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[感想日志] GRE只是一切的开始 [复制链接]

lingli_xiaoai
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电梯直达

楼主

发表于 2010-7-18 09:57:57 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

RT 虽然我突然跑到作文版来晃荡，是因为受到酸奶等同志的感召。因为自己复习完全是闭门造车类型的。至少是5年前是这样。
所以虽然在寄托混了这么多年，从来没发过自己写的ISSUE OR ARGU [不容易啊]

第一个有点意义主题帖是收到了两张笔考准考证。
最怀念的就是056G结束以后，那个寻找GF的水贴。可以说就是因为那个贴，让我对GTER产生了感情。其实对一个地方产生感情，实际上产生感情的是对这里遇到的人。一瞬间，5年都过去了，闭门造车的个性其实也没怎么改变，动不动就人间蒸发。偶尔登陆到MSN，看到里面那个熟悉的GTER分组。是我所有分组里面人最多的。而且也是最常来往的。之前在某一个论坛，看到一个无关爱情的征文，让写出夏天与爱情无关的但是最让人印象深刻的日子。对我来说，第一个想到的，居然不是同样的夏天，毕业，或者第一次来美国，而是在作文班，在水贴里面灌水的日子。因为那些人现在还不断的出现在我的生活当中。

出国留学可以是一条很短，也可以是一条很长的路。这条路大多数时候都充满着痛苦和绝望，但是也有很多快乐。我看着周围的人，每个人都有属于自己的故事，挣扎和委屈，都有突然想把书一摔，电脑一关，对自己说，我不干了，绝望了就这样吧。结果过了一天，又不死心的对自己说，不甘心啊，一定要坚持下去之类的事情。很多人都做着周围的人不能理解的事情。我也去上过xdf，对于那些笑话，记忆力只是普通。很多印象深刻的话，都是阅读老师说的，他说，你们来这里，就是找到自己的战友，然后一起在这条路上坚持下去，最后大家一起去美国。那个GF水贴里面的绝大部分人都实现了这个计划。GRE好像是一切开始的地方，是最初的但是很有可能是最有激情的战场。虽然它可能在申请上只是一块砖而已。但是看着这里，我好像能重新回忆起来当初的心情。

希望在这里留下痕迹的人，能跟我一样，5年后回忆起现在，会感激怀念和快乐，在这里找到的战友，能一起坚持到最终目标实现的那天。
感觉gter 有些时候，就像一群有梦想的但是脆弱的人，因为遇到了彼此而变得坚强，实现了本来自己一个人没有办法做到的事情。

==========我应该是很多年没这么煽情过了========

煽情完毕。。进入正题。
其实也不是什么正题。
主要是收集一写写作，阅读的资料，和自己的一些想法。

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人生有些决定是大胆的，但是那并不代表这些决定是错误的。

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沙发

发表于 2010-7-18 10:06:38 |只看该作者

本帖最后由 lingli_xiaoai 于 2010-7-18 10:17 编辑

教育的目的

来源：http://www.teachersmind.com/education.htm

The Meaning of Education
©2001-2002 Judith Lloyd Yero
Recently, a university professor wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. He commented
that people shouldn’t put too much weight on the recently released trends in SRA scores of the
state’s high school students. The professor went on to describe some of the unanswered questions
about the nature and value of assessment. He mentioned that one of the problems with assessment
was the ongoing disagreement on the very purpose of education.

A few days later, the paper printed a scathing response from a community member who
questioned whether the University really wanted someone on their staff who didn’t even know the
purpose of education. Clearly, this person assumed that his definition of education was shared by
all. What is the meaning of education?

Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching (now that’s really useful, isn’t
it?) Educate is further defined as “to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of...” Thus, from
these definitions, we might assume that the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge,
skill, or character of students. Unfortunately, this definition offers little unless we further define
words such as develop, knowledge, and character. [这句话也说出了我的一些感受，有时候看到别人写作文，
动不动就用一些general的词语，但是并没有解释这些词语到底说是什么。最后的结果就是这些句子实际上没有任何实际的信息]

What is knowledge? Is it a body of information that exists “out there”—apart from the human
thought processes that developed it? If we look at the standards and benchmarks developed by
many states—or at E. D. Hirsch’s list of information needed for Cultural Literacy (1), we might
assume this definition of knowledge to be correct. However, there is considerable research
leading others to believe that knowledge arises in the mind of an individual when that person
interacts with an idea or experience.

