1705042780 我想我已经解释详尽了；结束语和开头所言一样，大学是来自四面八方的师生为各种知识而汇聚一堂的地方。最好的东西不可能俯拾皆是；你必须到大城市或者商业中心区寻觅。在那里自然和人工的顶尖产品荟萃一处，而在原产地你只能发现孤零零的一种特产。全国和全世界的财富都被运往该处；最佳的市场，最好的工匠都在那里；那是贸易的中心，时尚的最高鉴定处，竞争人才的公断所，还是珍奇宝物的评判标准。它是观赏一流画作的场所，也是聆听美妙歌喉、欣赏超凡演出的殿堂。那里汇聚着伟大的传道者、演说家、贵族和政治家。世间万物，伟大与完整并行；卓越常常指向核心。这个核心，我再三指出，就是大学；希望读者莫要厌烦我的多次重复；成百上千的学校为成就大学做出贡献，使它成为知识分子可以自由探查研究、建构思想的所在，他们定会在此遭逢挑战和对手，并在真理的裁判所接受检验。在大学里，通过心灵的激荡和学术的碰撞，人们质疑、修正和完善，消解鲁莽之失，揭示谬误之陋。在这里，能言善辩的教授传道授业解惑，满怀对学科的深爱，用最全面可信的方式展示科学，点燃听众胸中的热情。在这里，教授在问答宣讲中以扎实的脚步前行，将真理灌注到学生的记忆宝库，并不断楔入和夯实在他们日益增长的理性中。这是一处以佳誉赢得青年的仰慕，以美好点燃中年的热爱，以通达锁定老年的忠诚的场所。这里是智慧源泉、世界灯塔、信仰之门，是新一代人的母校。大学还是除此之外的林林总总，需要比我更加善思决断之人才能备述其妙。

1705042781

1705042782 （张萍　译）

1705042783

1705042784

1705042785

1705042786 [1]典出莎士比亚《皆大欢喜》（As You Like It）第二幕第一景，此处所引为梁实秋译文。

1705042787

1705042788 西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033872]

1705042789 42 THE THEORY OF THE LIBERAL COLLEGE

1705042790

1705042791 By Alexander Meiklejohn

1705042792

1705042793

1705042794 THE THEORY OF THE LIBERAL COLLEGE, by Alexander Meiklejohn, from his Freedom and the College , New York, The Century Company, 1923, pp. 155-189.

1705042795

1705042796

1705042797

1705042798 Alexander Meiklejohn （1872-1964）, American educator and teacher of philosophy.

1705042799

1705042800 This was his inaugural address as president of Amherst College, Massachusetts, October 16, 1912.

1705042801

1705042802 In the discussions concerning college education there is one voice which is all too seldom raised and all too often disregarded. It is the voice of the teacher and scholar, of the member of the college faculty. It is my purpose here to consider the ideals of the teacher, of the problems of instruction as they present themselves to the men who are giving instruction. And I do this not because I believe that just now the teachers are wiser than others who are dealing with the same questions, but rather as an expression of a definite conviction with regard to the place of the teacher in our educational scheme. It is, I believe, the function of the teacher to stand before his pupils and before the community at large as the intellectual leader of his time. If he is not able to take this leadership, he is not worthy of his calling. If the leadership is taken from him and given to others, then the very foundations of the scheme of instruction are shaken. He who in matters of teaching must be led by others is not the one to lead the imitative undergraduate, not the one to inspire the confidence and loyalty and discipleship on which all true teaching depends. If there are others who can do these things better than the college teacher of to-day, then we must bring them within the college walls. But if the teacher is to be deemed worthy of his task, then he must be recognized as the teacher of us all, and we must listen to his words as he speaks of the matters intrusted to his charge.

1705042803

1705042804 In the consideration of the educational creed of the teacher I will try to give, first, a brief statement of his belief;second, a defense of it against other views of the function of the college; third, an interpretation of its meaning and significance; fourth, a criticism of what seem to me misunderstandings of their own meaning prevalent among the teachers of our day; and finally, a suggestion of certain changes in policy which must follow if the belief of the teacher is clearly understood and applied in our educational procedure.

