新世纪大学生英语综合教材3Unit5A.doc

Education in cyberspace On a recent business trip a man asked me what I did for a living. I replied that I wrote and taught college courses.1在最近的一次出差途中，有人问及我的职业，我说自己是从事编写和教授大学课程的。Oh? he said. Where do you teach?2“哦？那在哪儿教书？”他问道。A honest answer came out of my mouth before I could think. Nowhere, I said.3我不假思索，老老实实地答道：“虚无空间里”。 Its true. Since 1990 I have taught and counseled for what a friend of mine calls keyboard colleges distance-learning degree programs.Where I teach is inside that electrically charged space that lies between my phone jack and the home computers of a group of generally older-than-average college students.4我说的是实情。1990年起，我就在被朋友称作“键盘大 学”里教远程学位教育课程并提供辅导。我的课堂是在充满电荷的空间里，其间一端连着我的电话插座，另一端连着一群年龄偏大的大学生家里的电脑。 In 1990, I designed Americas first online counseling center for distance learners. Since then Ive worked with more than 7,000 learners online. Ive flunked a few of them. Ive never personally met any of them. 51990年，我筹建了美国第一个远程学习者在线辅导中 心。迄今为止，我已在线辅导了700多个学生，其中只有几个人不及格，而我本人却从未与他们谋面。 For want of a clearer explanation of my career situation, I told the man who inquired that I teach in cyberspace. Im a virtual professor, I tried explaining. Distance learning online degree programs virtual universities. 6由于无法更清楚地解释我的工作环境，我只能告诉这位问话者：我在虚拟空间教书，“是个虚拟大学的教师。”我试着向他解释“远程教育在线学位课程虚拟大学”等 等。 The mans face remained as blank as a clear summer sky. I couldnt tell whether he was silent out of respect or keen confusion. I imagined both to be the case , so I settled in to explain what I have to explain frequently these days: the decline of the American college campus and the rise of the American educational mind as I see it.7那人的脸上仍旧一片茫然。我不清楚他沉默不语到底是因肃然起敬所致，还是纯粹对此稀里糊涂。我猜想两个原因都有。于是，我就开始解释这些天来经常解释的事情：我认为，美国的大学教育在衰退，而美国的教育新思维正在兴起。 Distance learning, or educational programs where pupil and professor never meet face-to-face, is nothing new. Sir Isaac Pitman of Bath , England, hit upon the idea of having rural residents learn secretarial skills by translating the Bible into shorthand , then mailing these translations back to him for grading . He began doing this in 1840. And he made mound of money doing it.8远程教学（即师生不用谋面的教育课程）并不是件新生事物。英国巴斯大学的艾塞克彼特曼爵士曾突发奇想，让乡村居民把圣经转换成速记文字，然后邮寄给他评阅，以这种办法教会他们文秘技能。1840年他就开始实施，从中赚取了大笔的金钱。 I dont teach shorthand; I teach psychology and career development. I write many of my own lessons, though, just as Sir Isaac had to do. My post is the World Wide Web. I post assignments toelectronic bulletin boards and send graded papers across the international phone lines in tariff -free e-mail packets. I convene classes and give lectures in online chat rooms when need be.9我并不教速记，我教心理学和职业拓展。但还是和艾塞克爵士一样，很多课程是自己编写的。我的岗位是在万维 网，我把作业张贴在电子布告栏上，把批阅过的试卷用电子邮件通过国际电话线发送出去，而且免交关税；必要时，把班级学生召集起来，在网上聊天室里在线讲课。 Is this any way to dispense with a real college education? Can people learn without sitting in neat rows in a lecture room listening to the professor the Sage on the Stage10难道这种方式能够摒弃现实中的大学教育吗？学生难道不用整齐地坐在教室里聆听老师讲坛上的圣人讲课就能学到知识吗？Yes, absolutely. Why not? In fact, while many people find it hard to imagine a college with no campus, I nowadays find it hard to imagine teaching anywhere other than in the liberal freedom that is cyberspace.11绝对可以，毫无疑问。事实上，很多人都认为没有校园的大学难以想象，可我现在却以为不在网络空间这块充满自由氛围的地方教书才是匪夷所思呢。 