This is hardly a new argument. In ancient Greece, Socrates argued that education was about
drawing out what was already within the student. (As many of you know, the word education
comes from the Latin e-ducere meaning “to lead out.”) At the same time, the Sophists, a group of
itinerant teachers, promised to give students the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions
with the city-state.

There is a dangerous tendency to assume that when people use the same words, they perceive a
situation in the same way. This is rarely the case. Once one gets beyond a dictionary definition—
a meaning that is often of little practical value—the meaning we assign to a word is a belief, not
an absolute fact. Here are a couple of examples.

“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should
produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society,
where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer

“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in
the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.”
~Emma Goldman

“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his
mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e.,
conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to
be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be
equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand

[这个定义我很喜欢，因为很具体，很容易展开。也许可以用在比如issue 51这样的题目中。]

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—
rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the
memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie

[英文版的授人以鱼，不如授人以渔]

“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking
questions.” ~Bishop Creighton

“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann
Tomlinson

These quotations demonstrate the diversity of beliefs about the purpose of education. How would
you complete the statement, “The purpose of education is...”? If you ask five of your fellow
teachers to complete that sentence, it is likely that you’ll have five different statements. Some will
place the focus on knowledge, some on the teacher, and others on the student. Yet people’s beliefs
in the purpose of education lie at the heart of their teaching behaviors.

Despite what the letter writer might have wished, there is no definition of education that all, or
even most, educators agree upon. The meanings they attach to the word are complex beliefs
arising from their own values and experiences. To the extent that those beliefs differ, the
experience of students in today’s classrooms can never be the same. Worse, many educators have
never been asked to state their beliefs—or even to reflect on what they believe. At the very least,
teachers owe it to their students to bring their definitions into consciousness and examine them
for validity.

Purposes and Functions

To make matters more complicated, theorists have made a distinction between the purpose of
education and the functions of education.(2) A purpose is the fundamental goal of the process—an
end to be achieved. Functions are other outcomes that may occur as a natural result of the
process—byproducts or consequences of schooling.

[教育的目的和教育的作用。这个例子也解释了，purpose和function这两个单词的含义区别]

For example, some teachers believe that the transmission of knowledge is the primary purpose of
education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world is something that
happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge—a function of education.
Because a purpose is an expressed goal, more effort is put into attaining it. Functions are assumed
to occur without directed effort. For this reason it’s valuable to figure out which outcomes you
consider a fundamental purpose of education. Which of the following do you actually include in
your planning.

* Acquisition of information about the past and present: includes traditional disciplines such as
literature, history, science, mathematics

* Formation of healthy social and/or formal relationships among and between students,
teachers, others
[children的社会化也可以是教育的目的]

* Capacity/ability to evaluate information and to predict future outcomes (decision-making)
* Capacity/ability to seek out alternative solutions and evaluate them (problem solving)
* Development of mental and physical skills: motor, thinking, communication, social, aesthetic
* Knowledge of moral practices and ethical standards acceptable by society/culture

[告诉孩子们社会的伦理和道德]

* Capacity/ability to recognize and evaluate different points of view

[critical thinking]

* Respect: giving and receiving recognition as human beings
* Indoctrination into the culture
* Capacity/ability to live a fulfilling life
* Capacity/ability to earn a living: career education
* Sense of well-being: mental and physical health
* Capacity/ability to be a good citizen
* Capacity/ability to think creatively
* Cultural appreciation: art, music, humanities
* Understanding of human relations and motivations
* Acquisition/clarification of values related to the physical environment
* Acquisition/clarification of personal values
* Self-realization/self-reflection: awareness of one’s abilities and goals

自我实现的具体方法和定义到底是什么。

* Self-esteem/self-efficacy

As Tom Peters reminds us, “What gets measured, gets done.” Regardless of high-sounding
rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of assessments that largely
drives education. How is the capacity/ability to think creatively assessed in today’s schools? To
what extent is the typical student recognized and given respect? How often are students given the
opportunity to recognize and evaluate different points of view when multiple choice tests require
a single ‘correct’ answer?

