1、接着令Fowkes大吃一惊的是，教授并没有按照顺序讲下一课，而是讲了后面一课。难道他真的在他唯一的学生缺席的情况下对着空教室讲了一课？Fowkes认为这太有可能了。Today American colleges and universities （originally modeled on German ones） are under strong attack from many quarters. Teachers, it is charged, are not doing a good job of teaching, and students are not doing a good
2、job of learning. American businesses and industries suffer from unenterprising, uncreative executives educated not to think for themselves but to mouth outdated truisms the rest of the world has long discarded. College graduates lack both basic skills and general culture. Studies are conducted and r
3、eports are issued on the status of higher education, but any changes that result either are largely cosmetic or make a bad situation worse. 今天美国的大学（原本是以德国的大学为模型的）受到了各方面的严厉指责。人们指责老师没有教好，学生没有学好。美国的商业和工业饱受无进取心的、缺乏创造力的管理人员之苦，这些人受的教育是自己不用思考，而是说一些过时的、在世界上其他地方早已抛弃的陈词滥调。大学毕业生即没有基本技能也没有全面修养。有人对高等教育的状况做了研究并发表
4、了报告，但由此引发的变化很大程度上不是表面的，就是使已经糟糕的情形变得更糟。One aspect of American education too seldom challenged is the lecture system. Professors continue to lecture and students to take notes much as they did in the thirteenth century, when books were so scarce and expensive that few students could own them. The time
5、 is long overdue for us to abandon the lecture system and turn to methods that really work.美国教育中很少被挑战的方面是讲课制度。教授不停地讲，学生不停地记笔记，就想十三世纪时的情形一样，那时因为课本缺乏又昂贵，很少有学生买得起。我们早就该舍弃讲课制度，开始使用真正有用的方法。Some days Mary sits in the front row, from where she can watch the professor read from a stack of yellowed notes tha
6、t seem nearly as old as he is. She is bored by the lectures, and so are most of the other students, to judge by the way they are nodding off or doodling in their notebooks. Gradually she realizes the professor is as bored as his audience. At the end of each lecture he asks, “Are there any questions?
7、” in a tone of voice that makes it plain he would much rather there werent. He neednt worrythe students are as relieved as he is that the class is over.有几天玛丽坐在前排，她可以看到教授在读一叠几乎和他年纪一样老的发黄的讲义。她听课听烦了，其他大部分同学也听烦了，这从他们的行为中可以做出判断：他们要么在打盹，要么在笔记本上涂鸦。渐渐地她意识到教授和他的听众一样感到无聊。每次课结束时他都问道：“有问题吗？”他的语气明显表明他更希望没有问题。他不必
8、担心，学生和他一样感到下课是一种解脱。Mary knows very well she should read an assignment before every lecture. However, as the professor gives no quizzes and asks no questions, she soon realizes she neednt prepare. At the end of term she catches up by skimming her notes and memorizing a list of facts and dates. After
9、the final exam, she promptly forgets much of what she has memorized. Some of her follow students, disappointed at the impersonality of it all, drop out of college altogether. Others, like Mary , stick it out, grow resigned to the system and await better days when, as juniors and seniors, they will a
10、ttend smaller classes and at last get the kind of personal attention real learning requires. 玛丽清楚的知道她应该在每次上课前阅读布置的作业。但是，因为教授不做小测验也不提问，她很快就认识到她不必准备。学期末她只要看看笔记，再记记一些事件、年代就可以跟上进度。期末考试后她会立刻忘掉她背下来的大部分内容。她的有些同学对这种无人情味的学习很失望，干脆辍学。其他人像玛丽一样坚持下来，无奈地接受了这种制度，等待着到大三大四时的好日子，那时他们就会有较小的班级，最终也会得到真正的学习所需要的那种针对个人的关注。I
11、 admit this picture is overdrawnmost universities supplement lecture courses with discussion groups, usually led by graduate students; and some classes such as first-year English and always relatively small. Nevertheless, far too many courses rely principally or entirely on lectures, an arrangement
12、much loved by faculty and administrators but scarcely designed to benefit the students. 我承认上面的描述言过其实。大多数大学有讨论课来补充听力课，通常讨论课是由研究生主持的。而且有些班级，如一年级的英语课，也总是相对较小的。但是，还有太多的课主要或者完全依赖于讲课，这种安排受到教师和管理人员的青睐，但绝不是为学生的利益而设计的。One problem with lectures is that listening intelligently is hard work. Reading the same ma
13、terial in a textbook is a more efficient way to learn because students can proceed as slowly as they need to until the subject matter become clear to them. Even simply paying attention is very difficult; people can listen at a rate of four hundred to six hundred words a minute, while the most impass
14、ioned professor talks at scarcely a third of that speed. This time lag between speech and comprehension leads to daydreaming. Many students believe years of watching television have sabotaged their attention span, out their real problem is that listening attentively is much harder than they think.听课
15、存在的一个问题是：会听是件很难的事。阅读课本中的相同内容是更有效的学习方法，因为学生可以根据其需要慢慢阅读直到他们理解这些内容，甚至仅仅做到专心听课都很难。人听的速度可以达到每分钟400-600个词，而最富有激情的教授说话的速度也很难达到这个速度的1/3。讲课和理解之间的时间差异导致开小差。很多学生认为多年来看电视已经削弱了他们保持注意力的能力。但是他们真正的问题是专心听课比他们认为的要难得多。Worse still, attending lectures is passive learning, at least for inexperienced listeners. Active lea
16、rning, in which students write essays or perform experiments and them have their work evaluated by an instructor, is far more beneficial for those who have not yet fully learned how to learn. While its true that techniques of active listening, such as trying to anticipate the speakers next point or
