写作工具箱(新东方—孙远)1

写作工具箱（新东方—孙远）

下面的材料旨在丰富学生在是非问题写作方面的思想和语言，考生在复习时可以先分类阅读这些篇章，然后尝试写相关方面的作文题。

对于文章中用黑体字的部分，特别建议你熟读，背诵，因为它们在语言和观点上都值得吸收。学习语言的人应该明白，表达能力和思想深度都靠日积月累，潜移默化。从某种意义上说，提高英语写作能力无捷径可走，你必须大段背诵英语文章才能逐渐形成语感和用英语进行表达的能力。这一关，没有任何人能代替你过。

因此，建议你下点苦功夫，把背单词的精神拿出来背诵文章。何况，我并不是要求你背了之后永远牢记在心：你可以这个星期背，下个星期忘。这没有关系，相信你的大脑具有神奇的能力。背了工具箱里的文章后，你会惊讶的发现：I can think in English now.

经常有学生告诉我：不知道背诵什么好。现在我可以告诉各位：背诵下面的文章错不了，至少对GRE 的写作来说有立竿见影的效果！可别再找借口了哦！

Section one: Education

1.Proverbs

1.A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success.

2. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one‘s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one‘s time.

3. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

4. The classroom--not the trench--is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.

5. Education‘s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

6. It is the purpose of education to help us become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny.

7. You see, real ongoing, lifelong education doesn‘t answer questions; it provokes them.

8. People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

9. the most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.

10. The essence of our efforts to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each as equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.

11. A great teacher never strives to explain his vision-he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

12. If you can read and don‘, you are an illiterate by choice.

2. Damaging Research

A study by National Parent-Teacher Organization revealed that in the average American school, eighteen negatives are identified for every positive that is pointed out. The Wisconsin study revealed that when children enter the first grade, 80 percent of them feel pretty good themselves, but by the time they get to the sixth grade, only 10 percent of them have good self-images.

3. Education and Citizenship

An important aspect of education in the United States is the relationship between education and citizenship. Throughout its history this nation has emphasized public education as a means of transmitting democratic values, creating equality of opportunity, and preparing new generations of citizens to function in society. In addition, the schools have been expected to help shape society itself. During the 1950s, for example, efforts to combat racial segregation focused on the schools. Later, when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite, American schools and colleges came under intense pressure and

were offered many incentives to improve their science and mathematics programs so that the nations would not fall behind the Soviet Union in scientific and technological capabilities.

Education is often viewed as a tool for solving social problems, especially social inequality. The schools, t is thought, can transform young people from vastly different backgrounds into competent, upwardly mobile adults. Yet these goals seem almost impossible to attain. In recent years, in fact, public education has been at the center of numerous controversies arising from the gap between the ideal and the reality. Part of the problem is that different groups in society have different have different expectations. Some feel that children should be taught basic job-related skills; still others believe education should not only prepare children to compete in society but also help them maintain their cultural identity (and, in the case of Hispanic children, their language). On the other hand, policymakers concerned with education emphasize the need to increase the level of student achievement and to improve parents in their children‘s education.

Some reformers and critics have called attention to the need to link formal schooling with programs designed to address social problems. Sociologist Charles Moscos, for example, is a leader in the movement to expand programs like the Peace Corps, Vista, and Outward Bound into a system of voluntary national service. National service, as Moscos defines it, would entail ―the full-time undertaking of public duties by young people whether as citizen soldiers or civilian servers-who are paid subsistence wages‖ and serve for at least one year. In return for this period of service, the volunteers would receive assistance in paying for college or other educational expenses.

Advocates of national service and school-to-work programs believe that education does not have to be confined to formal schooling. In devising strategies to provide opportunities for young people to serve their society, they emphasize the educational value of citizenship experiences gained outside the classroom. At this writing there is little indication that national service will become a new educational institution in the United States, although the concept is steadily gaining support among educators and social critics.

4. The Teacher‘s Role

Given the undeniable importance of classroom experience, sociologists have done a considerable amount of research on what goes on in the classroom. Often they start from the premise that, along with the influence of peers, students‘ experiences in the classroom are of central importance to their later development. One study examined the impact of a single first-grade teacher on her students‘subsequent adult status. The surprising results of this study have important implications. It is evident that good teachers can make a big difference in children‘s lives, a fact that gives increased urgency to the need to improve the quality of primary-school teaching. The reforms carried out by educational leaders like James Comer suggest that when good teaching is combined with high levels of parental involvement the results can be even more dramatic.

Because the role of the teacher is to change the learner in some way, the teacher-student relationship is an important part of education. Sociologists have pointed out that this relationship is asymmetrical or unbalanced, with the teacher being in a position of authority and the student having little choice but to passively absorb the information provided by the teacher. In other words, in conventional classrooms there is little opportunity for the students to become actively involved in the learning process. On the other hand, students often develop strategies for undercutting the teacher‘s authority: mentally withdrawing, interrupting, and the like. Hence, much current research assumes that students and teachers influence each other instead of assuming that the influence is always in a single direction.

5. Education Philosophy

For the past fifty years our schools have operated on the theories of John Dewey (1859-1953), an American educator and writer. Dewey believed hat the school‘s job was to enhance the natural development of the growing child, rather than to pour information, for which the child had no context, into him or her. In the Dewey system, the child becomes the active agent in his own education, rather than a passive receptacle for facts.

Consequently, American schools are very enthusiastic about teaching ―life skills‖–logical thinking,

analysis, creative problem--solving. The actual content of the lessons is secondary to the process, which is supposed to train the child to be able to handle whatever life may present, including all the unknowns of the future. Students and teachers both regard pure memorization as an uncreative and somewhat vulgar.

In addition to ―life skills‖, schools are assigned to solve the ever growing stoke of social problems. Racism, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, reckless driving, and suicide are just a few of the modern problems that have appeared on the school curriculum.

This all contributes to a high degree of social awareness in American youngsters.

6. Student Life

To the students, the most notable difference between elementary school and the higher levels is that in junior high they start ―changing classes‖. This means that rather than spending the day in one classroom, they switch classrooms to meet their different teachers. This gives them three or four minutes between classes in the hallways, where a great deal of the important social action of high school traditionally takes place. Students have lockers in these hallways, around which thy congregate.

Society in general does not take the business of studying very seriously. Schoolchildren have a great deal of free time, which they are encouraged to fill with extracurricular activities—sports, clubs, cheerleading, scouts—supposed to inculcate such qualities as leadership, sportsmanship, ability to organize, etc. those who don‘t become engaged in such activities or have after\school jobs have plenty of opportunity to ―hang out‖, listen to teenager music, and watch television.