Teachers who hold a more humanistic view of the purpose of education often experience stress
because the meaning they assign to education differs greatly from the meaning assigned by
society or their institution. It is clear in listening to the language of education that its primary
focus is on knowledge and teaching rather than on the learner. Students are expected to conform
to schools rather than schools serving the needs of students. [完全就是issue51啊]

Stopping to identify and agree upon a fundamental purpose or purposes of education is rare. One
sees nebulous statements in school mission statements, but they are often of the “Mom, baseball,
and apple pie” variety that offer little substance on which to build a school culture. Creating
meaningful and lasting change in education is unlikely without revisiting this basic definition. At
the very least, educators must be challenged to identify and reexamined their beliefs in the light
of present knowledge.

Substantive change must begin with a shift of thinking from things to people. The focus must
shift from what’s “out there—the curriculum, assessments, classroom arrangement, books,
computers—to the fundamental assumptions about and definitions of education held by educators
and policymakers. NASA did not send men to the moon by building on the chassis of a model T.
In the same way, education cannot hope to move beyond its present state on the chassis of 18th
century education.

References
1 Hirsch, E. D. Jr. (1987). Cultural Literacy. Houghton Mifflin
2 Callaway, R. (1979) Teachers’ Beliefs Concerning Values and the Functions and Purposes of
Schooling, Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED 177 110

人生有些决定是大胆的，但是那并不代表这些决定是错误的。

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轻轻de舞
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板凳

发表于 2010-7-18 10:10:47 |只看该作者

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地板

发表于 2010-7-18 10:22:17 |只看该作者

GRE是我很美好的一段记忆。
梦想出差，生活继续。

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色不迷人人自迷。
天佑中华！！Bless bless bless

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5楼

发表于 2010-7-18 10:25:27 |只看该作者

还是没抢到地下室…赞小哀

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6楼

发表于 2010-7-18 11:59:22 |只看该作者

i think this whole thing in second floor is pretty much the gist of liberal arts education.

and I feel like the process of preparing AW is actually the start point for most Chinese students to think in American way. One doesn't have to keep doing it or appreciate it but at least everyone has a flavor of it.

but sadly, most people just want to get a satisfactory/useful score and get it over with.
they want a good result but overlook the process of thinking...

WAKE UP...it's not gonna happen unless you really try to think... rather than use some New Oriental teachers' points of view or examples

finally, same as lz commented on some part of this article... examples or ideas are actually everywhere, if you think more....

people like lz deserve an awesome score...

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7楼

发表于 2010-7-18 12:51:46 |只看该作者

本帖最后由追梦小木耳于 2010-7-18 13:20 编辑

先对楼主的感慨发一发自己混论坛的感慨，再看二楼的文
不得不说，好喜欢我们这个论坛！
从开始复习时——周围的人都在忙期末考试，而我天天拿出大把时间抱着电脑研究写作文，到今天距离考试还有十天——宿舍走的只剩我一个，从没有觉得孤单。虽然天天几乎形单影只，但是来到这个论坛，有那么多G友热心的改文，提意见，甚至还得到了斑竹的亲自指点，感觉自己不是一个人在战斗。
也许是因为那些前人留下的不仅是备考的经验，更多的是大家互相支持互相鼓励的传统，让我觉得这条路走的并不是那么迷茫，事实上走的越来越坚定

关于教育，这篇文章总结的很透彻，很全面，说出了自己想说但是又不知道怎么说的东西。每次写到教育类的文章，都喜欢在最后一个body里说一说自己的观点，虽然被很多人批太片面，但是我还是坚持认为提出自己的想法比较好。嗯，这篇文章能补充我那些对于教育的议论。

by the way,这也说出了我们接受教育的涵义啊

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8楼

发表于 2010-7-18 13:07:44 |只看该作者

小哀大师说的很对，我如果没来论坛学习，没有被改过文章，我可能就不会知道自己到底有什么问题，该往什么方向努力。
支持支持

既然跑不了了，还不如拼了,第一步，超越自己

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9楼

发表于 2010-7-18 14:50:35 |只看该作者

在这个论坛上留下的先辈们奋斗的足迹，激励着我们现在的努力，启迪着后辈们的梦想。

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10楼

发表于 2010-7-18 14:58:39 |只看该作者

自我实现的具体方法和定义到底是什么。
这也是我们要在自己的成长里，在论坛里渐渐找到的吧。
赞小哀。

心大了，事情就小了。

如果受了伤就喊一声痛，
真的说出来就不会太难过。
不去想自由，
反而更轻松，
愿意感动孤独单不忐忑。
生活啊生活啊，
会快乐也会寂寞，
生活啊生活啊，
明天我们好好的过。

