From_Competence_to_Commitment课本讲解与分析

From_Competence_to_Commitment课本讲解与分析Text1:From Competence to CommitmentErnest Boyer1.Today's students have ambiguous feelings about their role in the world. They aredevoting their energies to what seems most real to them: the pursuit of security, the accumulation of material goods. They are struggling to establish themselves, but theyoung people also admitted to confusion: Where should they put their faith in this uncertain age? Undergraduates are searching for identity and meaning and, like the rest of us, they are torn by idealism of service on the one hand, and on the hand, the temptation to retreat into a world that never rises above self-interests. (Main Idea ofPP1)2.In the end, the quality of the undergraduate experience (= education) is to bemeasured by the willingness of graduates to be socially andcivically engaged. Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, "Man cannot behold except he be committed ". Hecannot find himself without finding a center beyond himself." The idealism of theundergraduate experience must reflect itself in loyalties that transcend self. Is it toomuch to expect that, even in this hard-edged, competitive age, a college graduate withlive with integrity, civility - even compassion? Is it appropriateto hope that thelessons learned in a liberal education will reveal themselves in the humaneness of thegraduate's relationship with others?3.Clearly, the college graduate has civic obligations to fulfill. There is urgent need in American teaching to help close the dangerousand growing gap between public policy and public understanding. The information required to think constructively about the agendas of government seems increasingly beyond our grasp. It is no longer possible, many argue, to resolve complex public issues through citizen participation. How, they ask, can non-specialists debate policy choices of consequence when they do not even know the language?4.Should the use of nuclear energy be expanded or cut back? Can an adequate supply of water be assured? How can the arms race be brought under control? What is a safe level of atmospheric pollution? Even the semi-metaphysical questions of when ahuman life begins and ends have items on the political agenda.5.Citizens have tried with similar bafflement to follow the debate over Star Wars withits highly technical jargon of deterrence and counter-deterrence. Even what onceseemed to be reasonably local matters --- zoning regulations, school desegregation,drainage problems public transportation issues, licensing requests from competingcable television companies-call for specialists who debate technicalities andfrequently confuse rather than clarify the issues. And yet the very complexity of public requires more not less information more not less participation.6.For those who care about government by the people，the decline in publicunderstanding cannot go unchallenged. In a world where humansurvival is at stake ,ignorance is not an acceptable alternative. The full control of policy by specialists with limited perspective is not tolerable. Unless we find better ways to educateourselves as citizens, unless hard questions are asked and satisfactory answers are offered, we run risk of making critical decisions, not on the basis of what we know, but on the basis of blind faith in one or another set of professed experts.7.What we need today are groups of well-informed, caring individuals who bandtogether in the spirit of community to lean from one another, to participate, ascitizens, in the democratic process.8.We need concerned people who are participants in inquiry, who know how to ask theright questions, who understand the process by which public policyis shaped, and areprepared to make informed discriminating judgments on questions that effect the future. Obviously, no one institution in society can single-handedly provides the leadership we require. But we are convinced thatthe undergraduate college, perhaps more than any other institutions, is obliged to provide the enlightened leadership ournation urgently requires if government by the people is to endure.9.To fulfill this urgent obligation, the perspective needed is notonly national, but alsoglobal. Today's students must be informed about people and cultures other than theirown. Since man has orbited into space, it has become dramatically apparent that we are all custodians of a single planet. In the past half century, our planet has become vastly more crowded, more interdependent, and more unstable. If students do not seebeyond themselves and better understand their place in our complex world, their capacity to love responsibly will be dangerously diminished.10.The world may not yet be a village, but surely our sense of neighborhood must expand. When drought ravages the Sahara, when war in Indo-China creates refugees, neither our compassion nor our analyticintelligence can be bounded by a dotted line on a political map. We are beginning to understand that hunger and human rights affect alliances as decisively as weapons and treaties. Dwarfing all other concerns, the mushroom cloud hangs ominously over our world consciousness. These realities andthe obligations they impose must be understood by every student.11.But during our study we found on campus a disturbing lack of knowledge and evenat times a climate of indifference about our world. Refugees flow from one country toanother, but too few students can point to these great migrations on a map or talk about the famines, wars, or poverty that caused them. Philosophers, statesmen, inventors and artists from around the world enrich our lives, but such individuals and their contributions are largely unknown or unremembered.12.While some students have a global perspective, the vast majority, although vaguely concerned, are inadequately informed about the interdependent world in which theylive.13.University of Notre Dame campus minister William Toohey wrote