Compared to other nations, American students do not have much homework. Studies also show that American parents have lower expectations for their children‘s success in school than other nationalities do. (Historically, there has not been much correlation between American school success and success in later life.) ―He‘s just not a scholar‖, the American parents might say, content that their son is on the swim team and doesn‘t take drugs. (Some of the young do choose to study hard, for reason of their own, such as determining that the road to riches lies through Harvard Business School.)

What American schools do effectively teach is the competitive method. In innumerable ways children are pitted against each other—whether in classroom discussion, spelling bees, reading groups, or tests. Every classroom is expected to produce a scattering of A‘s and F‘s (teachers often grade A=excellent; B=good; C=average; D=poor; and F=failed). A teacher who gives all A‘s looks too soft—so students are aware that they are competing for the limited number of top marks.

Foreign students sometimes don‘t understand that copying from other people‘s papers or from books is considered wrong and taken seriously. Here, it is important to show that you have done your own work and are displaying your own knowledge. It is more important than helping your friends to pass, whom we think do not deserve to pass unless they can provide their own answers. Group effort goes against the competitive grain, and American students do not study together as many Asians do. Many Asians in this country consider their group study habits a large contributor to their school success.

7. Adult Education

After complaining about many aspects of American life, a 40-year-old woman from Hong Kong concluded, ―But where else could someone my age go back to school and get a degree in social work? Here you can change your whole life, start a new business, do what you really want to do.‖

So at least to this person, school requirements weren‘t inhibiting. And to millions of others, adult education is the path to a new career, or if not to a new career, to a new outlook. Schools generally encourage the older person who wants to start anew, and besides regular classes, schedule evening classes in special programs. Today there are so many people of retirement age in college that it is no longer remarkable.

8. Moral Relativism in American

Improving American education requires not doing new things but doing (and remembering) some good old things. At the time of our nation‘s founding, Thomas Jefferson listed the requirements for a sound education in

the Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia. In this landmark statement on American education, Jefferson wrote of the importance of education and writing, and of reading history, and geography. But he also emphasized the need ―to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens.‖ Jefferson believed education should aim at the improvement of both one‘s ―morals‖ and ―faculties‖. That has been the dominant view of the aims of American education for over two centuries. But a number of changes, most of them unsound, have diverted schools from these great pursuits. And the story of the loss of the school‘s original moral mission explains a great deal.

Starting in the early seventies, ―values clarification‖programs started turning up in schools all over America. According to this philosophy, the schools were not to take part in their time-honored task of transmitting sound moral values; rather, they were to allow the child to ―clarify‖ his own values (which adults, including parents, had no ―rights‖to criticize). The ―values clarification‖movement didn‘t clarify values; it clarified wants and desires. This form of moral relativism said, in effect, that no set of values was right or wrong; everybody had an equal right to his own values; and all values were subjective, relative, and personal. This destructive view took hold with a vengeance.

In 1985 The York Times published an article quoting New York area educators, in slavish devotion to this new view, proclaiming, ―They deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong.‖The article told of one counseling session involving fifteen high school juniors and seniors. In the course of that session a student concluded that a fellow student had been foolish to return one thousand dollars she found in a purse at school. According to the article, when the youngsters asked the counselor‘s opinion, ―He told them he believed the girl had done the right thing, but that, of course, he would not try to force his values on them. ?If I come from the position of what is wrong,‘ he explained, ?then I‘m not their counselor.‘‖

Once upon a time, a counselor offered counselor, and he knew that an adult does not form character in the young by taking a stance of neutrality toward questions of right and wrong or by merely offering ―choices‖ or ―options‖.

In response to the belief that adults and educators should teach children sound morals, one can expect from some quarters indignant objections (I‘ve heard one version of it expressed countless times over the years): ―Who are you to say what‘s important?‖ or ―Whose standards and judgments do we use?‖

The correct response, it seems to me, is, is we ready to do away with standards and judgments? Is anyone going to argue seriously that a life of cheating and swindling is as worthy as a life of honest, hard work? Is anyone (with the exception of some literature professors at our elite universities) going to argue seriously the intellectual corollary, that a Marvel comic book is as good as Macbeth? Unless we are willing to embrace some pretty silly position, we‘ve got to admit the need for moral and intellectual standards. The problem is that some people tend to regard anyone who would pronounce a definitive judgment as an unsophisticated Philistine or a closed-minded ―elitist‖ trying to impose his view on everybody else.

The truth of the real world is that without standards and judgments, there can be no progress. Unless we are prepared to say irrational things—that nothing can be proven more valuable than anything else or that everything is equally worthless—we must ask the normative question. It may come, as a surprise to those who fell that to be ―progressive‖is to be value-neutral. But as Matthew Amold said, ―the world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things‖ and if the world can‘t decide what the best things are, at least to some degree, then it follows that progress, and character, is in trouble. We shouldn‘t be reluctant to declare that some things, some lives, books, ideas, and values are better than others. It is the responsibility of the schools to teach these better things.

At one time, we weren‘t so reluctant to teach them. In the mid-nineteenth century, a diverse, widespread group of crusaders began to work for the public support of what was then called the ―common school‖, the forerunner of the public school. They were to be charged with the mission of school felt that the nation could fulfill its destiny only if every new generation was taught these values together in a common institution.

The leaders of the common school movement were mainly citizens who were prominent in their communities—businessmen, ministers, local civic and government officials. These people saw the schools as upholders of standards of individual morality and small incubators of civic and personal virtue; the founders of the public schools had faith that public education could teach good moral and civic character from a common ground of American values.

But in the past quarter century or so, some of the so-called experts became experts of value neutrality, and moral education was increasingly left in their hands. The commonsense view of parents and the public，that schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values of home, family, and country, was increasingly rejected.

There are those today still that claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we consist of too many competing convictions and interests to instill common values. They are wrong. Of course we are a diverse people. We have always been a diverse people. And as Madison wrote in FederalistNo.10, the competing, balancing interests of a diverse people can help ensure the survival of liberty. But there are values that all American citizens share and that we should want all American students to know and to make their own: honesty, fairness, self-discipline, fidelity to task, friends, and family, personal responsibility, love of country, and belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and the freedom to practice one‘s faith. The explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of the common schools, and it is a legacy to which we must return.

