a*o
发帖数: 25262 | 1 人文学科不该成为冷门
韦尔兰·克林肯博格
在过去几年里，我曾在哈佛大学(Harvard)、耶鲁大学(Yale)、巴德学院(Bard)、波莫
纳学院(Pomona)、沙拉劳伦斯学院(Sarah Lawrence)和哥伦比亚大学(Columbia)新闻学
研究生院(Graduate School of Journalism)为本科生和研究生教授非虚构写作。在每
个学期我都充满希望又十分恐惧，如果我的学生已经掌握了写作，我将没什么可教。而
每个学期我都一再发现，他们还是不会写作。
他们能够组合起一串串术语，堆砌起大段大段腹语般的句子结构。他们能够围绕碰巧得
到的主题和意识形态概念四散转移，而仅仅这么做就能得到好成绩。但说到清晰、简洁
的写作，毫无障碍地阐明自己的想法和情绪、描述他们身边的世界——做不到。
人文学科是一套原则的组合，其最终目的是通过语言这种媒介来分析和理解人类的文化
、社会和历史活动。而这种清楚、直接、人性化的写作，以及作为这种写作基础的阅读
，就是人文学科的根本。
人文学科的教学已经陷入困境。美国文理科学院(American Academy of Arts and
Sciences)的一篇新报告对人文学科的现状做出了这样的判断，而且几乎每位在高等院
校教过书的人，经验也是如此。本科生会告诉你，他们承受着巨大的压力，来自父母、
来自债务的重担，总的来说来自全社会，这使得他们去选择那些他们认为会更快、更有
可能带来好工作的专业。这也经常意味着，逃掉人文学科的课程。
换句话说，在学生和父母考虑在大学里该学什么时，有一种新出现的对职业的狭隘强调
。正如美国文理科学院报告指出的，这是一系列事情造成的结果，包括文学体验的整体
下降。对文学体验的汲取，举例来说，可以从孩提时代父母为你大声朗读中得到。其结
果是，人文学科的毕业生人数大幅下降。今年春天，在我的母校波莫纳学院，英语专业
毕业的学生仅有16人，与1560的学生总数相比少得可怜。
在1991年，耶鲁大学有165名毕业生获得英语文学士学位。到2012年，这一数字是62。
在1991年，耶鲁大学两个最重要的专业是历史和英语。到2013年，它们变成了经济学和
政治学。在今年的波莫纳学院，它们是经济学和数学。
当孩子们进入英语专业后，他们的父母总会担心，英语专业有什么好的呢？从某一方面
来说，最好的答案总是：先耐心等等。但这个答案不会让任何人满意。然而这却是正确
答案，它能反映出文学学习给思想和语言上带来的多种才能。从前的英语专业学生分布
在几乎每一个领域、每一个职业岗位上，他们总是能够在语言、文学等方面带来丰富的
潜力。
从前，经典著作，也就是我们都认为值得学习的书籍和作家，似乎是毫无争议的，是某
种无需讨论的共识。但经典却总是在不停变化，比起四十年前，它如今包括的内容要广
泛得多，这是一件好事。但如今不那么明确的是，我们学习经典的目的是什么，为什么
我们选择使用这些理论和工具来进行学习。
专业的狭隘性，这种你可能会从研究生课程中看到的对专门化和理论研究的强调，已经
逐渐在本科课程里显露了出来。这种狭窄性有时反映的是教授对自己研究领域的狭窄关
注，但它同时也显示出，人们对人文学科研究始终存在的怀疑。这往往让本科生困惑，
他们到底在学些什么、为什么学这些，这是我通过与他们的交流发现的。
学习人文学科应该像是站在一个开放的甲板上，你身在同行和学生中间，船儿正沿着人
类体验的无尽海岸线畅游。相反地，现在的感觉却像是，人们撤回到了船腹的小舱里，
从那里他们向外看到的可能是海岸线、雾堤或是喷水鲸鱼的后背，但仅仅是一鳞半爪的
片段。
最近这种偏离人文学科的转向中，毫无疑问有追求实用性的考虑。这说明了几个问题。
一，急于让教育产生回报的冲动决定了，只有那些能立刻得到应用的技能才值得学习（
然而，这无法解释当前政治学的热门）。二，人文学科自身往往没能很好地阐明其重要
性。三，人文学科往往不善教授人文知识。你无须在这三种解释里仅选出一个。这三个
都适用。
许多本科生所不知道的，也是他们许多教授未能告诉他们的是，人文学科那些最基本的
馈赠未来将会变得多么珍贵。这种馈赠就是思路清晰、行文简明，以及一生对文学的兴
趣。
这个真相可能需要有一定的生活经验才能发现。每当我教授年纪较长的学生，不论他们
是本科生、研究生或者是初级教师，我都会从他们身上发现，他们对这种未能及早掌握
的技能，有鲜明而迫切的需求。他们不将这种技能称为人文学科，也不会将它称为文学
，而是将它称为写作。这种能力可以将他们的思考化为字句，而这种字句自身有其价值
，甚至是文学上的价值。
善写原本是人文学科的一个根本原则，这就像是数学和统计学在科学领域的角色一样关
键。但是，善写不仅仅是一个实用技能，它是一个人在与周边世界的交流中所生发起来
的，理性的优雅和能量。
没有人找得到一种为这种能力定价的方法，我怀疑也不会有人这么做。但每一个拥有它
的人——不论如何、何时获得——都知道，这是一种稀有而珍贵的财富。
http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20130629/c29klinkenborg/ | a*o
发帖数: 25262 | 2 这篇文章中文翻译很糟糕，贴个原版:
http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20130629/c29klinkenborg/en-us/
The Decline and Fall of the English Major
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
In the past few years, I’ve taught nonfiction writing to undergraduates and
graduate students at Harvard, Yale, Bard, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence and
Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Each semester I hope, and fear,
that I will have nothing to teach my students because they already know how
to write. And each semester I discover, again, that they don’t.
