1705037559
世界对于我们每个人来说都曾是新鲜和陌生的，就像当初对于亚当一样。并且，早在我们受到其他任何教育影响之前，大自然就支配着我们，对我们的生活无时无刻不进行教育并施加影响，使我们的行为大致遵循自然法则，从而避免我们可能因为过分地逆反自然而被其淘汰。即使一个人年至松鹤、寿比南山，我也不认为这种教育方式对他来说是过时的。对于每个人而言，世界都如最初时一样无比新颖。在那些用眼睛观察世界的人看来，那里充满了奇珍异物，奥妙难言。大自然就好比一所伟大的大学，在这里我们每个人都是学员，大自然总是对我们进行耐心的教导。不过，在大自然这所大学里并没有测试或考查制度。
1705037560
1705037561
在那里，能够获得荣誉并学会和服从支配人与事物法则的那些人，会成为这个世界上真正伟大而成功的人。相比之下，大部分人只是鹦鹉学舌，他们所学知识只是保证他们能够通过考试。而那些不学无术的人则会被淘汰，这样就再也无法挽回。被大自然所淘汰就意味着灭亡。
1705037562
1705037563
因此，从大自然角度而言，强制义务教育并不是个难题。关于这个问题的议案早已制定完成并获得通过。但是像其他强制性立法一样，自然的立法是残酷的，一旦违反则需要付出巨大代价。无知就像故意逆反一样要受到严厉的惩罚，无能则如同犯罪一般要付出相同的代价。大自然的惩罚方式甚至不是先予以打击，再以理相劝，而是直接予以无言的打击。你只能自己去找出被打的原因。
1705037564
1705037565
我们通常所称的教育（因为这种教育有人为介入，我在此将其称为“人为教育”以示区分），其目的在于弥补自然教育在方法上的缺陷，同时为孩子接受大自然的教育做好准备，使他们不至于无知、无能或逆反，也帮助他们了解自然不悦时的各种迹象，不至于毫无准备地接受未来的惩罚。总而言之，所有人为教育应该是对自然教育的预期。通识教育就是一种人为教育。这种教育方式不仅教导人们避免逆反自然规律这样的罪恶行为，还教导人们利用并感恩于自然的赏赐，因为大自然用她的自由之手散播赏赐，就如同散播各种惩罚一样。
1705037566
1705037567
我认为，一个接受过通识教育的人应该是这样的：他年轻时受到的训练可以使其身体服从自己的意志，就像一台机器一样轻松而愉悦地从事一切工作；他的心智好比一台敏锐、冷静而有逻辑性的引擎，每个部分能力相当，有条不紊地运行着；他又如一台蒸汽机，待于效力各种工作，纺织思想之纱，铸就心智之锚；他的大脑中充满着知识，既有关于大自然的重要真理和知识，也有自然界运行的基本规律；他并不是一个不正常的苦行人，他的生活中总是充满生机和热情，但他的激情永远受制于强大的意志力和敏感的良知；他学会去热爱一切美好的事物，不论是自然之美还是艺术之美；他憎恨所有的丑恶，并做到尊人如待己。
1705037568
1705037569
我认为，只有这样的人，才有资格称为接受过通识教育，因为他已经和自然互为相融，互利互用，和谐与共。他们将会相处得很好，自然界永远是他的慈母，而他也会成为慈母的喉舌，化身为她的意识，变为她的代理人和传声筒。
1705037570
1705037571
（罗选民 译）
1705037572
1705037573
1705037574
1705037575
1705037577
西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） 21 THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY
1705037578
1705037579
By Charles W. Eliot
1705037580
1705037581
THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY, from Charles William Eliot’s Educational Reforms: Essays and Addresses , New York, The Century Company, 1909, pp. 401-407.
1705037582
1705037583
Charles William Eliot （1834-1926）, American educationalist, president of Harvard University, 1869-1909. This is an address delivered before the Brooklyn Institute on October 2, 1897.
1705037584
1705037585
What the function of education shall be in a democracy will depend on what is meant by democratic education.
1705037586
1705037587
Too many of us think of education for the people as if it meant only learning to read, write, and cipher. Now, reading, writing, and simple ciphering are merely the tools by the diligent use of which a rational education is to be obtained through years of well-directed labor. They are not ends in themselves, but means to the great end of enjoying a rational existence. Under any civilized form of government, these arts ought to be acquired by every child by the time it is nine years of age. Competent teachers, or properly conducted schools, now teach reading, writing, and spelling simultaneously, so that the child writes every word it reads, and, of course, in writing spells the word. Ear, eye, and hand thus work together from the beginning in the acquisition of the arts of reading and writing. As to ciphering, most educational experts have become convinced that the amount of arithmetic which an educated person who is not some sort of computer needs to make use of is but small, and that real education should not be delayed or impaired for the sake of acquiring a skill in ciphering which will be of little use either to the child or to the adult. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, then, are not the goal of popular education.
