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1. College lectures: Is Anybody Listening?大学课堂:还有人在听吗?A former teacher of mine, Robert A. Fowkes of New York University, likes to tell the story of a class he took in Old Welsh while studying in Germany during the 1930s. On the first day the professor strode up to the podium shuffled his notes, coughed, and began, “ Guten Tag, Meine Damen und Herren(”od day, ladies and gentlemen). Fowkes glanced around uneasily. He was the only student in the course.纽约大学的Robert A Fowkes是我过去的一位老师。他喜欢讲在 上世纪30年代他在德国上,古威尔士语课的故事。第一天上课,教授大步走上讲台,翻了 翻笔记,咳嗽了一声,开始说道:“早上好,女士们、先生们 Fowkes不安地扫视一番。 他是上这门课的唯一学生。Toward the middle of the semester, Fowkes fell ill and missed a class. When he returned, the professor nodded vaguely and, to Fowkess astonishment, began to deliver not the next lecture in the sequence but the one after. Had he, in fact, lectured to an empty hall in the absence of his solitary student? Fowkes thought it perfectly possible,在学期中间,Fowkes 因病缺了一次课。 他回到课堂的时候,教授毫无表情地向他点了点头。接着令Fowkes大吃惊的是,教授没 有按照顺序讲下课,而是讲了后面一课。难道他真的在他唯一的学生缺席的情况下对着空 教室讲了一课? Fowkes认为这太有可能了。Today American colleges and universities ( originally modeled on German ones) are under strong attack from many quarters. Teachers, it is charged, are not doing a good job of teaching, and students are not doing a good job of learning. American businesses and industries suffer from unenterprising, uncreative executives educated not to think for themselves but to mouth outdated truisms the rest of the world has long discarded. College graduates lack both basic skills and general culture. Studies are conducted and reports are issued on the status of higher education, but any changes that result either are largely cosmetic or make a bad situation worse. 今天美国的大 学受到了各方面的严方指3人们指责老师没有教好,学生没有学好。美国的商业和、饱 受无进取心的,缺乏创造力的管理人员之苦,这些人受的教育是自己不要思考,而是说些 时时的、在世界上其他地方早已抛弃的陈词滥调。大学毕业生既没有基本技能也没有全面修 养。有人对高等教育的状况做了研究并发表了报告,但由此引发的变化在很大程度上不是表 面的,就是使已经糟糕的情形变得更糟。One aspect of American education too seldom challenged is the lecture system. Professors continue to lecture and students to take notes much as they did in the thirteenth century, when books were so scarce and expensive that few students could own them. The time is long overdue for us to abandon the lecture system and turn to methods that really work,美国教育中很少被挑 战的方面是讲课制度。教授不停地讲,学生不停地记笔记,就像十三世纪时的情形样,那 时是因为书本匮乏又昂贵,很少有学生买得起。我们早就该舍弃讲课制度,开始使用真正有 用的方法。To understand the inadequacy of the present system, it is enough to follow a single imaginary first-year student 一 lets call her Mary - through a term of lectures on. Say, introductory psychology (although any other subject would do as well ). She arrives on the first day and looks around the huge lecture hall, taken a little aback to see how large the class is. Once the hundred or more students enrolled in the course discover that the professor never takes attendance (how can he? - calling the roll would take far too much time), the class shrinks to a less imposing size. 想 要了解现行体制的不足只要跟着一个假设的一年级学生就行了。我们暂且称她为玛丽,我们 还是跟她去上一个学期的心理学导论。她到的第一天环顾巨大的课堂,看到班级这么大有些 吃惊。一旦百或百多个注册的学生发现教授从不点名,班级就缩小到不那么吓人的规模 了。