爱生活，爱寄托。
一直在这里。我爱你们。

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11楼

发表于 2010-7-18 15:16:14 |只看该作者

留名，希望5年以后能在看到这个贴，回忆起今天的努力

lingli_xiaoai
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12楼

发表于 2010-7-19 06:48:16 |只看该作者

本帖最后由 lingli_xiaoai 于 2010-7-19 07:21 编辑

今天要考虑的问题是历史。

ISSUE里面有很多跟历史有关的题目

48. The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten. 历史研究过于关注个人。历史上最有意义的事件和潮流能够成为可能不是因为几个少数的名人而是一些身份早就被淡忘的人群。

54. History teaches us only one thing: knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today. 历史只教会了我们一件事：了解过去无助于人们今天作出重要的决定。

81. Patriotic reverence for the history of a nation often does more to impede than to encourage progress. 出于爱国对于一个国家的尊崇往往不是促进进步而是阻碍进步。

103. The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives. 只有研究和我们日常生活相关的历史才有价值。

120. So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding the past provides little guidance for living in the present. 现代社会是如此的崭新和复杂以至于回首了解过去对于当代生活已经没有太大的帮助了。

110. When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers. 当我们通过研究历史来考虑自身问题的时候，我们就会变成说故事的人。因为我们不可能直接了解过去，只有通过解释一些史料来构造历史，所以探索历史更多的是一件创造性的事业而不是客观的追寻。所以的历史学家都是讲故事的人。

125. The past is no predictor of the future. 过去是无法预测未来的。

139. Every new generation needs to redefine ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in its own terms and according to the conditions of its own time. 每一代人都要根据自己时代的情况和自己的说法来重新定义“对与错”。

189. If people disregard the great works of the past, it is because these works no longer answer the needs of the present. 如果人们忽视了过去的伟大成就，那只能是因为这些成就已经不再满足现今的需要了。

221. The chief benefit of the study of history is to break down the illusion that people in one period of time are significantly different from people who lived at any other time in history. 研究历史最大的好处就是打破了这种假象：不同时代的人们之间基本上是完全不同的。

综合来看这些题目，虽然各个题目的侧重点不同，但是要写好，都不可避免要去思考一些问题。

1，历史研究的目的是什么，方法是什么。
2，我们为什么要学习历史。
3，历史对现在和未来到底有没有帮助。

然后找到了一篇文章
叫做 why study history?解释历史的作用。
这文章很长，内容很丰富。

看材料的时候，不仅要看材料的内容，如何帮组自己提炼出属于自己的观点，也要看看别人是如何说理，如何去论证，历史的重要性，如何去回答，我们为什么要学习历史这个问题的。

Why Study History?

http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/whystudyhistory.htm

Why Study History?

By Peter N. Stearns

People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?

[Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. ] Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.[对于不喜欢历史的人，他们想问的问题就是为什么要学历史]

Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine.[讲出了很多人看待的关于历史没有实用性的问题] History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines. [指出历史首先是有用的，不能取代的，但是历史的作用比较起其他学科 less tangible-definite; not vague or elusive]。

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline. [很有趣的观点。过去的人为什么学习历史]

History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts. [主题句]

[History Helps Us Understand People and Societies ]

[历史帮助我们理解现在，这也是很多人曾经想到过的。为什么我们是今天这样子，中国的历史是怎么从夏开始，到现在的。了解了一个国家成立发展的历史，可以帮助别人去理解它的现在]
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. [Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. ]

[This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.]