9. Schools Should Teach Values

People often said, ―Yes, we should teach these values, but how do we teach them?‖ this question deserves a candid response, one that isn‘t given often enough. It is by exposing our children to good character and inviting its imitation that we will transmit to them a moral foundation. This happens when teachers and principals, by their words and actions, embody sound convictions. As Oxford‘s Mary Warnock has written, ―You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself; and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong.‖ The theologian Martin Buber wrote that the educator is distinguished from all other influences ―by his will to take part in the stamping of character and by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of the growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of what is ?right‘, of what should be.‖ It is in this will, Buber says, in this clear standing for something, that the ―vocation as an educator finds its fundamental expression.‖

There is no escaping the fact that young people need as example principals and teachers who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and who themselves exemplify high moral purpose. As Education Secretary, I visited a class at Waterbury Elementary School in Waterbury, Vermont, and asked the students, ―Is this a good school?‖They answered, ―Yes, this is a good school.‖I asked them, ―Why?‖Among other things, one eight-year-old said, ―The principal Mr. Riegel, makes good rules and everybody obeys them.‖ So I said, ―Give me an example.‖ And another answered, ―You can‘t climb on the pipes in the bathroom. We don‘t climb on the pipes and the principal doesn‘t either.‖

This example is probably too simple to please a lot of people who want to make the topic of moral education difficult, but there is something profound in the answer of those children, something education should pay more attention to. You can‘t expect children to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults taking those rules seriously in their day-to-day affairs. Certain must be said, certain limits lay down, and certain examples set. There is no other way.

We should also do a better job at curriculum selection. The research shows that most ―values education‖exercises and separate courses in ―moral reasoning‖ tend not to affect children‘s behavior; if anything, they may leave children morally adrift. Where to turn? I believe our literature and our history are a rich quarry of moral literacy. We should mine that quarry. Children should have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we believe to be right and wrong, good and bad—examples illustrating what are morally right and wrong can indeed be known and that there is a difference.

What kind of stories, historical events, and famous lives am I talking about? If we want our children to know

about honesty, we should teach them about Abe Lincoln walking three miles to return six cents and conversely, about Aesop‘s shepherd boy who cried wolf if we want them to know about courage, we should teach them about Joan of Arc, Horatius at the bridge, and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. If we want them to know about persistence in the face of adversity, they should know about the voyages of Columbus and the character of Washington during the Civil War. And our youngest should be told about the Little Engine That Could. If we want them to know about respect for the law, they should understand why Socrates told Crito: ―No, I must submit to the decree of Athens.‖ If we want our children to respect the rights of others, they should read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.‘―Letter from Birmingham jail.‖From the Bible they should know about Ruth‘s loyalty to Naomi, Joseph‘s forgiveness of his brothers, Jonathan‘s friendship with David, the Good Samaritan‘s kindness toward a stranger, and David‘s cleverness and courage in facing Goliath.

These are only a few of the hundreds of examples we can call on. And we need not get into issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some people, but the fact is that the formation of character in young people is educationally a task different from, and prior to, the discussion of the great, difficult controversies of the day. First things come first. We should teach values the same way we teach other things: one step at a time. We should not use the fact that there are many difficult and controversial moral questions as an argument against basic instruction in the subject.

After all, we do not argue against teaching physics because laser physics is difficult, against teaching American history because there are heated disputes about the Founders‘ intent. Every field has its complexities and its controversies. And every field has its basics, its fundamentals. So they are too with forming character and achieving moral literacy. As any parent knows, teaching character is a difficult task. But it is a crucial task, because we want our children to be healthy, happy, and successful but decent, strong, and good. None of this happens automatically; there is no genetic transmission of virtue. It takes the conscious, committed efforts of adults. It takes careful attention.

10. College Pressures

Mainly I try to remind that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don not want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now –that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, Social Security and, presumably, a prepaid grave.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na?ve. One of the national gods venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains: only victims. ―In the late 1960s.‖ one dean told me. ―The typical question that I got from students was ?Why is there so much suffering in the world‘ or ?how I can make a contribution?‘ Today it‘s ?Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?‘‖ many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: ―They are trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.‖

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for

Borderline, even though, in Yale‘s official system of grading, A means ―excellent‖ and B means ―very good.‖Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

It‘s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it‘s nice to think that admission officers are ready reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with As that they regard a B as positively shameful.

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the ―gentleman‘s C.‖when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses-music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I do not know if they are getting As or Cs, and I do not care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They cannot.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now come to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what college receives in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now, the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs—higher every year—of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in American the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used ―he,‖incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society has not yet caught up with this fact.

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know tem in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

―Do you want to medical school?‖ I asked them.

―I guess so,‖ they say, without conviction, or ―Not really.‖

―Then why are you going?‖

―Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They are paying all this money and …‖

Poor students, poor parents, they are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean will; they are trying to steer their sons and draughts toward a secure future. But the sons and daughter want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no ―practical‖value. Where‘s the payoff on the humanities? It‘s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do indeed pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an

ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or, as I sometimes heard it put, ―pre-rich.‖

But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obliged to fulfill their parents‘ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one—she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-round person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a ―dumb‖ thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the ―dumb‖courses her father wants her to take—at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students—no small achievement in it—and she deserves to follow her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.

―I had a freshman student I‘ll call Linda,‖ one dean told me, ―who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I could not tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.‖

The story is almost funny—except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the pressure put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: ―Will I get everything done?‖

Probably they won‘t. They will get blocked. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out.

Part of the problem is that they are expected to do. A professor will assign five page papers. Several students will start writing ten page papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.

―Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,‖ one dean points out, ―It‘s bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic work, psychologically.‖

Why cannot the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can, and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor‘s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along from home. That‘s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their figure nails onto a shrinking profession.

If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments—as departmental chairmen or members of committees—that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students‘ own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents‘ dreams and their classmates‘ fears. They must be jolted into

believing into themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

―Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,‖ says Carlos Hortas. ―College should be open-ended: at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along. It‘s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist-that they‘ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best paying slot.‖

―They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to life of colorless mediocrity. They‘ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing.‖

I have painted too drab a portrait of today‘s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story; if they were so dreary I wouldn‘t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extracurricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ?60s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale‘s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions—as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians—with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also cannot afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper—who‘s past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.—much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that ―newsies‖ routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today‘s students will one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I‘ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it‘s because that‘s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It‘s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that there is no one ―right‖ way to get ahead—that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell neither them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway products, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians—a mixed bag of achievers.

I asked them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

11. To Err Is Wrong

In the summer of 1979, Boston Red Sox first baseman Carl Yastrzemski became the fifteenth player in baseball

history to reach the three thousand hit plateaus. This event drew a lot of media attention, and for about a week prior to the attainment of this goal, hundreds of reports covered Yaz‘s every more. Finally, one reporter asked, ―Hey Yaz, aren‘t you afraid all of this attention will go to your head?‖ Yastrzemski replied, ―I look at this way: in my career I‘ve been up to bat over ten thousand times. That means I‘ve been unsuccessful at the plate over seven thousand times. That fact alone keeps me from getting a swollen head.‖

Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both products of the same process. As Yaz suggest, an activity that produces a hit may also produce a miss. It is the same with creative thinking; the same energy that generates good creative ideas also produces errors.