Some days Mary sits in the front row, from where she can watch the professor read from a stack of yellowed notes that seem nearly as old as he is. She is bored by the lectured, and so are most of the other students, to judge by the way they are nodding off or doodling in their notebooks. Gradually she realizes the professor is as bored as his audience. At the end of each lecture he asks, “Are there any questions?” in a tone of voice that makes it plain he would much rather there werent. He neednt worry - the students are as relieved as he is that the class is over. 丹 儿天玛 丽坐在前,排,她可以看到教授在读叠几乎和他的年纪样老的发黄的讲义。她听课烦了, 其他大部分同学也听烦了,这从他们的行为中可以判断出:他们要么在打盹,要么在笔记本 上涂鸦。渐渐地她意识到教授和他的听众样感到无聊。每次课结束时他都问道:“有问题 吗? ”他的语气明显表明他更希望没有问题。他不必担心,学生和他样感到下课是种解 脱。Mary knows very well she should read an assignment before every lecture. However, as the professor gives no quizzes and asks no questions, she soon realizes she neednt prepare. At the end of the term she catches up by skimming her notes and memorizing a list of facts and dates. After the final exam, she promptly forgets much of what she has memorized. Some of her fellow students, disappointed at the impersonality of it all. Drop out of college altogether. Others, like Mary, stick it out, grow resigned to the system and await better days when, as juniors and seniors, they will attend smaller classes and at last get the kind of personal attention real learning requires. 玛丽清楚地知道她应该在每次上课前阅读布置的作业。但是,因为教授不做小测验也不提问, 她很快就认识到她不必准备。学期末她只要看看笔记,再记记些事件、年代就可以跟上进 度。期末考试后她会立刻忘掉她背来的大部分内容。她的有些同学对这种无人情味的学习 很失望,干脆辍学。其他人像玛丽样坚持下来,无奈地接受了这种制度,等待着到大三、 大四时的好日子，那时他们就会有较小的班级,最终也会得到真正的学习所需要的那种针对 个人的关注。I admit this picture is overdrawn - most universities supplement lecture courses with discussion groups, usually led by graduate students, and some classes such as first - year English, are always relatively small. Nevertheless, far too many courses rely principally or entirely on lectures, an arrangement much loved by faculty and administrators but scarcely designed to benefit the students.我承认上面的描述言过其实。大多数大学有讨论课补充听讲课，通常讨 论课是由研究生主持的。而且有些班级，如一年级的英语课,也总是相对较小的。但是,还 是有太多的课主要或者完全依赖于讲课，这种安排受到教师和管理人员的青睐，但绝不是为 学生的利益而设计的。One problem with lectures is that listening intelligently is hard work. Reading the same material in a textbook is a more efficient way to learn because students can proceed as slowly as they need to until the subject matter becomes clear to them. Even simply paying attention is very difficult; people can listen at a rate of four hundred to six hundred words a minute, while the most impassioned professor talks at scarcely a third of that speed. This time lag between speech and comprehension leads to daydreaming. Many students believe years of watching television have sabotaged their attention span, but their real problem is that listening attentively is much harder than they think.听课存在的一个问题是:会听是件很难的事。阅读课本中的相同内容是更有 效的学习方法，因为学生可以根据其需要慢慢阅读直到他们理解这些内容。甚至仅仅做到专 心听讲都很难。人听的速度可以达到每分钏400-600个词，而最富有激情的教授说话的速度 也很难达到这个速度的1/3。讲话的理解之间的时间差导致开小差。很多学生认为多年来看 电视一经削弱了他们保持注意力的能力。但是他们真正的问题是专心听课比他们认为的要难 得多。Worse still, attending lectures is passive learning, at least for inexperienced listeners. Active learning in which students write essays or perform experiments and then have their work evaluated by an instructor, is far more beneficial for those who have not yet fully learned how to learn. While its true that techniques of active listening, such as trying to anticipate the speakers next point or taking notes selectively, can enhance the value of a lecture, few students possess such skills at the beginning of their college careers. More commonly, students try to write everything down and even bring tape recorders to class in a clumsy effort to capture every word. 