CET6

Lesson 9
Education: One of the Key Words of Our Time

Education is one of the key words of our time. A man without an education, many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. Convinced of the importance of education, modern states “invest” in institutions of learning to get back “interest” in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, punctuated by text-books—those purchasable wells of wisdom—what would civilization be like without its benefits?

So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and defendants, marriages and births—but our spiritual outlook would be different. We would lay less stress on “facts and figures” and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow-citizens. If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of “college” imaginable. Among the people whom we like to call savages all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all; it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life.

It is the ideal condition of the “equal start” which only our most progressive forms of modern education try to regain. In primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. There are no “illiterates”—if the term can be applied to peoples without a script — while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in I642, in France in 1806, and in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of “civilized” nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the “happy few” during the past centuries.

Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. All are entitled to an equal start. There is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. There, a child grows up under the ever-present attention of his parents; therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no “juvenile delinquency.” No necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, and no father is confronted with his inability to “buy” an education for his child.

名人名言

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

—Thomas Carlyle

Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing.

—William Styrom

There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse hath its own beauty.

—Emerson

教育：当代的关键词之一

“教育”是我们时代的关键词之一。我们许多人都相信，没有受过教育的人是境况不佳的不幸牺牲品，他们被剥夺了(deprived)20世纪最了不起的机会之一。现代国家由于确信教育的重要性，才向教育机构“投资”，以期以获得一大群有知识的（enlightened）男女青年的形式收回“利息”，这些青年是潜在的领导人。教育的教学周期经过了仔细的安排，其周期的标志是教科书，后者是可以买得到的智慧源泉。受不到教育的裨益，文明会成为什么样子呢?

可以肯定的是：医生和牧师，律师和被告（defendant），新婚夫妇和产儿还会有的——不过人们的精神面貌就会不同了。我们会较少强调“资料和数字”，而较多强调良好的记忆力、应用心理学以及人们和自己的伙伴相处的能力。如果我们的教育制度效法没有书籍的古代教育，我们的学院将具有可以想象得出的最民主的形式了。在我们喜欢称为野人（savage）的人们中间，传统留下的一切知识为全民共享，这种知识要授予部落的每一个成员，所以在这方面，给每个人配备的生活的本领是相等的。

只有现代教育最进步的形式才去努力恢复的就是这种“平等起点”的理想状态。在原始文化中，寻求和接受传统教育的义务对全民都有约束力。那里没有“文盲”(如果这个词语可以用于没有文字的人群的话)，而我们的义务教育在德国成为法律是在1642年，在法国是在1806年，在英国是在1876年，但是在许多“文明”的国家里，义务（compulsory）教育仍然不存在。这表明经过了多么漫长的时间之后，我们才认识（deemed）到有必要确保使我们所有的儿童都能分享过去若干世纪中“少数幸运儿”所积累起来的知识。

荒凉地区的教育不是一个钱财（monetary）问题。所有的人都有平等起点的权利。在那里没有仓促不安的现象，而这种现象在我们的社会中常常妨碍（hamper）正在增长着的个性的全面发展。在那里孩子无时无刻不在父母的关怀下成长，因此，丛林和荒原里没有“少年（juvenile）犯罪(delinquency)”。人们没有必要离开家园去谋生，所以，不会产生孩子无人照管的现象，父亲决不会面临无力为子女教育“出钱”的问题。

名人名言

历史是不可胜数的传记的精髓。

——托马斯·卡莱尔

绘画或一般意义上的艺术，就其本身而言，尽管富于技巧，从事起来困难重重，且结果独特，只不过是一种高贵而富于表现力的语言，作为思想表达的工具极具价值，但自身毫无价值。

——威廉·斯蒂伦

没有任何东西会丑恶到了这样一种地步，以至于强烈的光也无法赋予其美丽。光为我们的感觉提供的刺激，以及它如同时间和空间一样所具有的一种博大使得万事万物都能变得多姿多彩、令人愉悦，甚至于尸体都具有它独到的美丽。

——爱默生

（责任编辑：中大编辑）

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