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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033831]
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21 民主社会中教育之功用
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民主社会中教育之功用取决于民主教育之意义。
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古往，教育于吾民大众莫过于教人诵读、授人文书、传人算术。如今，勤勉之士视之为“工具”而已，只需努力得当，假以时日，即可实现理性教育。然工具本身并非教育之目标，乃是受教育者为实现“享受理性生存”这一伟大目标之手段。任何文明政体下，孩童至九岁时便应习得此诸般技艺。时下，称职之师或规范之校皆同时教授阅读、写作及拼写。如此一来，孩童依照所读进行书写，当然，也于书写时拼读文字。因而，初始习得阅读、写作等技艺时，耳、眼、手则予协调并用。至于算术，多数教育专家坚信，受教育之人，除非专业于计算，其所需运算量甚小。无论在孩童时期或成人阶段，算术鲜有用武之地，故不应以延缓甚至牺牲真正教育为代价而习得此种鸡肋之技。至此，阅读、写作、算术皆不入大众教育之标的。
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不论民主抑或其他教育，其标的总是随受教育者进步而后移，好比登山者眼中之山顶总不断后移。当攀上眼前之峰顶时，更远山脉、更高顶峰则相继涌现。言虽如此，目前教育目标仍是获取知识、锻炼产力、学会鉴赏及塑造性格。民主教育乃新生领域，其功能及目标尚未能得到完全领会。以柏拉图之见，模范联邦体中，劳动阶级不需接受任何教育。对柏拉图此等大哲学家而言，此观点似乎非比寻常；然虑及吾辈，尚表疑惑。不妨回想，仅一代人之前，于美国南方诸州之内教授劳动阶层人民阅读乃犯法之事。在封建社会，受教育乃贵族与牧师之特权，亦为其获得权利之源泉。在德国，全民教育源于拿破仑战争，目标为培养自由公民。在英格兰，此等公众教育体系仅存廿七年之久，且其最主要目标是使大众民智、民行、民乐上升一个层次，但此目标即便在美国也未得到充分领会。多数民众认为，大众教育不过是危险迷信活动之预防，治安管理之手段，抑或提高国家艺术及贸易产率之方式。故而，吾辈如若对民主国家教育之目标理解不透彻，实乃情有可原。
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继而，将简述民主学校教学与学科两大主题。如若能轻松上手且娴熟运用上文所言之“工具”，即可逐步获取外部世界基础知识以提升产力及培养乐趣。民主学校应在第一学年初始开设关于自然之学习，且所有教师应具备能力教授自然地理、气象学、植物学、动物学等基础知识。学生所学知识会作为整体在头脑中构成他们所处复杂环境的和谐轮廓。此即小学教师之价值功用，吾辈前人未曾有所意识。然年复一年，孩童启蒙师的早期价值功用会变得愈加明晰。在孩童迈向成熟之途中，化学、物理此等重要学科会在其系统训练中有所体现。据孩童之才干与能力，自第七或第八年，平面几何、立体几何、形式科学会在众多学习科目中占有一席之地，某些主要科目甚或需要连续学习六七载。通过各种学科知识来了解外在自然世界，于每位学生而言皆应有趣而快乐。此过程愉悦充盈、苦痛未沾，且孩童之读、写、算技能可获稳步提升。
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此外，孩童应予早期了解自身所处环境之另一面——人类本身。人类故事应在孩童开始享受阅读之时就逐渐灌输于他们头脑中。传记文学与历史叙述两种灌输方式应予以并重，且对现实和真实事件之描写需穿插一些跌宕起伏、引人入胜的想象元素。然而，不禁思虑，完全符合意愿之想象性儿童文学作品在相当程度上有待创作。以往，神话传说、圣经故事、童话奇谈、历史演义等被习惯性用于填充孩童精神世界，但其中些许内容是违逆、野蛮且琐碎的。将此等愚蠢、残忍或有悖道德之邪恶思想灌输于一代代孩童内心，成为人类伦理发展进程缓慢原因之一。而当这些思想被轻率地置于孩童面前时，他们并不会理解其中之邪恶，这使得人们认为这种做法理所应当。好比一位母亲，她自认为孩童不会吸收脏物，从而喂食其不干净牛奶或米粥，对此，我们做何感想？从口食物品到精神食粮，我们应放肆标准，任意进食吗？然而，仅靠观察或记录事实来填充孩童精神世界之做法既不合理亦不可能。艺术与文学中通过想象而得的大量产物是每个受教育之人都应或多或少熟悉的具体事实，此类产物是每个个体所处真实环境中的一部分。
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对多数孩童而言，他们能否在家里和田间，或至少在家里出活出力也构成教育之重要部分。人口向城市或大型城镇快速聚集，以及作为工业现代化标志的分工细化导致了一个严重后果，即比起过去大部分人口从事农业活动的时代，保障这种有益健康的教育已日趋困难。因而，系统性教育必须在城市社区安排大量的动手能力训练与品性道德教育，而在农业社区中，孩童与父母协同承担工作，以完成此部分教育。故而，城市中的教育机构应当训练孩童在生产劳动中如何做到手工精细、耐心耐性、思虑筹划及正确判断，这些尤为重要。
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最后，课堂教学应利用阅读中所提供的规则、例子和图解予以施教，确保每个孩童的最高培养目标是富有活力与魅力的性格。受益于良好家教的孩童自小便在言行上做到勤勉、坚韧、诚实，心中也已知晓公正、礼让这些品格，学校教育应让这些品格继续兴旺、传播。而对其他缺乏上述得体言行及优良品格的孩童，教育职责在于将其植入童心，并悉心发扬。另外，应让孩童明晓，品行美德于己于人、于国于民皆同行同德、同心同理。小至某个村落，大到一个城邦，治国之道德准则同样适用于规约个人行为，故寄生于群体或个人的自私、贪婪、虚伪、无情、凶残都是令人生厌及丧失体面的低劣人格。
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以上略述之教育即前面言及的民主教育。此类教育理念只存在于现今最聪慧者当中或组织方式非凡突出的部分学校。尽管民主教育仍旧遥远，但绝不意味其遥不可及。在一个富有雄心及深度思想的民主国家，民主教育乃公办教学之合理目标。当然，师资与经费是两大问题，首先需要一批水平远超现今普通小学教员的教师，其次，还需投入比惯常更大的开支。如若民主制度想要繁荣发展，民众切实福利想要持续提高，则师资与经费的投入成必然之势。另外，教育标准不应以既成现有或触手可及的原则来制定，因公共教育之优势在于朝更远目标而迈进。
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（罗选民 译）
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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033832]
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22 WHAT SHALL WE EDUCATE FOR?
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By Bertrand Russell
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WHAT SHALL WE EDUCATE FOR?by Bertrand Russell in his Education and the Good Life , as reprinted in Walter Lippmann and Allan Nevins:A Modern Reader , Boston, D. C. Heath and Company, 1936, pp. 473-477.
