From Competence to Commitment原文及答案
From Competence to Commitment
Ernest Boyer
1. Today's students have ambiguous feelings about their role in the world. They
are devoting their energies to what seems most real to them: the pursuit of security, the accumulation of material goods. They are struggling to establish themselves, but the young people also admitted to confusion: Where should they put their faith in this uncertain age? Undergraduates are searching for identity and meaning and, like the rest of us, they are torn by idealism of service on the one hand, and on the hand, the temptation to retreat into a world that never rises above self-interests.
2. In the end, the quality of the undergraduate experience (= education) is to be
measured by the willingness of graduates to be socially and civically engaged.
Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote, "Man cannot behold except he be committed ".
He cannot find himself without finding a center beyond himself." The idealism of the undergraduate experience must reflect itself in loyalties that transcend self.
Is it too much to expect that, even in this hard-edged, competitive age, a college graduate with live with integrity, civility - even compassion? Is it appropriate to hope that the lessons learned in a liberal education will reveal themselves in the humaneness of the graduate's relationship with others?
3. Clearly, the college graduate has civic obligations to fulfill. There is urgent need
in American teaching to help close the dangerous and growing gap between public policy and public understanding. The information required to think constructively about the agendas of government seems increasingly beyond our grasp. It is no longer possible, many argue, to resolve complex public issues through citizen participation. How, they ask, can non-specialists debate policy choices of consequence when they do not even know the language?
4. Should the use of nuclear energy be expanded or cut back? Can an adequate
supply of water be assured? How can the arms race be brought under control?
What is a safe level of atmospheric pollution? Even the semi-metaphysical questions of when a human life begins and ends have items on the political agenda.
5. Citizens have tried with similar bafflement to follow the debate over Star Wars
with its highly technical jargon of deterrence and counter-deterrence. Even what once seemed to be reasonably local matters --- zoning regulations, school desegregation, drainage problems public transportation issues, licensing requests from competing cable television companies-call for specialists who debate technicalities and frequently confuse rather than clarify the issues. And
yet the very complexity of public requires more not less information more not less participation.
6. For those who care about government by the people，the decline in public
understanding cannot go unchallenged. In a world where human survival is at stake , ignorance is not an acceptable alternative. The full control of policy by specialists with limited perspective is not tolerable. Unless we find better ways to educate ourselves as citizens, unless hard questions are asked and satisfactory answers are offered, we run risk of making critical decisions, not on the basis of what we know, but on the basis of blind faith in one or another set of professed experts.
7. What we need today are groups of well-informed, caring individuals who band
together in the spirit of community to lean from one another, to participate, as citizens, in the democratic process.
8. We need concerned people who are participants in inquiry, who know how to
ask the right questions, who understand the process by which public policy is shaped, and are prepared to make informed discriminating judgments on questions that effect the future. Obviously, no one institution in society can single-handedly provides the leadership we require. But we are convinced that the undergraduate college, perhaps more than any other institutions, is obliged to provide the enlightened leadership our nation urgently requires if government by the people is to endure.
9. To fulfill this urgent obligation, the perspective needed is not only national, but
also global. Today's students must be informed about people and cultures other than their own. Since man has orbited into space, it has become dramatically apparent that we are all custodians of a single planet. In the past half century, our planet has become vastly more crowded, more interdependent, and more unstable. If students do not see beyond themselves and better understand their place in our complex world, their capacity to love responsibly will be dangerously diminished.
10. The world may not yet be a village, but surely our sense of neighborhood must
expand. When drought ravages the Sahara, when war in Indo-China creates refugees, neither our compassion nor our analytic intelligence can be bounded by a dotted line on a political map. We are beginning to understand that hunger and human rights affect alliances as decisively as weapons and treaties.
Dwarfing all other concerns, the mushroom cloud hangs ominously over our world consciousness. These realities and the obligations they impose must be understood by every student.
11. But during our study we found on campus a disturbing lack of knowledge and
even at times a climate of indifference about our world. Refugees flow from one
country to another, but too few students can point to these great migrations on a map or talk about the famines, wars, or poverty that caused them. Philosophers, statesmen, inventors and artists from around the world enrich our lives, but such individuals and their contributions are largely unknown or unremembered.
12. While some students have a global perspective, the vast majority, although
vaguely concerned, are inadequately informed about the interdependent world in which they live.
13. University of Notre Dame campus minister William Toohey wrote recently, "The
trouble with many colleagues is that they indulge the nesting instinct by building protected little communities inside their great walls."
