.And,whether achild can land a seat in a better quality school matters greatly for universityadmission.Most parents want their kids to study o
23、ut-of-school courses to be competitive.Insuch a situation,it is unrealistic to urge parents to stop sending their children to suchcourses.The only effective way is to ban these courses by law.A few days ago,Wuhan,the capital of Hubei province,planned to pass a lawprohibiting parents from tracking th
24、eir kids1 Internet browsing for the protection ofthe minors1 privacy/Most netizens opposed the idea after it was reported online.Whether right or wrong,I think a more urgent and practical necessity is a lawbanning all kinds of extra-curricular courses.This is essential to free our kids from theridic
25、ulously heavy burden of“study”and allow them more time to play.Public Mood Is Never to Be IgnoredTwo incidents that happened recently have caused a sensation across the country.On May 10,three government workers of Yesanguan township in Badong county,Hubei province,visited an entertainment venue and
26、 asked for special serviceM from awaitress.When the girl refused,one of the three men-an official-hit her on her headwith a wad of money saying Think I dont have enough money?while another mansaid providing special service was her job.The girl argued against the humiliation andtried twice to leave t
27、he room but the official pushed her back on the sofa.The girltook up a knife to stab the official to death and injured the other man beforesurrendering to the police.The media reports about the event soon caught nationwide attention and thenumber of online comments reached hundreds of thousands in j
28、ust a few days.Ninety-nine percent of the comments expressed sympathy for the girl.Many appealedfor lenient treatment for her;some even claimed she was innocent and called her naheroine against rapists.n The latest statement announced by the local police,however,differed greatly from the media repor
29、ts and was so carefully couched that the officialsappeared not that guilty.The other event took place in Hangzhou,Zhejiang province,on May 8,when a speeding car hitand killed a pedestrian at the zebra crossing.Thedriver was suspected to be racing with fellow youngdrivers,all believed to be children
30、of rich families.Photos posted online showed the indifference of thedriver and his friends at the scene of the accident.Their attitude aroused public anger,which was furtherfueled by a police statement announcing that thespeed of the car was 70 km per hour,20 km above thelimit.Witnesses said the spe
31、ed must be much higherfor the pedestrian had been thrown 5 meters in the air and 20 meters away from thecar.The police later changed their statement about the speed but their decision thatthe driver would be charged with causing traffic disturbances*rather thanendangering public security caused more
32、 public outcry.In both cases,the authorities*attitude differed from the public sentiment.Ofcourse,the authorities should be cautious in stating the facts and the cases should betried by courts before the nature of the incidents are determined.But the authoritiesshould take public sentiment seriously
33、 and reflect on why the public were sounanimous in their judgment of the events.The public sympathized with the waitress in the Hubei case because of,I assume,at least two reasons.First,the Yesanguan township official and his colleagues didintend to force the girl to have sex with them and insulted
34、her before he was killed.The public thought the girl was defending herself.Second,there had recently beenquite a number of reports of government officials violating women.For instance,inthe child prostitution case in Xishui,Guizhou province,a few government workerswere involved in forcing underage g
35、irls into sex.And media revelation of officialsvisiting brothels seems to have never ended.In the Hangzhou case,the public hoped to charge the suspect with a more severecrime because of,also,two reasons.First,the suspects and his friends*action ofracing on streets has caused danger to the public.Sec
36、ond,wealthy people violatinglaws and escaping punishment by spending money has become quite common inmany places.The public strongly resent dirty deals between power and wealth.In both cases,public opinion may not be totally reasonable and may have beeninfluenced by intuition.But they are not withou
37、t reason.Legal authorities should bevery careful when investigating the facts and giving a verdict.Any inaccurateconclusion about the facts and incorrect verdict may infuriate the public.They arewatching and waiting for the result.Heroism loses value amid moral decayA sense of justice is the minimum
38、 standard for morality in any society.If thatsense is corrupted,the society is in danger of moral deterioration.Our society seemsto be showing signs of a weakening sense of justice,as revealed by the followingincident.Last Friday,in Chongqing,a policeman was stabbed to death while trying tocontrol a
39、 knife-wielding criminal single-handedly.No passers-by offered help even ashe desperately sought it.I was not mainly targeting these passers-by when I lamented the loss of a senseof justice;I was referring to some people who posted comments online disdaining oreven cursing the policeman.And when a n
40、ewspaper com-mentator expressed indignation at the“unscrupulous words of these people,they turned on the writer blaming him forunscrupulously defending0 the police.I dont know how these people developed so strong a fury against the police ingeneral.Most likely they have suffered the condescending ma
41、nner of some policemenor were wronged or bullied by some ill-natured officers.But that does not excuse theircursing the policeman,who sacrificed his life fighting a dangerous criminal who waslater found to have killed four pedestrians before he was spotted by the officer.Zhou Xin was a police office
42、r from a community station in Fuling district,Chongqing municipality.He was going to an eatery for lunch,not wearing hisuniform,when he saw the thug with a dagger.Realizing the man was posing a threat to the public,Zhou ordered him tosurrender the knife.But the man thrust at him instead.A fight ensu
43、ed and thepoliceman was stabbed three times by the thug,who was much taller and stronger.During the fight,Zhou asked pedestrians for help but none of them did anything.If it is understandable that these pedestrians dare not join the fight for fear ofbeing wounded,it is totally unacceptable that some
44、 appeared to be glad at Zhousdeath.How could they be so heartless?No matter how reasonable they may be inresenting police for some unpleasant experiences,how could they delight in acourageous crime-fighters death?No matter how many other policemen have donesomething wrong,no one has the right to ins
45、ult an officer like Zhou,who fought forthe safety of the people.Zhou was a hero,an unmistakable hero!Respecting heroes is a good tradition in any nations culture.The Chinese nationparticularly worships heroism.In its thousands of years of struggles against foreigninvasions and natural calamities,the
46、 Chinese people have greatly admired those whosacrificed their personal interests and even lives for the good of the nation and society.This is a valuable tradition.However,for some years,these values have been challenged by some people,who disparage the promotion of heroism as ideological brainwash
47、ing and eveninhumane.Many people no longer revere heroes.Theyre even reticent about sayingthey were moved by some heroic behavior.Even the above-mentioned article rappingthe netizens who jeered the Chongqing police officer said:You may not laud thehero,but you should not be so apathetic as becoming
48、unscrupulous.0Such a compromising attitude just reflects the social mentality of shunningheroism.Why has our society become this way?Americans even took their returnedPOWs in the Iraqi wars as national heroes.Why do we dare not acclaim a policemanwho heroically fought a brutal criminal?What happened
49、 to our sense of right andwrong?Something must have gone wrong with our society.Of course,things have not deteriorated to the extent that heroism is completelydead.The fact that tens of thousands of common people voluntarily went to thefuneral of Zhou Xin proved that the broad masses still admire he
50、roism out of a senseof justice.Those people who vilified the hero were only a small part of society.Buttheir online comments are a bad influence.They should be vociferously repudiated.So far they havent been.Jobs for College GraduatesAs millions of newly graduated college students enter the labor ma