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Bertrand Russell （1872-1970）, later Earl Russell, English journalist, public speaker, and political thinker. After 1918 he lectured at Peking University. While traveling, lecturing, and studying the civilizations of Soviet Russia, China, the United States, and Europe, he has hammered out in detail his view of the future of mankind—lucidly expressed in Proposed Roads to Freedom , Education and the Good Life , and The Prospects of Industrial Civilization . He believes in combining industrialism with leisure, individual liberty, and the cultivation of art. He believes that this new civilization may easily be created if mankind will but establish three bases for it: first, a more equal distribution of goods; second, the abolition of war; third, the acceptance of a stationary or but slowly rising level of population.
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Traditional Chinese education was, in some respects, very similar to that of Athens in its best days. Athenian boys were made to learn Homer by heart from beginning to end; Chinese boys were made to learn the Confucian classics with similar thoroughness. Athenians were taught a kind of reverence for the gods which consisted in outward observances and placed no barrier in the way of free intellectual speculation. Similarly, the Chinese were taught certain rites connected with ancestor-worship, but were by no means obliged to have the beliefs which the rites would seem to imply. An easy and elegant skepticism was the attitude expected of an educated adult;anything might be discussed, but it was a trifle vulgar to reach very positive conclusions. Opinions should be such as could be discussed pleasantly at dinner, not such as man would fight for. Carlyle calls Plato “a lordly Athenian gentleman, very much at his ease in Zion.” This characteristic of being “at his ease in Zion” is found also in Chinese sages, and is, as a rule, absent from the sages produced by Christian civilizations, except when, like Goethe, they have deeply imbibed the spirit of Hellenism. The Athenians and the Chinese alike wished to enjoy life, and had a conception of enjoyment which was refined by an exquisite sense of beauty.
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There were, however, great differences between the two civilizations, owing to the fact that, broadly speaking, the Greeks were energetic and the Chinese were lazy. The Greeks devoted their energies to art and science and mutual extermination—in all of which they achieved unprecedented success. Politics and patriotism afforded practical outlets for Greek energy: when a politician was ousted he led a band of exiles to attack his native city. When a Chinese official was disgraced he retired to the hills and wrote poems on the pleasures of country life. Accordingly, the Greek civilization destroyed itself, but the Chinese civilization could be destroyed only from without. These differences, however, seemed not wholly attributable to education, since Confucianism in Japan never produced the indolent cultured skepticism which characterized the Chinese literati, except in the Kyoto nobility, who formed a kind of Faubourg Saint Germain.
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Chinese education produced stability and art; it failed to produce progress or science. Perhaps this may be taken as what is to be expected of skepticism. Passionate beliefs produce either progress or disaster, not stability. Science, even when it attacks traditional beliefs, has beliefs of its own, and can scarcely flourish in an atmosphere of literary skepticism. In a pugnacious world, which has been unified by modern inventions, energy is needed for national self-preservation. And without science democracy is impossible: the Chinese civilization was confined to the small percentage of educated men and the Greek civilization was based on slavery. For these reasons the traditional education of China is not suited to the modern world, and has been abandoned by the Chinese themselves. Cultivated eighteenth-century gentlemen, who in some respects resembled Chinese literati, have become impossible for the same reasons.
