Of course, people may reject what they are taught at home. People between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one often have sharp and apparently permanent differences with their parents in terms of beliefs and values on many issues. Still, whether you accpet or reject what you are taught, your present position grows out of those teachings. It is a response to your upbringing. Given different parents with a different culture and different values - growing up, say, in Istanbul rather than Dubuque - your response would necessarily be different. You would, in that sense, not be the same reason.
THE ROLE OF MASS CULTURE
In centuries past, the influence of family and teachers was the dominant, and sometimes the only, influence on children. Today, however, this influence exerted by mass culture (but broadcast media, newspapers, magzines and popular music) is often greater.
By age eighteen the average teenager has spend 11,000 hours in the classroom and 22,000 hours in front of the television set. He or she has done perhaps 13,000 school lessons, yet has watched more than 750,000 commercials.
What effects does mass culture have on young people (and many adults, as well)? To answer, we need only consider the formats and devices commonly used. Moden advertising typically bombards the public with slogans and testimonials by celebrities. This approach is designed to appeal to emotions and create artificial needs for products and services. As a result, many people develop the habit of responding emotionally, impulsively, and gullibly to such appeals.
Television programmers use frequent scene shifts and sensory appeals such as car crashes, violence, and sexual encounters to keep audience interest from diminishing. Then they add frequent commercial interruptions. As a result, many people find it difficult to concentrate in school or at work. They may think the teacher or the job is boring when, in fact, mass culture has made them impatient with the normal rhythms of life.
Finally, mass culture promotes values that oppose those held by most parents. Play is presented as more fulfilling than work, self-gratification more desirable than self-control, and materialism more meaningful than idealism. People who adopt this values without questioning them may end up sacrificing worthy goals to their pursuit of "a good time" and lots of money.
生词短语：
upbringing 教养；养育
dominant 占优势的；显性的
exerted 外露的
mass culture 大众文化
bombard 轰炸；炮击
testmonials 推荐书；证明信；纪念品；奖状
approach 方式；方法；接近
appeal to 对...有吸引力；呼吁
artificial needs 人为的需求（虚假需求）
impulsively 冲动地
gullibly 易受骗地
scen shifts 场景的变化
diminishing 减少；衰减；递减
rhythms /'rɪð(ə)mz 韵律（rhythms of life 生活节奏）
self-gratification 自我满足；自享
EFFECTS ON SELF-IMAGE
The circumstances of our lives are so influential that they affect not only our view of the world but also our view of ourselves. If you were to make a list of your capacities for different kinds of activities, you might say, for example, " I work well with mechanical things, but I have no talent for dealing with ideas." Would that be accurate? Not necessarily! It would be what you had come to believe about yourself, the conclusion you'd reached as a result of your experience. However, it might very well be a conclusion you reached too soon.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz explains the amazing results one educator had in improving the grades of school children by changing their self-images. He had observed that when they saw themselves as stupid in a particular subject (or stupid in general), they unconsciously acted to confirm their self-images. They believed they were stupied, so they actied that way. Reasoning that it was their defeatist attitude rather than any lack of ability that was defeating them, the educator set out to change their self-images. He found that when he accomplished that, they no longer behaved stupidly!
Maltz records how this same nagtive self-image kept a salesman from ever reaching more than a certain level of sales. When his territory was changed to a larger and more promising territory, he continued to make the same dollar amount, not a bit more. The trouble was found to be not in the conditions of his work but in his self-image. He had decided he couldn't exceed a certain amount, and so he subconsciously prevented himself from doing so.
Maltz concludes from these and other examples that our experiences can work a kind of self-hypnotism on us, suggesting a conclusion about ourselves and then urging us to make it come true.
self-image 自我印象
capacities 能力
Not necessarily 未必
defeatist 失败主义者
set out to do sth 着手做某事
promising 有前途的；有希望的
self-hypnotism 自我催眠
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