14. One point emerges with stark clarity from all we have said: Our world has
undergone immense transformations. It has become a more crowded, more interconnected, more unstable place. A new generation of Americans must be educated for life in this increasingly complex world. If the undergraduate college cannot help students see beyond themselves and better understand the interdependent nature of our world, each new generation will remain ignorant, and its capacity to live confidently and responsibly will be dangerously diminished.
15. Throughout our study we were impressed that what today's college is teaching
most successfully is competence --- competence in meeting schedules, in gathering information, in responding well on tests, in mastering the details of a special field. Today the capacity to deal successfully with discrete problems is highly prized. And when we asked students about their education, they, almost without exception, spoke about the credits they had earned or the courses they still needed to complete.
16. But technical skill, of whatever kind, leaves open essential questions:
Education for what purpose? Competence to what end? At a time in life when values should be shaped and personal priorities sharply probed, what a tragedy it would be if the most deeply felt issues, the most haunting questions the most creative moments were pushed to the fringes of our institutional life. What a monumental mistake it would be if students, during the undergraduate years, remained trapped within the organizational grooves and narrow routines to which the academic world sometimes seems excessively devoted.
17. Students come to campus at a time of high expectancy. And yet, all too often
they become enmeshed in routines that are deadening and distracting. As we talked with teachers and students, we often had the uncomfortable feeling that the most vital issues of life --- the nature of society, the roots of social injustice indeed the very prospects for human survival--- are the ones with which the
undergraduate college is least equipped to deal (with the most vital issues of life, undergraduate education is least prepared to address).
18. The outcomes of collegiate education should be measured by the student's
performance in the classroom as he or she becomes proficient in the use of knowledge, acquires a solid basic education, and becomes competent in a specific filed. Further, the impact of the undergraduate experience is to be assessed by the performance of the graduate in the workplace and further education.
19. But in the end, students must be inspired by a larger vision, using the knowledge
they have acquired to discover patterns, form values, and advance the common good. The undergraduate experience at its best (= at one's highest level of skill) will move the student from competence to commitment.
20. 20.A recent college graduate wrote about the commitments of young people and
their future, She asks: "What kind of nation will we be if we cannot even commit ourselves to other people, much less(= certainly not) to a set of abstract values? What kinds of politicians will we elect if self-interest is our highest value, humanity an inoperative commodity?"
21. When all is said and done, the college should encourage each student to
develop the capacity to judge wisely in matters of life and conduct. Time must be taken for exploring ambiguities and reflecting on the imponderables of life - in classrooms, in the rathskellers (=bar), and in bull sessions late at night. The goal is not to indoctrinate students, but to set them free in the world of ideas and provide a climate in which ethical and moral choices can be thoughtfully examined, and convictions formed.
22. This imperative does not replace the need for rigorous study in the disciplines,
but neither must specialization become an excuse to suspend judgment or diminish the search for purposeful life objectives.
23. We are keenly aware of the limited impact(that) people and their institutions
seem to make these days on the events of our time. But our abiding hope is that, with determination and effort, the undergraduate college can make a difference in the intellectual and personal lives of its graduates, in the social and civic responsibilities they are willing to assume, and ultimately in their world perspective. These intangibles, which reveal themselves in ways that are very real, are the characteristics by which, ultimate, the quality of the undergraduate experience much be measured.
1. Why is it necessary from competence to commitment? And how to do it?
2. They are devoting their energies to what seems most real to them and struggling
to establish themselves while the young are admitted to confusion that where to put their faith , and they are torn by the gap between the ideal and the reality.
3. Our world has undergone immense transformations, it has become a more
crowded, more interconnected, more unstable place. So the new generation of Americans must be educated for life in this increasingly complex world.
4. Because that what today’s college is teaching most successfully is competence, while today the capacity to deal successfully with discrete problems is highly prized. So undergraduates are often torn by idealism of service and the temptation to retreat into that never rises above self-interests.
5.”citizen” refers to nonspecialists.
We should become the concerned people who are participants in inquiry, who know how to ask the right questions, who understand the process by which public is shaped, and are prepared to make informed, discriminating judgments on questions that affect the future.
6. It is no longer possible to resolve complex public issues through citizen
participation.
That we make critical decisions on the bais of blind faith in one or another set of professed experts will happen.
We should find better ways to educate ourselves, and become gropes of well-informed, caring individuals who band together in the spirit of community to learn form one another, to participate in the democratic process.
7. Toda y’s college is teaching most successfully is competence, leaves such as
education for what purpose? Competence to what end? Open.
The result will be that students remained trapped within the organizational grooves and narrow routines to which the academic world sometimes seems excessively devoted.
8. With determination and effort, the undergraduate college can make a difference in
the intellectual and personal lives of its graduates, in the social and civic responsibilities they are willing to assume, and ultimately in their world perspective.