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本帖最后由 kejan 于 2010-3-14 02:13 编辑
教育的目的
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
By Martin L. King Jr
1948, Morehouse College
As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.
It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!
-Due to this inherent dignity and as the individual source of political authority, learning self-control is vital to educational success. Students develop self-control through learning to obey authority that they accept as legitimate. If students never learn to obey others, they can hardly learn to obey their own internal restraints; they will have recurring trouble resisting harmful vices and directing others while leaving dignity intact.
Early examples of democratic local autonomy were the Ancient Greeks and Renaissance Europeans. The classical liberal arts curriculum of grammar, rhetoric, logic and arithmetic was developed because these building blocks met the needs of this form of society. These building blocks remain sound for our representative democracy and our knowledge-based global economy because they provide necessary learning within the fundamental realms of meaning, truth and purpose. Grammar is necessary for all the social sciences broadly addressing meaning. Arithmetic and logic are necessary for all the natural sciences broadly addressing truth. Rhetoric is necessary for all the arts and humanities broadly addressing purpose.
Once these basics have been mastered, the student has the conceptual tools necessary to go deeper into any single fundamental realm or into interdisciplinary areas between realms. Teachers guide students into studies of works proven to have permanent worth, as Matthew Arnold put it, “the best that has been thought and said.” A student might choose to learn more between the realms of meaning and purpose, such as law or anthropology, or between the realms of purpose and truth, such as medicine or engineering, or between the realms of truth and meaning, such as economics or business.
The most general learning, relying equally on the tripod of the basic curriculum within all three realms, is in the areas of history, philosophy, politics and theology. This is the knowledge all individuals within representative democracies should attempt to achieve, at least to the degree that informed decisions are possible. Representatives themselves require this most generalized knowledge during periods of rapid, indeed, revolutionary changes of unknown scope and duration.
The purpose of education is the preservation and enhancement of knowledge and the development of character within our given form of society which will best prepare the individual for the conditions of extreme novelty the near future is bringing.
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