1705042805

1705042806 I.

1705042807

1705042808 First, then, What do our teachers believe to be the aim of college instruction? Wherever their opinions and convictions find expression there is one contention which is always in the foreground, namely, that to be liberal a college must be essentially intellectual. It is a place, the teachers tell us, in which a boy, forgetting all things else, may set forth on the enterprise of learning. It is a time when a young man may come to awareness of the thinking of his people, may perceive what knowledge is and has been and is to be. Whatever light-hearted undergraduates may say, whatever the opinions of solicitous parents, of ambitious friends, of employers in search of workmen, of leaders in church or state or business—whatever may be the beliefs and desire and demands of outsiders—the teacher within the college, knowing his mission as no one else can know it, proclaims that mission to be the leading of his pupil into the life intellectual. The college is primarily not a place of the body, nor of the feeling, nor even of the will; it is, first of all, a place of the mind.

1705042809

1705042810 II.

1705042811

1705042812 Against this intellectual interpretation of the college our teachers find two sets of hostile forces constantly at work. Outside the walls there are the practical demands of a busy commercial and social scheme; within the college there are the trivial and sentimental and irrational misunderstandings of its own friends. Upon each of these our college teachers are wont to descend as Samson upon the Philistines, and when they have had their will, there is little left for another to accomplish.

1705042813

1705042814 As against the immediate practical demands from without, the issue is clear and decisive. College teachers know that the world must have trained workmen, skilled operatives, clever buyers and sellers, efficient directors, resourceful manufacturers, able lawyers, ministers, physicians, and teachers. But it is equally true that in order to do its own work, the liberal college must leave the special and technical training for these trades and professions to be done in other schools and by other methods. In a word, the liberal college does not pretend to give all the kinds of teaching which a young man of college age may profitably receive; it does not even claim to give all the kinds of intellectual training which are worth giving. It is committed to intellectual training of the liberal type, whatever that may mean, and to that mission it must be faithful. One may safely say, then, on behalf of our college teachers, that their instruction is intended to be radically different from that given in the technical school or even in the professional school. Both these institutions are practical in a sense which the college, as an intellectual institution, is not. In the technical school, the pupil is taught how to do some one of the mechanical operations which contribute to human welfare. He is trained to point, to weave, to farm, to build; and for the most part he is trained to do these things by practice rather than by theory. His possession when he leaves the school is not a stock of ideas, of scientific principles, but a measure of skill, a collection of rules of thumb. His primary function as a tradesman is not to understand but to do, and in doing what is needed he is following directions which have first been thought out by others and are now practiced by him. The technical school intends to furnish training which, in the sense in which we use the term, is not intellectual but practical.

1705042815

1705042816 In a corresponding way the work of the professional school differs from that of the liberal college. In the teaching of engineering, medicine or law, we are or may be beyond the realm of mere skill and within the realm of ideas and principles. But the selection and the relating of these ideas is dominated by an immediate practical interest which cuts them off from the intellectual point of view of the scholar. If an undergraduate should take away from his studies of chemistry, biology, and psychology only those parts which have immediate practical application in the field of medicine, the college teachers would feel that they had failed to give the boy the kind of instruction demanded of a college. It is not their purpose to furnish applied knowledge in this sense. They are not willing to cut up their sciences into segments and to allow the students to select those segments which may be of service in the practice of an art or a profession. In one way or another the teacher feels a kinship with the scientist and the scholar which forbids him to submit to this domination of his instruction by the demands of an immediate practical interest. Whatever it may mean, he intends to hold the intellectual point of view and to keep his students with him if he can. In response, then, to demands for technical and professional training our college teachers tell us that such training may be obtained in other schools; it is not to be had in a college of liberal culture.