1705037588
1705037589
The goal in all education, democratic or other, is always receding before the advancing contestant, as the top of a mountain seems to retreat before the climber, remoter and higher summits appearing successively as each apparent summit it reached. Nevertheless, the goal of the moment in education is always the acquisition of knowledge, the training of some permanent capacity for productiveness or enjoyment, and the development of character. Democratic education being a very new thing in the world, its attainable objects are not yet fully perceived. Plato taught that the laborious classes in a model commonwealth needed no education whatever. That seems an extraordinary opinion for a great philosopher to hold; but, while we wonder at it, let us recall that only one generation ago in some of our Southern States it was a crime to teach a member of the laborious class to read. In feudal society education was the privilege of some of the nobility and clergy, and was one source of the power of these two small classes. Universal education in Germany dates only from the Napoleonic wars; and its object has been to make freeman. In England the system of public instruction is but twenty-seven years old. Moreover the fundamental object of democratic education—to lift the whole population on a higher plane of intelligence, conduct, and happiness—has not yet been perfectly apprehended even in the United States. Too many of our own people think of popular education as if it were only a protection against dangerous superstitions, or a measure of police, or a means of increasing the national productiveness in the arts and trades. Our generation may, therefore, be excused if it has but an incomplete vision of the goal of education in a democracy.
1705037590
1705037591
I proceed to describe briefly the main elements of instruction and discipline in a democratic school. As soon as the easy use of what I have called the tools of education is acquired, and even while this familiarity is being gained, the capacity for productiveness and enjoyment should begin to be trained through the progressive acquisition of an elementary knowledge of the external world. The democratic school should begin early in the very first grades—the study of nature; and all its teachers should, therefore, be capable of teaching the elements of physical geography, meteorology, botany, and zoölogy, the whole forming in the child’s mind one harmonious sketch of its complex environment. This is a function of the primary-school teacher which our fathers never thought of, but which every passing year brings out more and more clearly as a prime function of every instructor of little children. Somewhat later in the child’s progress toward maturity the great sciences of chemistry and physics will find place in its course of systematic training. From the seventh or eighth year, according to the quality and capacity of the child, plane and solid geometry, the science of form, should find a place among the school studies, and some share of the child’s attention that great subject should claim for six or seven successive years. The process of making acquaintance with external nature through the elements of these various sciences should be interesting and enjoyable for every child. It should not be painful but delightful; and throughout the process the child’s skill in the arts of reading, writing, and ciphering should be steadily developed.
1705037592
1705037593
There is another part of every child’s environment with which he should early begin to make acquaintance, namely, the human part. The story of the human race should be gradually conveyed to the child’s mind from the time he begins to read with pleasure. This story should be conveyed quite as much through biography as through history; and with the descriptions of facts and real events should be entwined charming and uplifting products of the imagination. I cannot but think, however, that the wholly desirable imaginative literature for children remains, in large measure, to be written. The mythologies, Old Testament stories, fairy tales, and historical romances on which we are accustomed to feed the childish mind contain a great deal that is perverse, barbarous, or trivial; and to this infiltration into children’s minds, generation after generation, of immoral, cruel, or foolish ideas is probably to be attributed, in part, the slow ethical progress of the race. The common justification of our practice is that children do not apprehend the evil in the mental pictures with which we so rashly supply them. But what should we think of a mother who gave her child dirty milk or porridge, on the theory that the child would not assimilate the dirt? Should we be less careful of mental and moral food materials? It is, however, as undesirable as it is impossible to try to feed the minds of children only upon facts of observation or record. The immense product of the imagination in art and literature is a concrete fact with which every educated being should be made somewhat familiar, such products being a very real part of every individual’s actual environment.
1705037594
1705037595
Into the education of the great majority of children there enters as an important part their contribution to the daily labor of the household and the farm, or, at least, of the household. It is one of the serious consequences of the rapid concentration of population into cities and large towns, and of the minute division of labor which characterizes modern industries, that this wholesome part of education is less easily secured than it used to be when the greater part of the population was engaged in agriculture. Organized education must, therefore, supply in urban communities a good part of the manual and moral training which the coöperation of children in the work of father and mother affords in agricultural communities. Hence the great importance in any urban population of facilities for training children to accurate handwork, and for teaching them patience, forethought, and good judgment in productive labor.
1705037596
1705037597
Lastly, the school should teach every child, by precept, by example, and by every illustration its reading can supply, that the supreme attainment for any individual is vigor and loveliness of character. Industry, persistence, veracity in word and act, gentleness and disinterestedness should be made to thrive and blossom during school life in the hearts of the children who bring these virtues from their homes well started, and should be planted and tended in the less fortunate children. Furthermore, the pupils should be taught that what is virtue in one human being is virtue in any group of human beings, large or small—a village, a city or a nation; that the ethical principles which should govern an empire are precisely the same as those which should govern an individual; and that selfishness, greed, falseness, brutality, and ferocity are as hateful and degrading in a multitude as they are in a single savage.
1705037598
1705037599
The education thus outlined is what I think should be meant by democratic education. It exists to-day only among the most intelligent people, or in places singularly fortunate in regard to the organization of their schools; but though it be the somewhat distant ideal of democratic education, it is by no means an unattainable ideal. It is the reasonable aim of the public school in a thoughtful and ambitious democracy. It, of course, demands of a kind of teacher much above the elementary-school teacher of the present day, and it also requires a larger expenditure upon the public school than is at all customary as yet in this country. But that better kind of teacher and that larger expenditure are imperatively called for, if democratic institutions are to prosper, and to promote continuously the real welfare of the mass of the people. The standard of education should not be set at the now attained or the now attainable. It is the privilege of public education to press toward a mark remote.
1705037600
1705037601
Notes
1705037602
1705037603
function, the work that education is designed to do; the natural and proper action of education.
1705037604
1705037605
cipher, do sums in arithmetic. Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic are called the 3 R’s.
1705037606
1705037607
diligent, hard-working, industrious, steady in application, attentive to duties.
1705037608
[
上一页 ]
[ :1.705037559e+09 ]
[
下一页 ]