更糟的是,听课是被动学习,至少对没有经验的听众如此。主动学习时学生写文章或做实验, 然后由教师评价他们的作亜,因此主动学习对那些还没有完全学会如何学习的学生来说益处 要大得多。的确,积极听讲的技巧,如设法预测说话人的下个要点或有选择地记笔记,能 够提高听课的价值，但是很少有学生在大学学习的开始阶段就已经学握了这些技巧。更为常 见的是学生试图写下所有内容,甚至还带着录音机去听课，以这咱笨拙的方式来记录每个词。Students need to question their professors and to have their ideas taken seriously. Only then will they develop the analytical skills required to think intelligently and creatively. Most students learn best by engaging in frequent and even heated debate, not by scribbling down a professors often unsatisfactory summary of complicated issues. They need small discussion classes that demand the common labors of teacher and students rather than classes in which one person, however learned propounds his or her own ideas.学生需要向教授提问,也需要别人重视他们 的想法。只有这样他们才能开发出聪明的、创造性的思考所必需的分析能力。大多数学生 通过参加频繁的、甚至是激烈的辩论会学得最好,而不是通过胡乱记下教授对复杂事件所 做出的常常不能令人满意的总结。他们需要小型讨论课,这种课需要老师和学生的共同努力, 他们不需要那种让个人提出自己观点的课堂,无论这个多么有学识。The lecture system ultimately harms professors as well. It reduces feedback to a minimum, so that the lecturer can neither judge how well students understand the material nor benefit from their questions or comments. Questions that require the speaker to clarify obscure points and comments that challenge sloppily constructed arguments are indispensable may not be able to make telling contributions very often, but lecturing insulates a professor even from the beginners naive question that could have triggered a fruitful line of thought.讲课制度最终会危害到教授们。反 馈减少到了最低点，因此讲课者既不能判断学生对材料的了解程度，也不能受益于学生的提 问或评论。学生要求说话者澄清模糊论点所提的问题，以及挑战结构松散的论据的评论,这 对于学术是必不可少的。没有这些，最活跃的头脑也会萎缩。大学生或许还不能够常常做出 显著的贡献，但是讲课把教授同新生天真的问题阻隔开了,而这些问题很可能会引起一系列 思考。If lectures make so little sense, why have they been allowed to continue? Administrators love them, of course. They can cram far more students into a lecture hall than into a discussion class, and for many administrators that is almost the end of the story. But the truth is that faculty members, and even students, conspire with them to keep the lecture system alive and well. Lectures are easier on everyone than debates. Professors can pretend to teach by lecturing just as students as students can pretend to learn by attending lectures, with no one the wiser, including the participants. Moreover, if lectures afford some students an opportunity to sit back and let the professor run the show, they offer some professors an irresistible forum for showing off. In a classroom where everyone contributes, students are less able to hide and professors less tempted to engage in intellectual exhibitionism.如果说讲课如此不通情理,为什么还一直允许继续下 去呢?当然是因为教学管理者喜欢了。他们可以把更多的学生塞进演讲厅,而无法把这么学 生塞进讨论班。对许多管理者而方,这基本上就是他们所关心的了。但是,事实上,老师、 甚至学生和管理者联合起来使得这制度继续存在,且运行得很好。对任何人来说,讲课都 比辩论容易。教授可以通过讲课假装在教,就像学生可以通过听课假装在学,这一点没有人 意识到,包括参与者。此外,如果听课给某些学生袖手旁观、而让老师唱主角的机会,这也 给些教授提供了炫耀其才学的不可抗拒的舞台。如果课堂上人人参与,学生就无法躲藏, 教授也不会被吸引去进行学识上的自我表现。