目 录 上一节 
计算机与诗人 The essential problem of man in a computerized age remains the same as it has always been. That problem is not solely how to be more productive, more comfortable, more content, but how to be more sensitive, more sensible, more proportionate, more alive. The computer makes possible a marvellous leap in human proficiency; it pulls down the fences around the practical and even the theoretical intelligence. But the question persists and indeed grows whether the computer will make it easier or harder for human beings to know who they really are, to identify their real problems, to respond more fully to beauty, to place adequate value on life, and to make their world safer than it now is. 在计算机时代，人类的基本问题依然是过去一直存在的问题。这个问题不仅仅是如何更多产、更舒适、更惬意，而是如何更敏感、更明智、更均衡、更有生机。计算机使人类能力上的巨大飞跃成为可能；它打破了束缚实践智能和理论智能的藩篱。但是计算机是使人类更容易还是更难以理解自己究竟是什么，是否有助于识别真正的问题，有助于对美作出更全面的反应，对生活作出更充分的评价？是否能使世界变得比现在更安全？这个问题一直存在而且越来越突出。 Electronic brains can reduce the profusion of dead ends involved in vital research. But they can't eliminate the foolish ness and decay that come form the unexamined life. Nor do they connect a man to the things he has to be connected to - the reality of pain in others; the possibilities of creative growth in himself; the memory of the race; and the rights of the next generation. 电脑能够减少许多生命研究中的死胡同。但它们不能消除因为生活未经反省产生的愚蠢和腐朽；它们也不能把一个人同之相关的事物--别人的痛苦现实、自我创造性发展的可能性、种族的印记以及下一代的权利联系起来。 The reason these matters are important in a computerized age is that there may be a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, and intelligence with insight. Easy and convenient access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they would lead. 这些事情在计算机时代之所以重要是因为可能有一种错把数据当智慧的趋势，就像一直存在的把逻辑与价值、智力，以及见解混为一谈的趋势一样。获取事实的便捷手段只有与弄清这些事实的意义与导向的愿望和能力一致时才能使人们受益无穷。 Facts are terrible things if left spreading and unexamined. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced. 如果任其事实流传而不加检验，这样的事实是可怕的，因为它们极容易被认为是已获定评的事实，而不是迫切需要处理使之具有逻辑条理的原始材料中最原始的部分。怀特里德说，对事实进行分析需要非凡的头脑。计算机能够提供正确的数字，但如果不作判断，这个数字可能毫无意义。 
因而，在人类不能区分电子智力的中间运算与人的决定的最终责任的情况下，计算机可能被证明是一种节外生枝。它可能模糊人类满足自身条件的意识。它可能使人产生错觉，当他实际上只是在问功能的问题时，却认为他在问基本的问题。它可能被认为是智力的替代物，而不是智力的延伸。它可能使人过分相信具体答案。培根说："如果我们肯定开始，就会以疑惑结束；如果我们以疑惑开始，并且耐心处之，我们就会以肯定结束。" The computer knows how to conquer error, but before we lose ourselves in celebrating the victory, we might reflect on the great advances in the human situation that have come about because men were challenged by error and would not stop thinking and exploring until they found better approaches for dealing with it. "Give me a good fruitful error, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections," Ferris Greenslet wrote, "You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." 计算机懂得如何克服错误，但在我们得意忘形地为此欢呼之前，我们不妨思考一下人类的处境之所以出现巨大的进步是因为人类受到错误的挑战而且总是不停的思考、探索，直到找到的更好的处理方法。"给我一个内容丰富的错误，充满希望的种子，包含自我更正，"费里斯·格林里特道，"你可以把贫瘠的真理留给自己。" The biggest single need in computer technology is not for increased speed, or enlarged capacity, or prolonged memory, or reduced size, but for better questions and better use of the answers. Without taking anything away from the technicians, we think it might be fruitful to effect some sort of junction between the computer technologist wonders of the creative imagination on the kinds of problems being put to electronic technology. The company of poets may enable the men who tend the machines to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire. 对计算机技术最大的、唯一的要求不是提高速度、扩大容量、延长记忆或减小体积，而是要提出更好的问题，更好地利用其答案。我们认为，在计算机技术专家和诗人之间衽某种结合可能会卓有成效，而且对技术人员不损秋毫。通过充分发挥由电子技术处理的问题的创造性想象的神奇力量，计算机起到真正的作用。与诗人为伍可能使使用计算机的人能看到比技术自身激发出的更大范围的可能性。 A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos but from his dreams. But the quality of man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world. 亚里士多德说，诗人的优势是表达共性，而专家表现的仅仅是某个特性。而且诗人能够提醒我们，人最大的能量并不来自精力，而是来自他的梦想。但是人的梦想的特征仅仅是他的下意识的反映。因而，他存在下意识的东西实质上是世界上最好的营养。 Nothing really happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet - and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit - can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it. 并没有什么事会真的发生在一个人的身上，除非这件事已在他的潜意识里烙下了印记。正是在潜意识里，事件和感情变成记忆，生活的证据储存于此。诗人--我们用这个词指所有新生人类精神，诉说人类精神的人--能够帮助为潜意识提供材料，增强其敏感度，从而保护它。诗人也能使人们不至于按照电子奇迹的形象改变自己，因为危险不在于人被计算机控制而在于人可能会模仿计算机的思维。 