[这一段话是多么漂亮的论证。包括里面的反问句。反问句的前半句和后半句的逻辑联系是清晰明确的。How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials。和平时期如果没有历史，如何去研究战争？[逻辑关系是一目了然的。所以作者说了这句话就没了。因为不需要证明。但是一句中文。没有xxxx，怎么会有新中国呢？这不是一句逻辑关系明确的例子，而是一个论断。这种情况下不能move on。除非说，xxx是唯一一个可以建立新中国的人，没有它怎么会有新中国呢？我们在写作文的时候，要想想GRE的填空，明白什么叫做直接逻辑关系，就是只用推一步，句子作为一个孤立的个体就可以成立。如果不是这样，后面就需要解释和论证。否则逻辑上就不成立。]

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change.

[Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.] 语气加强的排比句是跟在例子后面的。这样表达自己观点的排比句得到了论证，显得更容易让人接受。如果前后没有具体事例，只有排比句就weak了]
[下面这几段说明了历史研究跟现在社会的联系，说明了历史可以解决现实的问题]

The importance of history in explaining and understanding change in human behavior is no mere abstraction. Take an important human phenomenon such as alcoholism. Through biological experiments scientists have identified specific genes that seem to cause a proclivity toward alcohol addiction in some individuals. This is a notable advance. But alcoholism, as a social reality, has a history: rates of alcoholism have risen and fallen, and they have varied from one group to the next. Attitudes and policies about alcoholism have also changed and varied. History is indispensable to understanding why such changes occur. And in many ways historical analysis is a more challenging kind of exploration than genetic experimentation. Historians have in fact greatly contributed in recent decades to our understanding of trends (or patterns of change) in alcoholism and to our grasp of the dimensions of addiction as an evolving social problem.

One of the leading concerns of contemporary American politics is low voter turnout, even for major elections. A historical analysis of changes in voter turnout can help us begin to understand the problem we face today. What were turnouts in the past? When did the decline set in? Once we determine when the trend began, we can try to identify which of the factors present at the time combined to set the trend in motion. Do the same factors sustain the trend still, or are there new ingredients that have contributed to it in more recent decades? A purely contemporary analysis may shed some light on the problem, but a historical assessment is clearly fundamental—and essential for anyone concerned about American political health today.

History, then, provides the only extensive materials available to study the human condition. It also focuses attention on the complex processes of social change, including the factors that are causing change around us today. Here, at base, are the two related reasons many people become enthralled with the examination of the past and why our society requires and encourages the study of history as a major subject in the schools.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives
[历史跟我们个人的联系]

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society. [这段的内容很有趣，说历史的故事跟艺术和娱乐节目一样，serve real purpose让我们知道什么叫做激动，什么叫美。并且也回应了issue题目中一个story-telling的话题。]

History Contributes to Moral Understanding
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. [我曾经想过的study great man的理由，给个人提供榜样，激情。]

["History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.] [历史的研究great man vs 个人]

History Provides Identity [历史让我们认识到自己 identity ：the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another。让我想起那个人们通过social group define self的题目]

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty. [历史让我们理解一个国家的价值，从而让我们对自己的国家产生loyalty]

---到这里也只是这文章的一半而已---

人生有些决定是大胆的，但是那并不代表这些决定是错误的。

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科学美国人杂志PDF下载

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发表于 2010-7-19 07:13:25 |只看该作者

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Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved.[ More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.]

What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?
[历史对教育的好处是什么，同样的思路可以放在很多学科上。]

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.
The Ability to Assess Evidence. The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. [这段话可以用来反对历史很主观，只是在讲故事，因为历史也是建立在对证据的考虑，选择，通过推理在做出最符合事实真相的答案。跟随便编一个故事糊弄别人是有本质的不同的] Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life. [让我们学会区别什么是证据，什么是statement]

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations. Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. [Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. ] [跟一个issue题目产生了联系--------Patriotic reverence for the history of a nation often does more to impede than to encourage progress. ]The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our "ever-changing world." [这一段简直就是为了issue 100 准备的100. So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding the past provides little guidance for living in the present. 现代社会是如此的崭新和复杂以至于回首了解过去对于当代生活已经没有太大的帮助了。] Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process. [总结了history study对citizenship的作用。同时也说了对过去的知识如何帮组我们对现在的事情做出判断。]

