評論
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What my father told me that evening was true in itself, and it also contains the germ of an idea about what a university education should be. But apparently almost everyone else—students, teachers, and trustees and parents—sees the matter much differently. They have it wrong.
那天晚上，父親所告訴我的除了本身的真實性，還包括了大學教育應該是什么樣子的理念起源。但是顯然其他大多數人，學生、老師、校監以及家長們并不以為然，他們都錯了。
Education has one salient enemy in present-day America, and that enemy is education—university education in particular. To almost everyone, university education is a means to an end. For students, that end is a good job. Students want the credentials that will help them get ahead. They want the certificate that will give them access to Wall Street, or entrance into law or medical or business school. And how can we blame them? America values power and money, big players with big bucks. When we raise our children, we tell them in multiple ways that what we want most for them is success—material success. To be poor in America is to be a failure—it's to be without decent health care, without basic necessities, often without dignity. Then there are those backbreaking student loans—people leave school as servants, indentured to pay massive bills, so that first job better be a good one. Students come to college with the goal of a diploma in mind—what happens in between, especially in classrooms, is often of no deep and determining interest to them.
當今美國的教育有一個主要的敵人，這個敵人就是教育本身——尤其是大學教育。幾乎對每一個人來說，大學教育都是到達終點的一種手段。對學生來說，終點就是一份好的工作，學生想要得到幫助他們前進的證書，他們想要能讓他們進人華爾街的證書，能讓他們進入法學院、醫學院以及商學院的證書。我們怎么能怪他們呢？美國崇尚權力和金錢，喜歡揣著大錢的大玩家。撫養孩子的時候，我們用很多方式告訴他們我們對他們最大的期望就是成功——物質上的成功。在美國，貧窮就是失敗——意味著沒有像樣的醫療保障，沒有必需品，通常也沒有尊嚴。還有那些繁重的學生貸款——他們一畢業就成了仆人，必須按照合約償還巨額貸款，因此，第一份工作必須是好工作。學生來到大學，腦海里的目標就是獲得文憑——而大學期間發生什么，尤其是課堂上發生什么，對他們來說通常無法喚起他們的興趣和決心。
In college, life is elsewhere. Life is at parties, at clubs, in music, with friends, in sports. Life is what celebrities have. The idea that the courses you take should be the primary objective of going to college is tacitly considered absurd. In terms of their work, students live in the future and not the present; they live with their prospects for success. If universities stopped issuing credentials, half of the clients would be gone by tomorrow morning, with the remainder following fast behind.
大學里的生活在別處。生活就是聚會、酒吧、音樂、伙伴，還有運動。生活就是名人怎么過，學生就怎么過。那種認為自己所選課程是讀大學的主要目標的想法被默認是可笑的。就學生的任務而言，他們活在未來而不是當下；活在對成功的期望里。如果大學停止頒發證書，到明天早上，會有一半的學生離開，剩下的一半緊隨其后。