In cyberspace, I listen, read, comment and reflect what my students have to say each of them in turn. What they know, they must communicate to me in words. They cannot sit passivelyin the back row twiddling their mental thumbs as the clock ticksaway .They must think; and horrors of horrors, they must write . Thinking and writing: Arent these the Hallmarks of a classically educated mind? 12在网络空间里，我倾听、阅读、评价、思考学生们表述的观点一次一个，轮流发言。他们必须书面把见解传输给我，他们不能坐在后排座位上，无所事事地打发时光。他们必须思考，最令他们头疼的是，他们必须写作。思考与写作，那不就是传统教育培养出来的人才所具备的特质吗？ I know my students not by their faces or their seat position in a vast lecture auditorium ; I know them by the words and ideas they express in their weekly assignments, which everyone reads online13我不是凭借他们的脸庞或是他们在宽敞教室里所坐位置来认识我的学生，而是通过他们每周作业里的文字和观点了解他们。这些文字与观点大家都能在线读到。 I am not a Sage on the Stage I am more a Guide on the Side. Often what the students say or write to one another, or the way they incorporate their work and career ideas into their papers and debates with each other, is more practically inspiring than any help I could provide them with.14我不是讲坛上的圣人我更像是他们身边的向导。通常，学生们之间“说”的或写的东西、把自己工作和职业体会融入论文和辩论的方式，比起我能够提供的任何东西都更加实用，更有启迪性。My average college kid s 40 years old. More than a few are in their 50s or 60s. They are telecommuting to campus because they could not, or would not, uproot their careers and kids or grandkids to move to a college campus an entity modeled after the learning of monasteries of medieval times.15我学生的年龄一般是四十岁，还有不少五六十岁。他们通过网络来上学。因为他们不能或者不愿意辞去工作、离开儿女或孙辈们搬进大学校园那样的大学无非就是一个依照中世纪修道院模式建立起来的教育实体。Many of them know what they are talking about. Even more so, they know why they came back to college to learn. A cyber-education suits them because it respects their abilities to define for themselves what knowledge is and to go after interference it. It encourages them to argue their points and their perspectives without the interference of a professor, who might be tempted to step in to “calm down” or refocus an otherwise wonderfully enlightening classroom debate. 16他们大多数了解自己所谈论的东西，不仅如此，他们清楚自己为何返回大学学习。网络教育适合他们，因为网络教育尊重学员界定知识和追求知识的能力，鼓励他们抒发自己的观点和见解，没有教师干扰，因为教师可能会情不自禁地介入他们的争论，把原本很有启发性的课堂讨论“平息”或者“引到别的话题上去”。 They are experiencing something very different from the traditional factory model of American education, in which everyone on the assembly line is delivered the same units of information (lectures and textbooks) and then must pass the same quality inspection (objective exams). This factory model where students sit in neat rows, holding up their hands for permission to speak, Clock-watching their way through textbooks and lectures that are broken into discrete bits of knowledge has never been shown to be an effective way to learn. It has, however, been proven to be a convenient way for colleges to record on transcripts that a standard body of knowledge has been17学生们体验到的东西完全不同于依照传统工厂模式运作的美国教育。在传统教育中，生产线上的每个人接收到相同标准单位的信息（讲座和教材），然后必须通过同一质量检查（客观考试）。学生们坐在整齐排列的座位上，举手请求允许后才发言，不断地看着钟表学课本、听讲座，课本和讲座被分解成不相关联的知识玩意儿。没有证据显示，这样的工厂模式是有效的学习途径，而只能证明这是一种很便利的方式：大学在成绩报告单上记录下标准份量的知识已如期地传授。 Maybe teaching a liberal arts curriculum via a virtual environment makes more sense to me because it brings me backto what I learned to be a true liberal arts education. Studying philosophy in Athens, Greece, I was taught that to learn anything, one had to throw away textbooks and notebooks mere memory tools and instead rely on ones native ability to think critically.18或许，在虚拟环境下教大学文科课程对我来说特别有意义，因为它可以追溯到我当年所了解到的真正的大学文科教育。在希腊雅典研读哲学时，老师教导我，要学到东西就得扔掉课本和笔记本这些不过是记忆工具的东西，要依赖我们与生俱来的本领进行批判性思考。 While my cyber-students do have textbooks, the books are learning ; they are not the only