Many people, however, are not comfortable with errors. Our educational system, based on ―the right answer‖belief, cultivates our thinking in another, more conservative way. From an early age, we are taught that right answers are good and incorrect answers are bad. This value is deeply embedded in the incentive system used in most schools:

Right over 90% of the time = ―A‖

Right over 80% of the time = ―B~‖

Right over 70% of the time = ―C~‖ Right over 60% of the time = ―D~‖ Less than 60% correct, you fail.

From this we learn to be right as often as possible and to keep our mistakes to a minimum. We learn, in other words, that ―to err is wrong.

Playing It Safe

With this kind of attitude, you aren‘t going to be taking too many chances. If you learn that failing even a litter penalizes you (e.g., being wrong only 15% of the time garners you only a ―B‖ performance), you learn not to make mistakes. And more important, you learn not to put yourself to situation where you might fall. This leads to conservative thought pattern designed to avoid the stigma our society puts on ―failure‖.

I have a friend who recently graduated from college with a Master‘s degree in Journalism. For the last six month, she has been trying to find a job, but to no avail. I talked with her about situation, and realized that her problem is that she doesn‘t know how to fail. She went through eighteen years of schooling to try any approaches where she might fail. She has been conditioned to believe that failure is bad in and of itself, rather than a potential stepping-stone to new ideas.

Look around. How many middle managers, housewives, administrators, teachers, and other people do you see who are to try anything new because of this failure? Most of us have learned not to make mistakes in public. As a result, we remove ourselves from many learning experience except for those occurring in the most private of circumstances.

Different Logic

From a practical point of view, ―to err is wrong‖makes sense. Our survival in the everyday world requires us to perform thousand of small tasks without failure. Think about it: you wouldn‘t last very long if you were to step out in front of traffic or stick your hand a pot of boiling water. In addition, engineers whose bridges collapse, stock brokers who lose money for their clients, and copywriters whose ad campaigns decrease sales won‘t keep their jobs very long.

Nevertheless, too great an adherence to the belief ―to err is wrong‖ can greatly undermine your attempts to generate new ideas. If you are more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you‘ll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you‘ll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend litter time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what-if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking. As Yaz would put it, ―if you want the hits, be prepared for the misses.‖ That‘s the way the game of life goes.

Errors as Stepping Stones

Whenever an error pops up, the usual response is ―Jeez, another screw up, what went wrong this time?‖ the creative thinker, on the other hand, will realize the potential value of errors, and perhaps say something like, ―Would you look at that! Where can it lead our thinking?‖ and then he or she will go on to use the error as a stepping stone to a new idea. As a matter of fact, the whole history of discovery is filed with people who used erroneous assumptions and failed ideas as stepping-stones to new ideas. Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to India. Johannes Kepler stumbled on to the idea of interplanetary gravity because of assumptions that were right for the wrong reasons. And, Thomas Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb.

The following story about the automotive genius Charles Kettering exemplifies the spirit of working through erroneous assumptions to good ideas. In 1912, when the automobile industry was just beginning to grow, Kettering was interested in improving gasoline engine efficiency. The problem he faced was ―knock,‖the phenomenon in which gasoline takes too long to burn in the cylinder-thereby reducing efficiency.

Kettering began searching for ways to eliminate the ―knock.‖ He thought to him, ―How can I get the gasoline to combust in the cylinder at an earlier time?‖the key concept here is ―early‖. Searching for analogous situations, he looked around for models of ―things that happen early.‖He thought of historical models, physical models, and biological models. Finally, he remembered a particular plant, the trailing arbutus, which ―happens early,‖ i.e., it blooms in the snow (―earlier‖ than other plants). One of this plant‘s chief characteristics is its‘ red leaves, which help the plant retain light at certain wavelengths. Kettering figured that it must be the red color, which made the trailing arbutus bloom earlier.

Now came the critical step in Kettering‘s chain of thought. He asked himself, ―How can I make the gasoline red?‖ perhaps I‘ll put red dye in the gasoline—maybe that‘ll make it combust earlier.‖ He looked around his workshop, and found that he didn‘t have any red dye. But he did happen to have some iodine—perhaps that would do. He added the iodine to the gasoline and, lo and behold, the engine didn‘t ―knock‖.

Several days later, Kettering wanted to make sure that it was the redness of the iodine which had an fact solved his problem. He got some red dye and added it to the gasoline. Nothing happened! Kettering then realized that it wasn‘t the ―redness‖ which had solved the ―knock‖ problem, but certain other properties of iodine. In this case, an error had proven to be a stepping-stone to a better idea. Had he known that ―redness‖ alone was not the solution, he may not have found his way to the additive in iodine.

Negative Feedback

Errors serve another useful purpose: they tell us when to change direction. When things are going smoothly, we generally don‘t think about them. To a great extent, this is because we function according to the printing of negative feedback. Often it is when things or people fail to do their job that they get over attention. For example, you are probably not thinking about your kneecaps right now; that‘s because everything is fine with them. The same goes for your elbows: they are also performing their function—no problem at all. But if you were to break a leg, you would immediately notice all of the things you could no longer do, but which you used to take for granted.

Negative feedback means that the current approach is not working, and it is up to you to figure out a new one. We learn by trial and error, not by trial and rightness. If we did things correctly every time, we would never have to change direction—we‘d just continue the current course and end up with more of the same.

For example, after the supertanker Amoco Cadiz broke up off the coast of Brittany in the spring of 1987, thereby polluting the coast with hundreds of thousands of tons of oil, the oil industry rethought many of its safety standards regarding petroleum transport. The same thing happened after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in 1979—many procedures and safety standards were changed.

Neil Gold Schmidt, former Secretary of Transportation, had this to say about the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART): it‘s gotten too fashionable around the country to beat up on BART and not give credit to the vision that put this system in place. We have learned from BART around the country. The lessons were put to use in

Washington, in Atlantic, in Buffalo, and other cities where we are building mass transit systems. One of the lessons is not to build a system like BART. We learn by our failures. A person‘s errors are the whacks that lead him to think something different.

Trying New Things

Your error rate in any activity is a function of your familiarity with that activity. If you are doing things that are routine and have a high likelihood of correctness, then you will probably make every few errors. But if you are doing things that have no precedence in your experience or are trying different approaches, then you will be making your share of mistakes. Innovators may not bat a thousand –far from it—but they do get new ideas.