17、taking notes selectively, can enhance the value of a lecture, few students possess such skills at the beginning of their college careers. More commonly, students try to write everything down and even bring tape recorders to class in a clumsy effort to capture every word.更糟的是，听课是被动学习，至少对没有经验的听众如此。主动学
18、习时学生些文章或做实验，然后由教师评价他们的作业，因此主动学习对那些还没有完全学会如何学习的学生来说益处要大得多。的确，积极听讲的技巧，如设法预测说话人的下一个要点或有选择的记笔记，能够提高听课的价值，但是很少有学生在大学学习的开始阶段就已经掌握了这些技巧。更为常见的是学生试图写下所有的内容，甚至还带着录音机去听课，以这种笨拙的方式来记录每个词。Students need to question their professors and to have their ideas taken seriously. Only then will they develop the analytical
19、 skills required to think intelligently and creatively. Most students learn best by engaging in frequent and even heated debate, not by scribbling down a professors often unsatisfactory summary of complicated issues. They need small discussion classes that demand the common labors of teacher and stu
20、dents rather than classes in which one person, however learned, propounds his or her own ideas. 学生需要向教授提问，也需要别人重视他们的想法。只有这样他们才能开发出聪明的、创造性的思考所必需的分析能力。大多数学生通过参加频繁的、甚至激烈的辩论才会学的更好，而不是通过胡乱记下教授对复杂事件所作出的常常不能令人满意的总结，他们需要小型讨论课，这种课需要教师和学生的共同努力，他们不需要那种让一个人提出自己观点的课堂，无论这个人多么有学识。The lecture system ultimately harm
21、s professors as well. It reduces feedback to a minimum, so that the lecturer can neither judge how well students understand the material nor benefit from their questions or comments. Questions that require the speaker to clarify obscure points and comments that challenge sloppily constructed argumen
22、ts are indispensable to scholarship. Without them, the liveliest mind can atrophy. Undergraduates may not be able to make telling contributions very often, but lecturing insulates a professor even from the beginners nave question that could have triggered a fruitful line of thought.讲课制度最终也会危害到教授们。反馈
23、减少到了最低点，因此讲课者既不能判断学生对材料的了解程度，也不能受益于学生的提问或评论。学生要求说话者澄清模糊论点所提出的问题，以及挑战结构松散的论据的评论，这对于学术是必不可少的。没有这些，最活跃的头脑也会萎缩。大学生也许还不能够常常做出显著的贡献，但是讲课把教授同新生天真的问题阻隔开了，而这些问题很可能会引起一系列思考。If lectures make so little sense, why have they been allowed to continue? Administrators love them, of course. They can cram far more stu
24、dents into a lecture hall than into a discussion class, and for many administrators that is almost the end of the story. But the truth is that faculty members, and even students, conspire with them to keep the lecture system alive and well. Lectures are easier on everyone than debates. Professors ca
25、n pretend to teach by lecturing just as students can pretend to learn by attending lectures, with no one the wiser, including the participants. Moreover, if lectures afford some students an opportunity to sit back and let the professor run the show, they offer some professors an irresistible forum f
26、or showing off. In a classroom where everyone contributes, students are less able to hide and professors less tempted to engage in intellectual exhibitionism.如果说讲课如此不同情理，为什么还一直允许继续下去呢？当然是因为教学管理者喜欢了。他们可以把更多的学生塞进演讲厅，而无法把这么多学生塞进讨论班。对许多管理者而言，这基本上就是他们所关心的了。但是，事实上，教师，甚至学生和管理者联合起来使得这一制度继续存在，且运行的很好。对任何人来说，讲
27、课都比辩论容易。教授可以通过讲课假装在教，就像学生可以通过听课假装在学，这一点没有人意识到，包括参与者（指老师和学生）。此外，如果听课给某些学生袖手旁观，而让老师唱主角的机会，这也给一些教授提供了炫耀其才学的不可抗拒的舞台。如果课堂上人人参与，学生就无法躲藏，教授也不太会被吸引去进行学识上的自我表现。Smaller classes in which students are required to involve themselves in discussion put an end to students passivity. Students become actively involve
28、d when forced to question their own ideas as well as their instructors. their listening skills improve dramatically in the excitement of intellectual give-and-take with their instructors and yellow students. Such interchanges help professors do their job better because they allow them to discover wh
29、o knows whatbefore final exams, not after. When exams are given in this type of course, they can require analysis and synthesis from the students, not empty memorization. Classes like this require energy, imagination, and commitment from professors, all of which can be exhausting. But they compel st
30、udents to share responsibility for their own intellectual growth.如果班级较小又要求学生参加讨论，这就会消除学生的被动性。学生被迫对他们自己和老师的思想表示怀疑时，他们就变得主动参与了。他们听的技巧在与老师和同学的学术交流所带来的刺激中大大得到提高。这种交替互动能够帮助教师做得更好，因为他们会发现谁知道什么-在期末考试前，而不是之后。这种形式的课程考试要求学生分析和综合，而不是空洞的记忆。这样的课程需要教授们的活力、想象力和投入，所有这些都会令人精疲力竭的。但是，这也使得学生为他们自己 的学术成长分担责任。Lectures wil
31、l never entirely disappear from the university scene both because they seem to be economically necessary and because they spring from a long tradition in a setting that values tradition for its own sake. But the lectures too frequently come at the wrong end of the students educational careersduring the first two years, when they most need close, even individual, instruction. If lecture classes were restrictod to juniors and seniors, who are less in need of scholarly nurt
