TheSocialValueoftheCollege-Bred

1、The Social Value of the College-BredOF WHAT USE is a college trai ning? We who have had it seldom hearthe questi on raised might be a little nonpl ussed to an swer it offha nd.A certain amount of meditation has brought meto this as the pithiestreplywhich I myself can give The best claim that a colle

2、ge educati on canpo ssibly makeo n your res pect, the best thing it can asp ire to acco mp lish for you, is this that it should help you to know a good man whe n you see him. This is as true of women s as of men s colleges; but that it is n either a joke nora on e-sided abstracti on I shall now en d

3、eavorto show.What talk do we common ly hear about the con trast betwee n college educatio n and the educati on which bus in ess or tech ni cal or pro fessi onal schools confer? The college educati on is called higher because it is suppo sed to be so gen eral and so dis in terested. At the schools yo

4、u get a relatively n arrow p ractical skill, you are told, whereas the colleges give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the historical persp ective, the p hilos op hic atmos phere, or someth ing which p hrases of that sort try to exp ress. You are made into an efficie nt in strume nt

5、 for doing a defi nite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, apart from that, you mayrema in a crude and smoky kind of p etroleum, incap able of sp read ing light. The uni versities and colleges, on the other hand, although they mayleave you less efficient for this or that practical task, suffuse yo

6、ur whole mentality with something more important than skill. They redeemyou, make you well-bred; they make good company of you men tally. If they find you with a n aturally boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a tech ni cal school may leave you. This, at least, is p rete nded; this

7、is what we hear among college-tra ined people whe n they compare their education with every other sort. Now, exactly how muchdoes this signify?It is certa in,to beg in with, that the n arrowest trade or pro fessi onaltrai ning does someth ing more for a man tha n to make a skilful p racticaltool of

8、him 鈥攊 t makes him also a judge of other men s skill. Whether his trade be p lead ing at the bar or surgery or p lasteri ng or plumbing, it devel ops a critical sense in him for that sort of occ up ati on. He un dersta nds the differe neebetwee n sec on d-rate and first-rate work in his whole branch

9、 of in dustry; he gets to know a good job in his own line as soon as he sees it; and gett ing to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may meananyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, sp read into his judgme nts elsewhere. Sound work, clea n work,finished work; feeble w

10、ork, slack work, shamwork 鈥攖 hese words express an ide ntical con trast in many differe nt dep artme nts of activity .In sofar forth, then, even the humblest manual trade maybeget in one a certain small degree of po wer to judge of good work gen erally.collegeNow, what is supposed to be the line of

11、us who have the higher training? Is there any broader line鈥攕 ince our education claimstaughtbetwee nprimarily not to be narrow 鈥攊 n which wealso are madegood judges what is first-rate and what is sec on d-rate only? What is esp ecially in the colleges has long bee n known by the n ame of the huma ni

12、ties, and these are ofte n ide ntified with Greek and Lati n. But it is only as literatures, not as Ian guages, that Greek and Lati n have any gen eral huma nity-value; so that in a broad sense the huma nities mean literature p rimarily, and in a still broader sense the study of master pieces in alm

13、ost any field of humanendeavor. Literature keeps the primacy; for it not only con sists of master pieces but is largely about master pieces, being little more tha n an app reciative chroni cle of huma n master-strokes, so far as it takes the form of criticism and history. You can give humanistic val

14、ue to almost any thi ng by reach ing it historically. Geology, econo mics, mecha ni cs, are huma nities whe n taught with refere nee to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of

15、 dates, and natural scienee a sheet of formulas and weights and measures. we ought to meanby the humanities. Essentially this meansbiography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biogra phical history, that notThe sift ing of huma n creati ons!鈥攏 othing less than this is whatof politicsmere

16、ly, but of anything and everything so far as humaneffortsand conq uests are factors that have p layed their p art. Study ing in thisway, we learn what types of activity have stood the test of time; we acquire sta ndards of the excelle nt and durable. All our arts and scie nces andin stituti onsare b

17、ut so many quests of p erfecti on on the part of men; andwhe n we see how diverse the types of excelle nee may be, how various the tests, how flexible the ada ptatio ns, we gain a richer sense of what the terms better and worse maysignifyin general. Our criticalsensibilitiesgrow both more acute and

18、less fan atical. We symp athize with men mistakes eve n in the act of pen etrati ng them; we feel the p athos of lost causes and misguided ep ochs eve n while we appi aud what overcame them.笆二;二三先汪案，高三机师结卩以师的教案n改：一 考业关首 -霊-的切价环轻学积注教泛玄上远冒课课沃周疔:：二我S续：二致:勤主沟”二5A-,+_”. .出色地-各项任校Rib组织全组教师进一步；习熟* 材的体系和特索新教材教学模*.组好新教材的研究*全0师师提供“ 学习的平台和“。m:住指*.认；习贯彻”改”神，以贯彻*基础教程改革*核心，以研 9学重*促进教* G根本，以教*二三团inyyimFi三“”及时工作及析二.项学指标:主主活动.冬G师的示” “ B合,慧”