The creative director of an advertising agency told me that he isn‘t happy unless he is failing at least half of the time. As he puts it, ―If you are going to be original, you are going to be wrong a lot.‖

One of my clients, the president of a fast-growing computer company, tells his people: ―W e‘re innovators. We‘re doing things nobody has ever done before. Therefore, we are going to be making mistakes. My advice to you: make your mistakes, but make them in a hurry.‖

Another client, a division manager of a high-technology company, asked his president of engineering what percentage of their new products should be successful in the marketplace. The answer he received was ―about 50%‖. The division manager replied, ―That‘s too high, 30% is a better target; otherwise we‘ll be too conservative in our planning.‖

Along similar lines, in the banking industry, it is said that if the credit manager never has to default on any of his loans, it‘s a sure sign he‘s not being aggressive enough in the marketplace.

Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, has similar words: ―The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.‖Thus, errors, at the very least, are a sign that we are diverging from the main road and trying different approaches.

Nature‘s Errors

Nature serves as a good example of how trial and error can be used to make changes. Every now and then genetic mutations occur—errors in gene reproduction. Most of the time, these mutations have a deleterious effect on the species, and they drop out of the gene pool. But occasionally, a mutation provides the species with something beneficial, and that change will be passed on to future generations.

The rich variety of all species is due to this trial and error process. If there had been any mutations from the first amoeba, where would we be now?

Summary

There are places where errors are inappropriate, but the germinal phase of the creative process isn‘t one of them. Errors are a sign that you are diverging from the well-traveled path. If you‘re not failing every now and then, it‘s a sign you‘re not being very innovative.

Tip #1:

If you make an error, use it as a stepping-stone to a new idea you might not have otherwise discovered. Tip #2:

Differentiate between errors of ―commission‖and those of ―omission.‖The latter can be more costly than the former. If you‘re not making many errors, you might ask yourself, ―How many opportunities am I missing by not being more aggressive?‖

Tip #3:

Strengthen your ―risk muscle.‖Everyone has one, but you have to exercise it or else it will atrophy. Make it a point to take at least one risk every twenty-four hours.

Tip #4:

Remember these two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn‘t work; and second, the failure gives you an opportunity to try a new approach.

12. The Practicality of the Liberal Arts Major

Current trends indicate that by the year 2000 the average person will change careers at least twice during a lifetime. How does the entering college student prepare for career mobility, which has never before been necessary? Our fathers decided what they wanted to do in life, which was very often what their fathers had done-went to college or apprenticed themselves, and pursued the same career until retirement. Our mothers assumed one of the nurturing roles in society, if they assumed a role outside of the home at all. Things have certainly changed. No longer is life so simple.

Adaptability and lifelong learning is now the cornerstone of success. What direction does a person take to prepare for a lifetime of change? The one-degree that provides training, which never becomes obsolete, is the liberal degree; it teaches you how to think. It also teaches you how to read, write and speak intelligently, get along with others, and conceptualize problems. For the first time in several decades, the liberal arts degree is coming to the forefront of the employment field.

Growing ranks of corporate executives are lamenting that college students are specializing too much and too early. What corporate America really needs, according to chief executive officers of major corporations, is students soundly grounded in the liberal arts—English, especially—who then can pick up more specific business or technical skills on the job. Few students, however, seem to be listening to this message. Today‘s best selling courses offer evidence that students want to take courses that provide direct job related skills rather than the most basic survival skills in the workplace: communication and thinking skills. They want courses they can parlay into jobs and high paying ones at that. Certainly, we can understand this mentality when we consider trends indicating that this generation will be the first who will not be able to do better economically than their parents. They don‘t want to leave anything to chance. Historically, the liberal arts degree was good insurance for a poverty level existence. Students are looking to history to provide some answers it simply cannot give. They would do well to examine the present.

One of the big problems in the liberal arts community is that we do not market what we have to offer. Students very often fail to see the practicality of studying Shakespeare as preparation for a career in the business community. Perhaps some of us have locked ourselves in the ivory tower a little too long extolling the virtues of a liberal education as preparation for citizenship and life only to the neglect of it as preparation for career or careers. Education for education‘s sake is noble but impractical to today‘s college student who is facing a competitive and rapidly changing job market. They want and deserve to know how their courses will help them get a job. We as educators owe them some answers; we must be accountable not only for learning but also for providing information regarding the transferability of classroom skills into the workplace.

In an attempt to provide answers, we conducted a research project in the Dallas metropolis last year, assuming the role of the liberal arts graduate seeking employment in the fields of government, banking, business, and industry. Using informational inter-viewing as our method of job hunting and obtaining data, we conducted twenty-five interviews with a diversity of executive officers, ranging from personnel directors to the chairman of the board of an exclusive department store and the state governor. We wished to validate, through practical and current research, that not only does the liberal arts degree provide the best preparation for a lifetime of change, but it also provides a plethora of employment opportunities. We do not claim our research to be all encompassing, but we do feel its practicality was rewarding. We gathered data as to how the liberal arts major should present himself on paper and in person, where her best chances for employment are, and what he can do to augment the liberal arts degree. We were able to draw several conclusions as to how the liberal arts community could better prepare students for professional mobility.

13. The Liberal Arts Degree Is Marketable

Ninety percent of those interviewed responded they would hire liberal arts major for an entry-level position, which could lead to the executive suite if the position itself were not executive level. The chairman of the board of a major department store in Dallas responded to the question, ―For what position would you hire a

liberal arts graduate?‖ with a direct, ―Any position in the company.‖ When asked if a buyer wouldn‘t need to have special skills, he replied, ―Taste is acquired or learned, and the liberal arts major could certainly learn this skill on the job.‖ This interview is typical of the responses.

Skills acquired with a Liberal Arts Background Are Most Desired by Employers

We were not at all surprised to learn that the skills cited, as the most desirable in an employee are those skills acquired from a liberal arts background. The cited skills are listed below in order of importance.

1.Oral communication

2.Written communication

3.Interpersonal

4.Analytical thinking

5.Critical thinking

6.Leadership

Although these skills are not solely acquired through the mastery of an academic discipline, the discipline serves as a vehicle for developing or refining these skills.