History Is Useful in the World of Work
[历史甚至可以有利于找到工作，这个作者简直在写巅峰之作了，从抽象到具体，从跟人没有直接利益相关的社会，进入个人的职业发展。他的论证有没有说服你呢。]
History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives. [作者总结自己的观点，学习历史不是一种纯娱乐，而是对职业发展有左右的。让我想起商战和孙子兵法之类的。别人也可以想想，什么样的历史故事可以运用到实际生活中。另外，历史对人分析能力的培养，其实也不单单只有历史可以做到，还有很多学科也可以用这种说理方式。]

What Kind of History Should We Study?
[历史应该包含什么样的内容呢]
The question of why we should study history entails several subsidiary issues about what kind of history should be studied. Historians and the general public alike can generate a lot of heat about what specific history courses should appear in what part of the curriculum. Many of the benefits of history derive from various kinds of history, whether local or national or focused on one culture or the world. Gripping instances of history as storytelling, as moral example, and as analysis come from all sorts of settings. The most intense debates about what history should cover occur in relation to identity history and the attempt to argue that knowledge of certain historical facts marks one as an educated person. Some people feel that in order to become good citizens students must learn to recite the preamble of the American constitution or be able to identify Thomas Edison—though many historians would dissent from an unduly long list of factual obligations. Correspondingly, some feminists, eager to use history as part of their struggle, want to make sure that students know the names of key past leaders such as Susan B. Anthony. The range of possible survey and memorization chores is considerable—one reason that history texts are often quite long.

There is a fundamental tension in teaching and learning history between covering facts and developing historical habits of mind. Because history provides an immediate background to our own life and age, it is highly desirable to learn about forces that arose in the past and continue to affect the modern world. This type of knowledge requires some attention to comprehending the development of national institutions and trends.[ It also demands some historical understanding of key forces in the wider world. ] [历史要求去识别推动世界的最主要的力量]The ongoing tension between Christianity and Islam, for instance, requires some knowledge of patterns that took shape over 12 centuries ago. Indeed, the pressing need to learn about issues of importance throughout the world is the basic reason that world history has been gaining ground in American curriculums. Historical habits of mind are enriched when we learn to compare different patterns of historical development, which means some study of other national traditions and civilizations.

The key to developing historical habits of mind, however, is having repeated experience in historical inquiry. Such experience should involve a variety of materials and a diversity of analytical problems. Facts are essential in this process, for historical analysis depends on data, but it does not matter whether these facts come from local, national, or world history—although it's most useful to study a range of settings. What matters is learning how to assess different magnitudes of historical change, different examples of conflicting interpretations, and multiple kinds of evidence. Developing the ability to repeat fundamental thinking habits through increasingly complex exercises is essential. Historical processes and institutions that are deemed especially important to specific curriculums can, of course, be used to teach historical inquiry. Appropriate balance is the obvious goal, with an insistence on factual knowledge not allowed to overshadow the need to develop historical habits of mind.
Exposure to certain essential historical episodes and experience in historical inquiry are crucial to any program of historical study, but they require supplement. No program can be fully functional if it does not allow for whimsy and individual taste. Pursuing particular stories or types of problems, simply because they tickle the fancy, contributes to a rounded intellectual life. Similarly, no program in history is complete unless it provides some understanding of the ongoing role of historical inquiry in expanding our knowledge of the past and, with it, of human and social behavior. The past two decades have seen a genuine explosion of historical information and analysis, as additional facets of human behavior have been subjected to research and interpretation. And there is every sign that historians are continuing to expand our understanding of the past. [It's clear that the discipline of history is a source of innovation and not merely a framework for repeated renderings of established data and familiar stories.][历史研究也可以创新，让我们了解很多以前不了解的，不是故纸堆+老古董]

Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.
Further Reading

Holt, Thomas C. Thinking Historically: Narrative, Imagination, and Understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1990.

Howe, Barbara. Careers for Students of History. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1989.

Hexter, J. H. The History Primer. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

Gagnon, Paul, ed. Historical Literacy. New York: MacMillan, 1989.

Oakeshott, Michael. On History. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983.

Stearns, Peter N. Meaning over Memory: Recasting the Teaching of History and Culture. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

© 1998, American Historical Association.

===个人感觉就这一篇文章就把上面的issue题目涵盖了70%，所以在想这些issue是怎么来的=，就是从这个领域很多教授，很多人已经讨论过的问题上来的。

人生有些决定是大胆的，但是那并不代表这些决定是错误的。

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科学美国人杂志PDF下载