Smaller classes in which students are required to involve themselves in discussion put an end to students passivity. Students become actively involved when forced to question their own ideas as well as their instructors. Their listening skills improve dramatically in the excitement of intellectual give-and-take with their instructors and fellow students. Such interchanges help professors do their job better because they allow them to discover who knows what - before final exams, not after. When exams are given in this type of course, they can require analysis and synthesis from the students, not empty memorization. Classes like this require energy, imagination, and commitment from professors, all of which can be exhausting. But they compel students to share responsibility for their own intellectual growth.如果班级较小又要求学生参加讨论,这就 会消除学生的被动性。学生被迫对他们的和老师的思想表示怀疑时,他们就变得主动参与了。 他们听的技巧在与老师和同学的学术交流所带来的刺激中大大得到提高。这种交替互动能帮 助教师做得更好,因为他们会发现谁知道什么在期末考试前,而不是之后。这种形式的 课程考试要求学生分析和综合,而不是空洞的记忆。这样的课需要教授们的活力、想象和 投入,所有这些都会令人精疲力竭的。但是,这也使得学生为他们自己的学术成长分担责任。Lectures will never entirely disappear from the university scene both because they seem to be economically necessary and because they spring from a long tradition in a setting that values tradition for its own sake. But the lectures too frequently come at the wrong end of the students educational careers - during the first two years, when they most need close, even individual, instruction. If lecture classes were restricted to juniors and seniors, who are less in need of scholarly nurturing and more able to prepare work on their own, they would be far less destructive of students interests and enthusiasms than the present system. After all, students must learn to listen before they can listen to learn.讲课这方式不会完全从大学消失。是因为讲课似乎从 经济角度考虑是必需的,二是讲课起源于悠久的传统,而且人们又把传统本身看得很重。但 是,讲课通常出现在学生接受教育生涯的错误的那一端-在大学的第一和第二年,那时他 们是需要密切的,甚至是针对个体需要的指导。如果讲课这形式局限于三四年级的学生, 则对学生的兴趣和热情的破坏力会比目前的制度小得多,因为三四年级的学生不太需要学科 上的指导与帮助,而且更有能力自己制定学习计划毕竟,学生在能够从听讲课中学到知识之 前必须先要学会去听。2. Home and Trave! 家与旅行For many people, moving is one kind of thing and travel is something very different. Travel means going away from home and staying away from home; it is an antidote to the humdrum activities of everyday life, a prelude to a holiday one is entitled to enjoy after months of dullness. Moving means breaking up a home, sadly or joyfully breaking with the past; a happy venture or a hardship, something to be endured with good or ill grace.对许多人来说，搬家和旅行是截然不 同的两回事。旅行意味着离开家外出一段时日。它是摆脱日常单调生活的一种手段,是经过 数月乏味的生活之后个人应该开始享有的度假生活。而对于搬家,有人喜爱有人厌恶,因 为它意味着破坏一个家园,或悲伤或兴高采烈地摆脱过去而踏上也许幸福也许艰难的历险征 途。For me, moving and staying at home, traveling and arriving, are all of a piece. The world is full of homes in which I have lived for a day, a month, a year, or, much longer. How much I care about a home is not measured by the mean more to me than many months in a room a fireplace, a room in which my life has been paced less excitingly.对我来说,搬家和待在家里,旅行至达某 处是样的。世界各处都有我的家,可能我住过一天,个月,一年或更长的时间。我在 个家居住的时间长短并不是衡量我是否喜欢它的标准。在个有跳跃火苗的房间里仅住题 名带给我的意义也行远远大于在个没有壁炉的房间里生活数月,因为在这样的房间里我的 生活节奏会缺少些刺激。From the time I can first remember, I knew that we had not always lived where we were living then - in Hammonton, New Jersey, where we had moved so that Mother could work on her doctoral thesis. I knew that I had spent my first summer at a resort called Lavallette, a place I did not visit again unit I was seventeen, there to have the only authentic attack of homesickness I have ever had, brought on by the sound of the pounding surf. I knew also that we had lived on St. Marks square, Philadelphia, because the next winter we lived near St. Marks Square and still knew people who lived there.