Liberal Arts Majors Can Enhance Their Credentials

Adaptability and lifelong learning are the cornerstones of success in today‘s complex and rapidly changing society. No longer can the person who is steeped in one academic discipline, but knows nothing about anything else, meet today‘s demands. Based on the data we accumulated, our recommendations for the liberal arts major are the following:

1. A basic knowledge of accounting

https://www.doczj.com/doc/1f11493434.html,puter literacy

3.Second major in a business field

4.Multiple minors

5.Advanced degrees in another field

The key here is adaptability and diversity. Contrary to what most people believe, the higher a skill level an individual can claim, the more marketable he is. About those individuals who complain that they are

―overeducated‖ we can only assume that they are marketing themselves on the wrong level. ―Over education‖is a term whose time will not come in the foreseeable future. The problem many individuals will face is narrowness of education rather than ―over education‖.

Unlike Aristotle who is believed to have known everything there was to know at the time he lived, it is impossible for us to deal with the voluminous amounts of information which are produced daily. The lifelong learning which we have alluded to will not always be acquired through the traditional

sixteen-week college course，we in the community college need to provide a smorgasbord of opportunities for individuals who wish to increase their mobility and options.

The time has come to rethink what education really is and how it relates to the function of society. Perhaps what a liberal education does for an individual, who is more important than anything else, is to prepare him for more learning. The liberal arts background equips one with thinking skills; and others, coupled with the desire to learn, are the best preparation for career and life that any of us can possess.

14. The Vast Emptiness at the Core of Today‘s Liberal Arts Education

With this year‘s graduation season drawing to a close, we won‘t have to listen to many more commencement speakers. Usually, they tell the graduating seniors how lucky they were to spend four years acquiring wisdom. As a graduating senior at UC Berkeley, I have a somewhat different perspective—one that wasn‘t heard often at this year‘s commencement ceremonies but that contains a great deal more truth about the state of American higher education today.

I have done relatively well academically at Berkeley. Even so, I don‘t think I‘ve received a true liberal education—at least not in the way that a well-educated man of the 19th Century would have understood it. Back then, a university was supposed to provide nourishment for mind, body and soul. American colleges

stopped catering to the latter too long ago, when mandatory attendance in chapel and at physical education classes was abolished. Now, Berkeley and other leading research universities have even stopped feeling student s‘ minds.

What I‘ve missed is an education that integrates philosophy, history, literature and the other humanities into a coherent whole. Part of the fault is my own: I did not seek out some classes that I should have. But a large share of the burden lays with the university, which lacks a core curriculum—for example, ―Great Books‖—that could provide a general education.

Instead, Berkeley, like many other large universities, offers a host of overly specialized courses that seem to have little connection. The history department offers a class on Theodore Roosevelt; English has a course on science fiction; philosophy offers a class on Hegel. That‘s it. Almost no courses attempt to bridge the gulf between these areas. Those that should—that is, introductory courses aimed at freshmen only—offer the same content as the upper-division courses. They have an added drawback: inaccessible professors in giant auditoriums before thousands of bored students teach them.

The man responsible for this deplorable state of affairs is Clark Kerr, UC president during the 1960s and one of the most influential figures of post-World Wax II higher education. Kerr dreamed that the college would become all things to all people—a ―multiversity.‖ Instead, it would up serving almost everybody inadequately. Nobody is sure what the university‘s mission is anymore: is it to educate elite students or to create a social melting pot or to conduct graduate-level research? Partisans of all three viewpoints have waged intermittent battles on the Berkeley campus for decades, leaving all the players profoundly dissatisfied. Undergraduates are therefore denied the opportunity to pursue a comprehensive curriculum. Instead, they are left, like shoppers in a giant supermarket, to wander the aisles, picking products at random, never sure that their selections will add up to a nutritious meal. Laissez faire may work in the economy, but it‘s no way to run a university.

This loss of mission has also allowed a weird collection of nuts and cranks to assume prominent positions at Berkeley, as they have at other leading U.S. colleges. Deconstructionists in the English department teach that words have no intrinsic meaning. Revisionists in the history department teach that the Constitution was the result of a capitalist cabal. Newly minted PhD‘s in the ethnic-studies field teach that America has waged genocidal war against its racial minorities for centuries. Instructors in the ―Peace and Conflict Studies‖department teach strategies for nonviolent protest. A sociology professor instructs students on the ―plantation system‖ in professional sports today.

This is education? Thankfully, I‘ve been able to avoid most of these professors with an ax to grind. I have managed to study almost exclusively with professors who believe in old-fashioned academic standards and the importance of Western civilization. But most students don‘t fare as well. The lucky ones merely miss the chance to be educated. The unlucky ones axe indoctrinated by unscrupulous lecturers.

It‘s safe to say, then, that the reality of college education today is a fax cry from the dreamy land of learning and higher thinking described by commencement speakers. Just ask any recent graduate.

15. Education as Philosophy

There is an immense and justified pride in what our colleges have done. At the same time there is a growing uneasiness about their product. The young men and women who carry away our degrees are a very attractive lot—in looks, in bodily fitness, in kindliness, energy, courage, and buoyancy. But what is of their intellectual equipment? That too is in some ways admirable; for in spit of President Lowell‘s remark that the university should be a repository of great learning, since the freshmen always bring a stock with them and the seniors take little away, the fact is that our graduates have every chance to be well informed, and usually are so. Yet the uneasiness persists. When it becomes articulate, it takes the form of wishes that these attractive young products of ours had more intellectual depth and force, more at-home ness in the world of ideas, more of the firm, clear, quiet thoughtfulness that is so potent and so needed a guard against besetting humbug and quackery. The complaint commonly resolves itself into a bill of three particulars. First, granting that our graduates

know a good deal, their knowledge lies about in fragments and never gets welded together into the stuff of a tempered and mobile mind. Secondly, our university graduates have been so busy boring holes for themselves, acquiring special knowledge and skills, that in later life they have astonishingly little in common in the way of ideas, standards, or principles. Thirdly, it is alleged that the past two decades have revealed a singular want of clarity about the great ends of living, attachment to which gives significance and direction to a life. Here are three grave charges against American educations, and I want to discuss them briefly. My argument will be simple, perhaps too simple. What I shall contend is that there is a great deal of truth in each of them, and that the remedy for each is the same. It is larger infusion of the philosophic habit of mind.

16. What True Education Should Do

When most people think of the word ―education‖, they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing. Into this empty casing, the teachers are supposed to stuff ―education‖.

But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago, is not inserting the stuffing of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him; it is the drawing out of what is in the mind.

―The most important part of education,‖once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the distinguished Harvard philosopher, ―is this instruction of a man in what he has inside him.‖

And, as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, ―I know, learn from me.‖ He said, rather, ―Look out your own selves and find the spark of truth that God has put into every heart, and that only you can kindle to a flame.‖

In the dialogue called the ―Meno‖, Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of schooling, and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really ―knows‖ geometry—because the principles and axioms of geometry are already in his mind, waiting to be called out.