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Modern Japan affords the clearest illustration of a tendency which is prominent among all the Great Powers—the tendency to make national greatness the supreme purpose of education. The aim of Japanese education is to produce citizens who shall be devoted to the state through the training of their passions, and useful to it through the knowledge they have acquired. I cannot sufficiently praise the skill with which this double purpose has been pursued. Ever since the advent of Commodore Perry’s squadron the Japanese have been in a situation in which self-preservation was very difficult; their success affords a justification of their methods, unless we are to hold that self-preservation itself may be culpable. But only a desperate situation could have justified their educational methods, which would have been culpable in any nation not in imminent peril. The Shinto religion, which must not be called in question even by university professors, involves history just as dubious as Genesis; the Dayton trial pales into insignificance beside the theological tyranny in Japan. There is an equal ethical tyranny; nationalism, filial piety, Mikado-worship, etc., must not be called in question, and, therefore, many kinds of progress are scarcely possible. The great danger of a cast-iron system of this sort is that it may provoke revolution as the sole method of progress. This danger is real, though not immediate, and is largely caused by the educational system.
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We have thus in modern Japan a defect opposite to that of ancient China. Whereas the Chinese literati were too skeptical and lazy, the products of Japanese education are likely to be too dogmatic and energetic. Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty;that much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care and industry. In acting upon our beliefs, we should be very cautious where a small error would mean disaster; nevertheless, it is upon our beliefs that we must act. This state of mind is rather difficult: it requires a high degree of intellectual culture without emotional atrophy. But though difficult, it is not impossible; it is in fact the scientific temper. Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread, produce social disaster.
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Doctor Arnold’s system, which has remained in force in English public schools to the present day, had another defect:namely, that it was aristocratic. The aim was to train men for positions of authority and power, whether at home or in distant parts of the Empire. An aristocracy, if it is to survive, needs certain virtues; these were to be imparted at school. The product was to be energetic, stoical, physically fit, possessed of certain unalterable beliefs, with high standards of rectitude, and convinced that it had an important mission in the world. To a surprising extent, these results were achieved. Intellect was sacrificed to them, because intellect might produce doubt. Sympathy was sacrificed, because it might interfere with governing “inferior” races or classes. Kindliness was sacrificed for the sake of toughness; imagination, for the sake of firmness.
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In an unchanging world the result might have been a permanent aristocracy, possessing the merits and defects of the Spartans. But aristocracy is out of date, and subject populations will no longer obey even the most wise and virtuous rulers. The rulers are driven into brutality, and brutality further encourages revolt. The complexity of the modern world increasingly requires intelligence, and Doctor Arnold sacrificed intelligence to “virtue.” The battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the British Empire is being lost there. The modern world needs a different type, with more imaginative sympathy, more intellectual suppleness, less belief in bulldog courage and more belief in technical knowledge. The administrator of the future must be the servant of free citizens, not the benevolent ruler of admiring subjects. The aristocratic tradition embedded in British higher education is its bane. Perhaps this tradition can be eliminated gradually; perhaps the older educational institutions will be found incapable of adapting themselves. As to that, I do not venture an opinion.
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The American public schools achieve successfully a task never before attempted on a large scale: the task of transforming a heterogeneous selection of mankind into a homogeneous nation. This is done so ably, and is, on the whole, such a beneficent work, that on the balance great praise is due to those who accomplish it. But America, like Japan, is placed in a peculiar position, and what the special circumstances justify is not necessarily an ideal to be followed everywhere and always. America has had certain advantages and certain difficulties. Among the advantages were: a higher standard of wealth; freedom from the danger of defeat in war;comparative absence of cramping traditions inherited from the Middle Ages. Immigrants found in America a generally diffused sentiment of democracy and an advanced stage of industrial technique. These, I think, are the two chief reasons why almost all of them came to admire America more than their native countries. But actual immigrants, as a rule, retain a dual patriotism: in European struggles they continue to take passionately the side of the nation to which they originally belonged. Their children, on the contrary, lose all loyalty to the country from which their parents have come and become merely and simple Americans. The attitude of the parents is attributable to the general merits of America; that of the children is very largely determined by their school education. It is only the contribution of the school that concerns us.
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In so far as the school can rely upon the genuine merits of America, there is no need to associate the teaching of American patriotism with the inculcation of false standards. But where the Old World is superior to the New, it becomes necessary to instill a contempt for genuine excellencies. The intellectual level in Western Europe and the artistic level in Eastern Europe are, on the whole, higher than in America. Throughout Western Europe, except in Spain and Portugal, there is less theological superstition than in America. In almost all European countries the individual is less subject to herd domination than in America: his inner freedom is greater even where his political freedom is less. In these respects the American public schools do harm. The harm is essential to the teaching of an exclusive American Patriotism. The harm, as with the Japanese, comes from regarding the pupils as means to an end, not as ends in themselves. The teacher should love his children better than his state; otherwise he is not an ideal teacher.