诗人提醒人们记住自己的独特性。没有必要弄清这种独特性的终极定义，但即是这种独特性进行思考也是一种收获。 Changes to Come in U. S. Education 美国教育将要发生的变化 The biggest "infrastructure" challenge for the United States in the next decade is not the billions needed for railroads, highways and energy. It is the American school system, from kindergarten through the Ph.D. program and the postgraduate education of adults. And it requires something far scarcer than money - thinking and risk-taking. 下一个十年美国所面临的最大的"基础设施"的挑战并不是铁路、公路和能源所需的几十亿美元，而是美国的教育体制，从幼儿园到哲学博士的培养项目，到成人的研究教育。而且它需要的是比金钱更难得的东西--思考和冒险。 The challenge is not one of expansion. On the contrary, the rapid growth in enrollment over the last 40 years has come to an end. By 1978, more than 93 percent of young people entering the labor force had at least an eighth-grade education. So even if the birthrate should rise somewhat, little expansion is possible for elementary and secondary school enrollments. 这种挑战并不在于推广。相反，近40年来，招生人数的迅速增长已经结束。到1978年，加入劳动大军的93%以上的年轻人至少受过8年教育。因此，即使出生率有所上升，中小学入学人数不可能有大的增长。 The last 30 years social upheaval are also over. Busing will continue to be highly emotional issue in a good many large cities. And there will still be efforts to use schools to bring women into fields such as engineering that have traditionally been considered "male." But this shift has already been accomplished in many fields: half or more of the accounting students in graduate schools of business, for example, are now women. As for most other social issues, the country will no longer try to use schools to bring about social reform. It's becoming increasingly clear to policy makers that schools cannot solve all the problems of the larger community. 过去30年的社会动荡也要结束了。在许多大城市校车接送学生仍将是个极富感情色彩的问题。还需要继续作努力，利用学校让妇女们进入一些传统上被认为是"男性"的领域，诸如工程之类。但这种转换在许多领域已经完成了。例如，现在在商业研究生院半数或半数以上的会计专业的学生都是女性。至于大多数其他的社会问题，国家将不同志利用学校引起社会变革。决策者们越来越清楚地认识到学校不可能解决较大社会范围内的全部问题。 
相反，90年代的强烈呼声将是要求工作表现和能够承担责任。30年来，雇主们雇佣毕业生是因为其学历而不是看其能力；职业、薪水、甚至提升一直依赖文凭。现在许多大的雇主已经开始不仅仅注重学历了。例如，一些大银行正在研究进行入行考试的可能性，以此来测试求职者的毕业生的知识和能力。 Students and parents, too, will demand greater accountability from schools, on all levels. It will be increasingly common to go to law against school districts and colleges for awarding degrees without imparting the skills that are supposed to go along with them. And many young people are already switching to practical "hard" subjects. Caring little about the so-called "youth culture" and the media, they have been shifting from psychology into medicine, from sociology into accounting and from black studies into computer programming. 学生和家长们也将在各个层次对学校的责任提出更高的要求。因为学区和学院只授予学位而不传授必要技术而诉诸于法律的事将越来越普遍。许多年轻人已经开始转向具有实用性的、"过硬的"学科。他们不大关心所谓的"青年文化"和媒介，已经在从心理学转向医学，从社会学转向会计学，从黑人研究转向计算机程序设计 Demand for education is actually going up, not down. What is going down, and fairly fast, is demand for traditional education in traditional schools. 对教育的要求实际上正在提高，而不是下降。正在下降，而且争剧下降的是传统学校中对传统教育的要求。 Indeed, the fastest growing industry in America today may be the continuing professional education of highly schooled adults. Much of it takes place outside the education establishment - through companies, hospitals and government departments that run courses for managerial and professional employees; or through management associations and trade associations. In the meantime, any number of private enterprises are organizing courses, producing training films and tapes and otherwise taking advantage of growth opportunities that universities shy away from. 实际上，当今美国增长最快的行业可能是对受过不少教育的成年人的继续职业教育。很多这类教育是在教育机构之外进行的--通过公司、医院和政府部门，这些单位为其雇佣的管理人员和专业人员开设课程，或者通过管理协会或行业协会进行。与此同时，或多或少的私人企业也在组织课程，制作用于培训的影片和磁带并且以其他方式利用各种大学避而不用的增长机会。 The demand for continuing education does not take the from that most observers, including this writer, originally expected - namely, "Great Books" classes for adults wanting to learn about the humanities, the arts, the "life of the mind." We face instead a growing demand for advanced professional education: in engineering and medicine, in accounting and journalism, in law and in administration and management. 对继续教育的要求不采用包括本文作者在内的大多数观察者原先所想象的形式--即给想了解的人文学科、艺术以及心智活动的成年人用"大部头书"上课。我们面临的而是对高级职业教育日益增长的要求：在工程与医疗、会计与新闻、法律与行管方面。 