So many of the discussions and controversies about the content of education are futile and inconclusive because they are concerned with what should ―go into‖the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.

The college student who once said to me, after a lecture, ―I spend so much time studying that I don‘t have a chance to learn anything,‖was succinctly expressing his dissatisfaction with the sausage-casing view of education.

He was being so stuffed with miscellaneous facts, with such an indigestible mass of material, that he had no time (and was given no encouragement) to draw on his own resources, to use his own mind for analyzing and synthesizing, and evaluating this material.

Education, to have any meaning beyond the purpose of creating well informed students, must elicit from the pupil what is latent in every human being—the rules of reason, the inner knowledge of what is proper for men to be and do, the ability to sift evidence and come to conclusion that can generally be assented to by all open minds and worm hearts.

Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence.

17. The Future of Universities

―Can we speak of the death of the university?‖an English newspaper recently asked. Another offered the diagnosis: ―Still breathing.‖ Not only at this seminar, here and now, but also all over the world the future of the universities is now being discussed. This is not only because we are entering a new century. Many people are asking whether the traditional research universities in fact have any future at all. This doubt seems mainly to be due to the development of the new technology, the massification of the universities, the ideas if life long learning, the growing competition from other learning institutions and may be also because of the strong specialization that we now are experiencing in most fields of research. Many experts predict the demise of

universities, as we know them today, with a campus.

I am an optimist, and I have become even more of an optimist having listened to the speakers today. I believe in the magic of the campus! I believe that the universities will be able to enjoy a very bright future as intellectual power centers in a world in which society is calling out increasingly loudly for more knowledge.

But if we are to continue to live as intellectual power centers, the universities cannot sit passively letting developments take their course. We must know what sort of university we want in the future. Many battles have been lost because of the lack of any goal. We must also have a strategy and a policy for how we are to achieve our vision. This means that the universities must actively and relate to the great challenges we are now being confronted with, and we must develop our ability and will for renewal. Yet we must do this at the same time as we stand by the fundamental values that make us a university: that is our independence. I see it as one of the most important tasks for a university president to work for the greatest possible spirit of community in the university, and for the university to be an integrated institution and not simply a number of faculties or departments linked together in some kind of formal organization or strategic alliance. Only then can we defend the use of the name ―university‖.

I would like to conclude by saying a few words about international solidarity. The quality gap between academic institutions in different parts of the world should be a concern for the universities in the developed countries. They should assume a leading role in the dissemination of knowledge, and in promoting the development of universities worldwide. This is a matter of solidarity towards sister institutions. I agree with UNESCO when they underline that member of the world‘s academic community should be concerned not only about the quality of their own institutional setting, but also about the quality of research everywhere.

Most universities in the western word—at least the public universities—are now experiencing a serious lack of funds, and the institutional solidarity must not take a form that leads to a draining of strength and vitality of the universities. There are, however, many ways of showing solidarity without using too much of the universities own funding. One of the tasks of the universities is to keep reminding the authorities of the importance of spending money on research and education in developing countries. The universities themselves must work in close co-operation with the development-aid agencies where the Government provides most of the economic resources and the universities provide the competence. It is also possible to share knowledge by giving easier access to recent findings, to make possible academic mobility and increased technique co-operation among regional groupings. Various academic co-operation programs may protect against brain drain, which is now a serious threat in many countries.

Only through the development of local skill and competence, through increased numbers of providers and users of knowledge can the developing countries bridge the gap separating them from developed countries. And the bridging of this gap will lead to societies that are freer, more peaceful and more egalitarian. The universities have the competence, the possibility and therefore also a duty to promote the ―intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind‖ as stated in the UNESCO‘s constitution.

18. Teaching and Learning: Strategies for the 21st Century

Examining the situation in the higher learning today, we realize that since the end of the last World War there have been basic changes in the relations, of the state and the university in many countries. These changes are connected with dramatic increase in the number of students and not less with the increase in the cost of research. The social consequences of these process are: a) The profound change in the structure of the society due to the grown percentage of university graduates; b) The risk of intellectual unemployment of, this part of society; c) The relative devaluation of other vocations and the decrease in the number of young people who select manual vocations; and, as the result, d) A potential social lack of equilibrium and the inability of the society to support the university. But let me now come to more practical matters and enumerate the main factors that determine the development of education on the very eve of the 21st century.

1.The development of information technologies.

Throughout the world, information and telecommunication technologies are bringing about a new industrial revolution which looks to be as important and radical as those revolutions which preceded it. The benefits that come along with the development of new technologies are obvious and have been discussed quite a lot. I would like to draw your attention to those sides of introduction of information technologies which can pose new problems for education. The availability of information on the INTERNET, for example, widens the possibilities of informal education immensely. It could lead to knowledge of ―the lowest common denominator‖ in which people loose their historical, geographical and cultural bearings. New information technologies are widely introduced in schools and universities, and allow developing distance education programs without boundaries. However, methods of teaching and learning through electronic means are still to be developed. In many cases, lectures try to use the traditional methodology of teaching while dealing with new media and fail.

2. Internationalization is connected both with political situation and with the development of technologies.

Nowadays our world is becoming smaller and smaller, and turns into a ―global village.‖ International academic cooperation is an excellent basis for nation-wide cooperation and one of the key factors for sustainable development. It is absolutely vital for technical harmonization, environmental educational programs, growth of student mobility, and activization of regional cooperation. One can be quite sure that these processes will continue and deepen in the next century. Again, there are a number of issues which need serious consideration. To what extent should we standardize educational programs? How much risk does internationalization contain for national identity? How to create a global system of academic recognition and is it really necessary?

19. Universities changing to meet the needs of the 21st Century

Keeping with the theme of this session, I will talk about the role of the University for the 21st Century. I have chosen not one but seven different roles which will be important for universities in the 21st century:

●Learning Community Role

●Research and Discovery Role

●Assisting in Pre-college Education Role

●Partnerships with Corporations Role

●Convener Role

●World Role

●Societal Role

The learning community reflects a shift away from the typical lecture approach where the professor professes, i.e. imparts knowledge to the student and the student simply takes it down and takes it in. the new emphasis will be learning, in addition to the lecture through student initiative in setting the program, acquiring knowledge through the Internet as needed, collaborating with peers in special projects, experiential learning through internships, study abroad, and many other out-of-classroom experiences. Records of learning experience may be through portfolio, reflecting the variety of experiences, rather than simply transcripts showing courses taken and grades. In addition, the learning community means more than just the student experience. It includes all parts, all functions, all personnel having an involvement in learning, thus the learning community.