They can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic
syntax. They can meta-metastasize any thematic or ideological notion they
happen upon. And they get good grades for doing just that. But as for
writing clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts
and emotions and the world around them — no.
That kind of writing — clear, direct, humane — and the reading on which it
is based are the very root of the humanities, a set of disciplines that is
ultimately an attempt to examine and comprehend the cultural, social and
historical activity of our species through the medium of language.
The teaching of the humanities has fallen on hard times. So says a new
report on the state of the humanities by the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and so says the experience of nearly everyone who teaches at a
college or university. Undergraduates will tell you that they’re under
pressure — from their parents, from the burden of debt they incur, from
society at large — to choose majors they believe will lead as directly as
possible to good jobs. Too often, that means skipping the humanities.
In other words, there is a new and narrowing vocational emphasis in the way
students and their parents think about what to study in college. As the
American Academy report notes, this is the consequence of a number of things
, including an overall decline in the experience of literacy, the kind of
thing you absorbed, for instance, if your parents read aloud to you as a
child. The result is that the number of students graduating in the
humanities has fallen sharply. At Pomona College (my alma mater) this spring
, 16 students graduated with an English major out of a student body of 1,560
, a terribly small number.
In 1991, 165 students graduated from Yale with a B.A. in English literature.
By 2012, that number was 62. In 1991, the top two majors at Yale were
history and English. In 2013, they were economics and political science. At
Pomona this year, they were economics and mathematics.
Parents have always worried when their children become English majors. What
is an English major good for? In a way, the best answer has always been,
wait and see — an answer that satisfies no one. And yet it is a real answer
, one that reflects the versatility of thought and language that comes from
studying literature. Former English majors turn up almost anywhere, in
almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them a rich sense of
the possibilities of language, literary and otherwise.
The canon — the books and writers we agree are worth studying — used to
seem like a given, an unspoken consensus of sorts. But the canon has always
been shifting, and it is now vastly more inclusive than it was 40 years ago.
That’s a good thing. What’s less clear now is what we study the canon for
and why we choose the tools we employ in doing so.
A technical narrowness, the kind of specialization and theoretical emphasis
you might find in a graduate course, has crept into the undergraduate
curriculum. That narrowness sometimes reflects the tight focus of a
professor’s research, but it can also reflect a persistent doubt about the
humanistic enterprise. It often leaves undergraduates wondering, as I know
from my conversations with them, just what they’ve been studying and why.
STUDYING the humanities should be like standing among colleagues and
students on the open deck of a ship moving along the endless coastline of
human experience. Instead, now it feels as though people have retreated to
tiny cabins in the bowels of the ship, from which they peep out on a small
fragment of what may be a coastline or a fog bank or the back of a spouting
whale.
There is a certain literal-mindedness in the recent shift away from the
humanities. It suggests a number of things. One, the rush to make education
pay off presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are
worth acquiring (though that doesn’t explain the current popularity of
political science). Two, the humanities often do a bad job of explaining why
the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a bad job of
teaching the humanities. You don’t have to choose only one of these
explanations. All three apply.
What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors
have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift
of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear
writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.
Maybe it takes some living to find out this truth. Whenever I teach older
students, whether they’re undergraduates, graduate students or junior
faculty, I find a vivid, pressing sense of how much they need the skill they
didn’t acquire earlier in life. They don’t call that skill the humanities
. They don’t call it literature. They call it writing — the ability to
distribute their thinking in the kinds of sentences that have a merit, even
a literary merit, of their own.
Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as
essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences.
But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a
rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you.
No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I
doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or
when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance. | l******g
发帖数: 1066 | 3 will read it on the way back :)
and
how
【在 a*o 的大作中提到】
: 这篇文章中文翻译很糟糕，贴个原版:
: http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20130629/c29klinkenborg/en-us/
: The Decline and Fall of the English Major
: By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
: In the past few years, I’ve taught nonfiction writing to undergraduates and
: graduate students at Harvard, Yale, Bard, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence and
: Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Each semester I hope, and fear,
: that I will have nothing to teach my students because they already know how
: to write. And each semester I discover, again, that they don’t.
: They can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic
| a*o
发帖数: 25262 | 4 Yeah, this lady's writing style is pretty good....very articulate
She's teaching writing in different colleges.
【在 l******g 的大作中提到】
: will read it on the way back :)
:
: and
: how
| l****u
发帖数: 3449 | 5 哥啊，是大叔不是lady，哈哈
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlyn_Klinkenborg
【在 a*o 的大作中提到】
: Yeah, this lady's writing style is pretty good....very articulate
: She's teaching writing in different colleges.
| l*****l
发帖数: 5909 | | a*o
发帖数: 25262 | 7 哦哦哦。。只是看了个 first name ...
哈哈哈。。。
【在 l****u 的大作中提到】
: 哥啊，是大叔不是lady，哈哈
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlyn_Klinkenborg
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