从我记事时起,我就知道,我们全家并不是一直住在当时居住的地方 一新泽西州的哈蒙顿。我们搬到那里是为了让母亲能撰写博士论文。我知道我的第一个夏 天是在个叫lavallette的避暑胜地度过的。到了 17岁时我才故地重游,而且海浪拍岸的声 音让我惟次真切地感受到想家的滋味。我还知道,我们曾经在费城的圣马可广场居住过, 因为第二年冬天我们住在圣马可广场附近的时候,还认识住在那里的人们。Every winter we went to live in or near Philadelphia so that Father would not have to travel too stay in the city on the nights that he lectures at the University, From the time I was seven years old, we went somewhere for the summer, too. So we moved four times a year, because for the fall and spring we returned to the house in Hammonton.每年冬天我们都会去费城或附近居住,这 样父亲到大学讲学就不必走很远的路,也不必在城里过夜。从我岁起,每年夏天我们也会 去其他地方居住。这样,我们一年要搬4次家,因为秋天和春天我们会搬回到哈蒙顿的家。All the other houses were strange - houses that had to be made our own as quickly as possible so that they no longer would be strange. This did not mean that they were frightening, but only that we had to learn about every nook and comer, for otherwise it was hard to play hide-and-go -seek. As soon as we arrived, I ran ahead to find a room for myself as far away as possible from everyone else, preferably at the top of the house where I would always be warned by footsteps that someone was coming. After that until we were settled in, I was busy exploring, making my own the new domain. Later, when I was about fourteen, I was in charge of unpacking, getting beds made, food in the icebox, and the lamps filled and lit before nightfall.除 了 哈蒙顿的 家外,其他的家教很陌生。我们要尽快把它们变成像自己的家一样,这样就不会再有陌生感 了。这并不是说这些房子有多可怕,而是我们要了解房子的每个角落以便我们孩子玩捉迷藏。 每到处,我都会先跑进去为自己挑一间尽可能远离大家的房间,如果能在顶层就最好了。 这样，如果有人来，脚步声就能提前告诉我。之后,我就会一直忙于四处考察,以建立自己 的新领地，直到我们大家都安顿下来。等我14岁后,我已开始负责打开行李，铺床，把食 物放进冰箱,并在夜色降临前加油点灯。The next step was to explore the neighborhood. I had to find out what other children lived nearby and whether there were woods, wild flowers, tangles, or jungles - any hidden spot that could be turned into a miniature primeval forest where life could e quickly shaped to an imaginary world,接下来就是考察周边的情况了。我得了解附近住着什么样的小孩,周围有没有小树 林呀,野花从呀,蔓草或从林之类的任何隐蔽的地方,而且这种地方可以变成个小型的原 始森林,能让人迅速融入一个幻化的世界。In Hammonton we had five whole acres, a good part of which was second-growth bush, studded with blueberries, which the little Italian children who were our neighbors picked and sold back to us. In Lansdowne and Swarthmore there were bits of woodlot. But in Philadelphia there was nothing, only stone walls of different heights on which to walk. Nothing, except for the winter when we lived at the edge of the park near the zoo.在哈蒙顿,我们拥有整整5英亩土地,其中 很大一部分是再生灌木丛,里面点缀着蓝莓邻居的意大利孩子会采摘蓝莓的果实再卖给我 们。在lansdowne和swartthmore我们有些植林地。但在费城却什么也没有,只有高高矮矮 的石头墙,上面可以走路,其它什么都没有了。不过冬天当我们住在动物园附近公园边上的 时候是要除外的。However far away we moved and however often, we always came home again to Hammonton and the familiar and loved things that were too fragile to take with us - although Mother was very permissive about allowing us to carry along all the objects each of us wanted. In Hammonton there was the same blueberry thicket in which to wander along old paths and make new ones, the same surrey, which we hired from the livery stable, and the same door which was never opened - a second door on the front porch which was used only on one occasion, on the night the neighbors pounded on it to tell us that our chimney had caught fire.不管我们搬得多 远,也不管多频繁,我们总是会回到哈蒙顿的家,回到那些我们熟悉并喜爱但.是因为易碎而 无法带走的东西身边,虽然母亲每次都宽容地让我们自己想带的东西带着。在汉蒙顿的家, 一切都不曾改变:相同的蓝莓灌木丛,我们仍可以在原来的小路上漫步或另辟新径;马车还 是那辆,是从马房雇来的;前廊的第二扇门也没有变,是扇从未开启过的门。