recently, "Thetrouble with many colleagues is that they indulge the nestinginstinct by buildingprotected little communities inside their great walls."14.One point emerges with stark clarity from all we have said: Our world hasundergone immense transformations. It has become a more crowded, more interconnected, more unstable place. A new generation of Americans must be educated for life in this increasingly complex world. If the undergraduate college cannot help students see beyond themselves and better understand the interdependent nature of our world, each new generation will remain ignorant, and its capacity to live confidently and responsibly will be dangerously diminished. (世界在不断地变化)15.Throughout our study we were impressed that what today's college is teaching most successfully is competence --- competence in meeting schedules, in gathering information, in responding well on tests, in mastering the details of a special field. Today the capacity to deal successfully with discrete problems is highly prized. And when we asked students about their education, they, almost without exception, spoke about the credits they had earned or the courses they still needed to complete. 16.But technical skill, of whatever kind, leaves open essential questions: Educationfor what purpose? Competence to what end? At a time in life when values should be shaped and personal priorities sharply probed, what a tragedy it would be if the most deeply felt issues, the most haunting questions the most creative moments werepushed to the fringes of our institutional life. What a monumental mistake it would beif students, during the undergraduate years, remained trapped within the organizational grooves and narrow routines to which the academic world sometimesseems excessively devoted.17.Students come to campus at a time of high expectancy. And yet,all too often theybecome enmeshed in routines that are deadening and distracting. Aswe talked with teachers and students, we often had the uncomfortable feeling that the most vital issues of life --- the nature of society,the roots of social injustice indeed the very prospects for humansurvival --- are the ones with which the undergraduate college is least equipped to deal (with the most vital issues of life, undergraduate education is least prepared to address).18.The outcomes of collegiate education should be measured by the student'sperformance in the classroom as he or she becomes proficient in the use of knowledge, acquires a solid basic education, and becomes competent in a specific filed. Further, the impact of the undergraduate experience is to be assessed by the performance of the graduate in the workplace and further education.19.But in the end, students must be inspired by a larger vision,using the knowledge they have acquired to discover patterns, form values, and advance the common good. The undergraduate experience at its best (= at one's highest level of skill) will movethe student from competence to commitment.20.A recent college graduate wrote about the commitments of young people and their future, She asks: "What kind of nation will we be if we cannot even commitourselves to other people, much less (= certainly not) to a set of abstract values?What kinds of politicians will we elect if self-interest is our highest value, humanity an inoperative commodity?"21.When all is said and done, the college should encourage each student to develop the capacity to judge wisely in matters of life and conduct. Time must be taken for exploring ambiguities and reflecting on the imponderables of life - in classrooms, inrathskellers (=bar), and in bull sessions late at night. The goal is not to theindoctrinate students, but to set them free in the world of ideas and provide a climate in which ethical and moral choices can be thoughtfully examined, and convictionsformed.22.This imperative does not replace the need for rigorous study in the disciplines, butdiminish the neither must specialization become an excuse to suspend judgment or search for purposeful life objectives.23.We are keenly aware of the limited impact (that) people and their institutions seemto make these days on the events of our time. But our abiding hopeis that, withdetermination and effort, the undergraduate college can make a difference in the intellectual and personal lives of its graduates, in the social and civic responsibilities they are willing to assume, and ultimately in their world perspective. These intangibles, which reveal themselves in ways that are very real, are the characteristics by which, ultimate, the quality of the undergraduate experience much be measured. Part 1: PP 1 to PP2: Its main idea is...Part 2: PP3 to PP14 Its main idea is...Part 3: PP15 to PP18 Its main idea is...Part 4: PP19 to PP23 Its main idea is...What is the main idea of this essay?Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese1.Arnold Toynbee has said that all progress, all development come from a challenge and a consequent response. || Without challenge there is no response, no development,no freedom. || So first we owe to our children the most demanding, challenging curriculum that is within their capabilities.The second opportunity we can give our boys and girls is the rightto failure. || "Freedom is not only a privilege, it is a test," writes De Nouy. What kind of a test is it what kind of freedom where no one can fail? || The day is past when the United States can afford to give high school diplomas to all who sit through four years of instruction,regardless of whether any visible results can be discerned. || We livein a narrowed world where we must be alert, awake to realism; andrealism demands a standard, which either must be met, or result in failure. || These are hard words, but they are brutally true. If we deprive our children of the right to fail we deprive them of their knowledge of the world as it is.Translate the following Chinese into English:当今的大学生，尽管他们努力希望使自己成才，但对末来还是很模糊的。