The research role will continue to be a key function in the research university, but there will continue to be a shift in emphasis away from single investigator, working on a particular and narrow area, toward multi-disciplinary teams working on problems driven by societal need. Several factors will continue to force this direction such as, limited space and facilities in our institutions, limited budgets for doing research including high costs of duplicating laboratories for each new faculty investigator, and increasing expectations by these providing the funding to see substantive and useful results. The remaining five roles address the outreach function. This will be the area of most significant change in the 21st century.

First, the university will take on an even larger role in assisting pre-college education in preparing students for study and work. Success on college is greatly impacted by student preparation. Thus, the university will need to take more responsibility in guiding the process in college preparation.

Partnerships with corporations and businesses will become a greater part of university involvement. The 21st century will see expansion of partnerships of this type particularly with research universities. These will take on different forms. They will involve collaboration for education of an older workforce, collaboration for organizational and process improvement in both types of organizations, agreements for special consideration in student recruitment and internships, and employment and funding between the partners. Each will need to undergo some modification of culture as these changes occur.

The convener role involves bringing people to campus to address certain important issues. It means identifying experts around the world to join with those on campus to seek understanding and actions for change. This conference sponsored by Peking University is an example of the convener function. It also involves bringing people together to learn about modern approaches to the latest and important issues in many different fields. This role has been served for many years in agriculture, education and engineering. Others are emerging, and the future will have universities serving even broader roles as convener of experts in many different areas. The world role for universities is another that is evolving rapidly. It is being driven by increasing ease of communication worldwide, the connectivity of economies of countries around the world, the opening up of greater opportunities for trade, and the increasing prevalence of multinational corporations.

Finally, the societal role will be the area of greatest change as we move into the 21st century. The university will direct more of its financial resources and faculty expertise toward critical needs of society, toward convening faculty individuals in different colleges and departments to collaborate in certain fields of research and development. This will take time to evolve and it will require some shift in culture of the university. But, the external forces bearing on universities will drive change in emphasis from focusing on status as determined by university peers toward greater emphasis on relevance of work and accomplishment.

While the changes taking place involving moving toward more emphasis on needs of society are generally positive, there are concerns about some directions that could take place. For example, universities will need to maintain their independence in setting agendas and directions. It will be important to retain independence to work more effectively in an interdependent society. Secondly, universities will need to avoid excessive political and partisan influence on decision-making intended to benefit special interests. And, thirdly we will want to retain a balanced role of the faculty in the decision process of university governance.

In summary, the colleges and universities of the 21st century will need to be able to work effectively in an interdependent society having a worldwide scope. They will be less inward looking and more connected to issues outside that involve problems plaguing society. They will be more collaborative with corporations, other universities and among faculty across units within the institution. There will be more emphasis on the student‘s experience in learning, seeking knowledge through different methods, in addition to the lecture, and developing skills through experience. Finally, the university will be more dependent on technology in the students learning experience as well as the operation of all aspects of the activities within the institution. I believe the University of the 21st century will see students taking classes together and working on collaborative projects in universities that may be hundreds and possibly thousands of miles apart.

20. Education and Training

To understand the nature of the liberal college and its function in our society, it is important to understand the difference between education and training.

Training is intended primarily for the service of society; education is primarily for the individual. Society needs doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers to perform specific tasks necessary to its operation, just as it needs of society so that the work of the world may continue. And these needs, our training center the professional and trade schools fill. But although education is for the improvement of the

individual, it also serves society by providing a leavening of men of understanding, of perception, and wisdom. They are our intellectual leaders, the critics of our culture, the defenders of our free traditions, and the instigators of our progress. They serve society by examining its function, appraising its needs, and criticizing its direction. They may be earning their livings by practicing one of the professions, or in pursuing a trade, or by engaging in business enterprise. They may be rich or poor. They may occupy position of power and prestige, or they may be engaged in some humble employment. Without them, society either disintegrates or else becomes an anthill.

The difference between the two types of study is like the difference between the discipline and exercise in a professional baseball training camp and that of a Y gym. In the one, the recruit is training to become a professional baseball player who will make a living and serve society by playing baseball; in the other, he is training only to improve his own body and musculature. The training at the baseball camp is all relevant. The recruit may spend hours practicing how to slide into second base, not because it is a particularly useful form of calisthenics but because it is relevant to the game. The exercise would stop if the rules were changed so that sliding to a base was made illegal. Similarly, the candidate for the pitching staff spends a lot of time throwing a baseball, not because it will improve his physique—it may have quite the opposite effect—but because pitching is to be his principal function on the team. At the Y gym, exercises have no such relevance. The intention is to strengthen the body in general, and when the members sit down on the floor with their legs outstretched and practice touching their fingers to their toes, it is not because they hope to become galley slaves, perhaps the only occupation where that particular exercise would be relevant.

In general, relevancy is a facet of training rather than of education. What is taught at law school is the present law of the land, not the Napoleonic Code or even the archaic laws that have been scratched from the statute books. And the plumber and the carpenter and the electrician and the mason learn only what is relevant to the practice of their respective trades in this day with the tools and materials that are presently available and that conform to the building code.

In the liberal arts college, on the other hand, the student is encouraged to explore new fields and old fields, to wander down the bypaths of knowledge. There the teaching is concerned with major principles, and its purpose is to change the student, to make him something different from what he was before, just as the purpose of the Y gym is to make a fat man into a thin one, or a strong one out of a weak one. Clearly the two types of learning overlap. Just as the baseball recruit gets rid of excess weight and tightens his muscles at the baseball camp and thereby profits even if he does not make the team, so the law student sharpens his mind and broadens his understanding, even if he subsequently fails the bar exam and goes on to make his living in an entirely different kind of work. His study of law gives him an understanding of the rules under which our society functions and his practice in solving legal problems gives him an understanding of fine distinctions.

On the other hand, the Y member, whose original reason for joining may have been solely to get him in shape, may get caught up in the institution‘s baseball program and find that his skill has developed to the point where he can play the game professionally. Similarly, the student who undertakes a course of study merely because it interests him and he wants to know more about it may find that it has commercial value. He has studied a foreign language and literature in order to understand the society that produced it, and then he may find that his special knowledge enables him to get a job as a translator. Or he may find that while his knowledge of chemistry is not of professional caliber, it is still sufficient to give him preference in a particular job over someone who lacks even that modicum of knowledge of the subject. But these are accidental and incidental. In general, certain courses of study are for the service of society and other courses are for self-improvement. In the hierarchy of our educational system, the former are the function of our professional schools and the latter are the function of the college of liberal arts.

21. Knowledge and Wisdom

Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been