这扇门只 用过一次:就是有天晚上,邻居用砸门告诉我们烟囱着火了。There was the great tree from which a hornets, nest blew down in a storm. I had been dancing in the wind when it blew down and, still dancing, plunged my hands into it. I can still remember the wind but not the stings with which I was said to have been covered. There were the tall evergreen arborvitae that divided the lawn into little squares, where Grandma played games with us until one day she put here hand to her heart and then she did not play running games anymore, And outside the mock-orange hedge we once found faeces, and Mother said, in a tone of disgust close to horror, that they were human faeces,附近有棵大树,树上的黄蜂窝在次暴雨中被吹 落了下来。当时我正在风中跳舞,当蜂窝掉上来时,我仍然在跳着,不还把手伸进了蜂窝里。 现在我仍然记得那场大风。但是据说我被蛰得满身是包,这点我却记不得了。附近还有高大 常青的罗汉柏，它们把草坪分割成一块块的。祖母曾和我们在那里玩游戏，直到有一天她 发现自己心脏有问题后，就再也不和我们玩追赶的游戏了。还有一次我们在桑橙篱笆墙外看 到了一些粪便,母亲带着近乎恐惧的厌恶口吻说那是人的粪便。There was the well with a pump that we used to prime with hot water, until one day my five-year-old brother and a desperado friend a year younger threw everything detachable down the well, and then it was never used again. There was an old dinghy in which we grew flowers until the boys tore it up. And once, when the bam had been reshingled the old shingles had been piled in the bam for the winter, the two little boys threw all of them out. Grandma said it just showed how two children, each one quite good by himself, could get into mischief. You never could tell, when you put two children together, what the outcome would be. This enlarged my picture of what boys were like.我们有口井带碰个用热水可以启动的抽水泵。但是有一天我5岁的弟弟 和他个4岁的淘气的朋友把抽水泵能卸的部分都卸下来扔到了井里,这口井从此再也没有 被用过。我们还有一块旧的用来种花的小触板,但也被这两个男孩给搞烂了。还有一次,我 家马厩的屋顶翻新,旧的盖板被堆在马厩里准备留到冬天以备不时之需,但是这两个男孩却 把它们全扔了出去。祖母说这恰恰表明了一点:两个孩子,独处是都是好孩子,呆在起就 会调皮捣蛋。两个孩子呆在起会有什么后果谁都无法预料。这更增进了我对男孩的了解。It was contrapuntal to an engraving in a homemade copper frame that stood the mantelpiece. This showed a pair of children, a little girl diligently sewing a fine seam and a boy, beautiful and remote, simply sitting and looking out at the world. Long years later, the same picture provided the central image in a bitter little verse of feminine protest that I wrote when Edward Sapir told me I would do better to stay at home and have children than to go off to the South Seas to study adolescent girls:Measure your thread and cut itTo suit your little seam,Stitch the garment tightly, tightly, And leave no room for dream.Head down, be not caught lookingWhere the restless wild geese fly,这和壁炉架上一幅镶在自制的铜框架中的版画所表现 的情景恰好相反。画中有两个孩子:小女孩在认真地缝东西,而那漂亮却显孤高的男孩只是 坐在那里似乎在看着外面的世界。多年后,同样的画面也体现在我写的一首略带苦涩的小诗 里。当时爱德华.萨丕尔告诉我:与其去南太平洋研究十多岁的少女还不如待在家里相夫教 子。于是我写了这首诗以表达我作为女性的抗议（略）：There were treasures on Mothers dressing table, too - a Wedgwood pin dish, a little porcelain Mary and her lamb, the pale green, flowered top a rose bowl that had broken, and Mothers silver-backed comb and brush and mirror. All these things held meaning for me. Each was - and still is capable of evoking a rush of memories.母亲的梳妆台上摆放着一些珍藏的 物品个韦奇伍德的放别针的小碟,个小小的玛丽和她的小绵羊的瓷器制品,一个里 面镶花但已破碎的浅绿色的玫瑰碗,以及母亲那把镀银的梳子,刷子和镜子。所有这些对我 都深有含义,每件东西曾经并且仍然能够勾起我串串回忆.Take altogether, the things that mattered a great deal to me when I was a child are very few when I compare them to the overloaded tables and overcrowded shelves through
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