1705042817

1705042818 In the conflict with the forces within the college our teachers find themselves fighting essentially the same battle as against the foes without. In a hundred different ways the friends of the college, students, graduates, trustees, and even colleagues, seem to them so to misunderstand its mission as to minimize or to falsify its intellectual ideals. The college is a good place for making friends; it gives excellent experience in getting on with men; it has exceptional advantages as an athletic club; is a relatively safe place for a boy when he first leaves home; on a whole it may improve a student’s manners;it gives acquaintance with lofty ideals of character, preaches the doctrine of social service, exalts the virtues and duties of citizenship. All these conceptions seem to the teacher to hide or to obscure the fact that the college is fundamentally a place of the mind, a time for thinking, an opportunity for knowing. And perhaps in proportion to their own loftiness of purpose and motive they are the more dangerous as tending all the more powerfully to replace or to nullify the underlying principle upon which they all depend. Here again when misconception clears away, one can have no doubt that the battle of the teacher is a righteous one. It is well that a boy should have four good years of athletic sport, playing his own games and watching the games of his fellows; it is well that his manners should be improved; it is worth while to make good friends; it is very desirable to develop the power of understanding and working with other men; it is surely good to grow in strength and purity of character, in devotion to the interests of society, in readiness to meet obligations and opportunities of citizenship. If any one of these be lacking from the fruits of a college course we may well complain of the harvest. And yet is it not true that by sheer pressure of these, by the driving and pulling of the social forces within and without the college, the mind of the student is constantly torn from its chief concern? Do not our social and practical interests distract our boys from the intellectual achievement which should dominate their imagination and command their zeal? I believe that one may take it as the deliberate judgment of the teachers of our colleges to-day that the function of the college is constantly misunderstood, and that it is subjected to demands which, however friendly in intent, are yet destructive of its intellectual efficiency and success.

1705042819

1705042820 III.

1705042821

1705042822 But now that the contention of the teacher has been stated and reaffirmed against objections, it is time to ask, What does it mean? And how can it be justified? By what right does a company of scholars invite young men to spend with them four years of discipleship? Do they, in their insistence upon the intellectual quality of their ideal intend to give an education which is avowedly unpractical? If so, how shall they justify their invitation, which may perhaps divert young men from other interests and other companionships which are valuable to themselves and to their fellows? In a word, what is the underlying motive of the teacher, what is there in the intellectual interests and activities which seems to him to warrant their domination over the training and instruction of young men during the college years?

1705042823

1705042824 It is no fair answer to this question to summon us to faith in intellectual ideals, to demand of us that we live the life of the mind with confidence in the virtues of intelligence, that we love knowledge and because of our passion follow after it. Most of us are already eager to accept intellectual ideals but our very devotion to them forbids that we accept them blindly. I have often been struck by the inner contradictoriness of the demand that we have faith in intelligence. It seems to mean, as it is so commonly made to mean, that we must unintelligently follow intelligence, that we must ignorantly pursue knowledge, that we must question everything except the use of thinking itself. As Mr. F. H. Bradley would say, the dictum, “Have faith in intelligence,” is so true that it constantly threatens to become false. Our very conviction of its truth compels us to scrutinize and test it to the end.

1705042825

1705042826 How then shall we justify the faith of the teacher? What reason can we give for our exaltation of intellectual training and activity? To this question two answers are possible. First, knowledge and thinking are good in themselves. Secondly, they help us in the attainment of other values in life which without them would be impossible. Both these answers may be given and are given by college teachers. Within them must be found whatever can be said by way of explanation and justification of the work of the liberal college.

1705042827

1705042828 The first answer receives just now far less of recognition than it can rightly claim. When the man of the world is told that a boy is to be trained in thinking just because of the joys and satisfactions of thinking itself, just in order that he may go on thinking as long as he lives, the man of the world has been heard to scoff and to ridicule the idle dreaming of scholarly men. But if thinking is not a good thing in itself, if intellectual activity is not worth while for its own sake, will the man of the world tell us what is? There are those among us who find so much satisfaction in the countless trivial and vulgar amusements of crude people that they have no time for the joys of the mind. There are those who are so closely shut up within a little round of petty pleasures that they have never dreamed of the fun of reading and conversing and investigating and reflecting. And of these one can only say that the difference is one of taste, and that their tastes seem to be relatively dull and stupid. Surely it is one function of the liberal college to save boys from that stupidity, to give them an appetite for the pleasures of thinking, to made them sensitive to the joys of appreciation and understanding, to show them how sweet and captivating and wholesome are the games of the mind. At the time when the play element is still dominant it is worth while to acquaint boys with the sport of facing and solving problems. Apart from some of the experiences of friendship and sympathy I doubt if there are any human interests so permanently satisfying, so fine and splendid in themselves as are those of intellectual activity. To give our boys that zest, that delight in things intellectual, to give them an appreciation of a kind of life which is well worth living, to make them men of intellectual culture—that certainly is one part of the work of any liberal college.

1705042829

[ 上一页 ]  [ :1.70504278e+09 ]  [ 下一页 ]