然而回来进行这类学习的成年人所要求的东西却是专业课程的老师很少能提供的：一种能把先进的专业技术知识融汇到经验和常识的更广阔的普遍体系中的人文主义的观点。由于这些新学生还需要非常规的时间--晚上、周末或者说把一个学期的任务挤到两周的高强度课程--他们的学习要求给学校的体制带来一种不明确的但又是真正的威胁。 The greatest challenge to education is likely to come from our new opportunities for diversity. We now have the chance to apply the basic findings of psychological, developmental and educational research over the last 100 years: namely, that no one educational method fits all children. 对教育的巨大挑战可能来自于我们在多样性中选择的新机会中。现在我们有机会利用过去100年来心理学、发展和教育等方面研究的基本成果。即没有一种教育方式适合所有的孩子。 Almost all children are capable of attaining the same standards within a reasonable period of time. All but a few babies, for instance, learn to walk by the age of two and to talk by the age of three, but no two get there quite the same way. 在一段合理的时间内，几乎所有的孩子都能达到同样的标准。例如，除了极小数婴儿外，所有的孩子都能在两岁时学会走路，三岁时学会说话，但是没有两个孩子是以同样的方式达到这一标准的。 So too at higher levels. Some children learn best by rote, in structured environments with high certainty and strict discipline. Others gain success in the less structured "permissive" atmosphere of a "progressive" school. Some adults learn out of books, some learn by doing, some learn best by listening. Some students need prescribed daily doses of information; others need challenge and a high degree of responsibility for the design of their own work. But for too long, teachers have insisted that there is one best way to teach and learn, even though they have disagreed about what that way is. 在较高的层次上也是如此。在非常稳定和严格的纪律构成的环境里，有的孩子是靠死记硬背学习的。有的孩子是在"进步"学校规则不甚严格的"随意"气氛中取得成绩的。有的成年人从书本中学习，有的从实践中学习，有的则靠听就能学得最好。有的学生需要规定每天要获取的一些信息；有的需要挑战，为他们的工作设计出高标准的要求。但是很久以来，教师们一致认为，教与学有一种最佳的方式，尽管他们对那种方式产生了分歧。 A century ago, the greatest majority of Americans lived in communities so small that only one one-room schoolhouse was within walking distance of small children. Then there had to be "one right method" for everybody to learn. 一个世纪前，绝大多数美国人所居住的社区是如此之小，以至于小孩步行的范围内只有一间房的校舍。那时只有"一种好方式"供大家学习。 
今天，美国绝大多数的孩子生活在人口稠密的大城市里，每个孩子步行或骑车所能到达的范围内不难找到三、四所小学和中学。这使学生以及家长们能够在竞争中的各个学校所提供的不同的学习机会中进行选择。 Indeed, competition and choice are already beginning to infiltrate the school system. Private schools and colleges have shown an unusual ability to survive and develop during a period of rising costs and dropping enrollments elsewhere. All this presents, of course, a true threat to the public school establishment. But economics, student needs and our new understanding of how people learn are bound to break the traditional education monopoly just as trucks and airplanes broke the monopoly of the railroads, and computers and "chips" are breaking the telephone monopoly. 实际上，竞争和选择已经开始渗透到学校的体制中。私立中学和大学在其他地方学费上涨，入学人数下降的时候展示出了非凡的生存和发展能力。当然所有这一切对公立教育体制构成了真正的威胁。但是经济情况、学生的需要以及我们对人们如何学习的理解肯定会打破传统的教育垄断，就像火车和飞机打破铁路的垄断、计算机和芯片正在打破电话的垄断一样。 In the next 10 or 15 years we will almost certainly see strong pressures to make schools responsible for thinking through what kind of learning methods are appropriate for each child. We sill almost certainly see great pressure, from parents and students alike, for result-focused education and for accountability in meeting objectives set for individual students. The continuing professional education of highly educated adults will become a third tier in addition to undergraduate and professional or graduate work. Above all, attention will shift back to schools and education as the central capital investment and infrastructure of a "knowledge society." 在下一个10年或15年里，我们几乎会肯定地看到强大的压力迫使学校负责思考什么样的学习方法适合每一个学生这个问题。我们几乎肯定地看到同样来看学生的和家长们的压力，要求提供注重结果的教育，要求负责让每个学生达到所制定的目标，对受过高层次教育的成年人的继续职业教育将是除本科生以及职业或研究生教育之后的第三种教育。更重要的是，注意力将转回到学校和教育上，把它们看作是"知识社会"的重要的基本投资和基础结构。 | 
