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Another School Year — What For?--John Ciardi

"But having finished the day's work, what do you do with those other eight hours? Let's say you go home to your family. What sort of family are you raising? Will the children ever be exposed to a reasonably penetrating idea at home? Will you be presiding over a family that maintains some contact with the great democratic intellect? Will there be a book in the house? Will there be a painting a reasonably sensitive man can look at without shuddering? Will the kids ever get to hear Bach?"

That is about what I said, but this particular pest was not interested. "Look," he said, "you professors raise your kids your way; I'll take care of my own. Me, I'm out to make money."

"I hope you make a lot of it," I told him, "because you're going to be badly stuck for something to do when you're not signing checks."

Fourteen years later I am still teaching, and I am here to tell you that the business of the college is not only to train you, but to put you in touch with what the best human minds have thought. If you have no time for Shakespeare, for a basic look at philosophy, for the continuity of the fine arts, for that lesson of man's development we call history — then you have no business being in college. You are on your way to being that new species of mechanized savage, the push-button Neanderthal. Our colleges inevitably graduate a number of such life forms, but it cannot be said that they went to college; rather the college went through them — without making contact.

No one gets to be a human being unaided. There is not time enough in a single lifetime to invent for oneself everything one needs to know in order to be a civilized human.

Assume, for example, that you want to be a physicist. You pass the great stone halls of, say, M. I. T., and there cut into the stone are the names of the scientists. The chances are that few, if any, of you will leave your names to be cut into those stones. Yet any of you who managed to stay awake through part of a high school course in physics, knows more about physics than did many of those great scholars of the past. You know more because they left you what they knew, because you can start from what the past learned for you.

And as this is true of the techniques of mankind, so it is true of mankind's spiritual resources. Most of these resources, both technical and spiritual, are stored in books. Books are man's peculiar accomplishment. When you have read a book, you have added to your human experience. Read Homer and your mind includes a piece of Homer's mind.

Through books you can acquire at least fragments of the mind and experience of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare — the list is endless. For a great book is necessarily a gift; it offers you a life you have not the time to live yourself, and it takes you into a world you have not the time to travel in literal time. A civilized mind is, in essence, one that contains many such lives and many such worlds. If you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your own limitations, to accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the minds of Aristotle, or Chaucer, or Einstein, you are neither a developed human nor a useful citizen of a democracy.

I think it was La Rochefoucauld who said that most people would never fall in love if they hadn't read about it. He might have said that no one would ever manage to become human if they hadn't read about it.

I speak, I'm sure, for the faculty of the liberal arts college and for the faculties of the specialized schools as well, when I say that a university has no real existence and no real purpose except as it succeeds in putting you in touch, both as specialists and as humans, with those human minds your human mind needs to include. The faculty, by its very existence, says implicitly: "We have been aided by many people, and by many books, in our attempt to make ourselves some sort of storehouse of human experience. We are here to make available to you, as best we can, that expertise."

参考译文

上大学的意义-B

“但是，完成每天的工作后，另外的八小时做什么呢？假设你回到了家， 和家人在一起，你供养的家是什么样的呢？孩子们在家能接触到一点还算是精辟的思想吗？你主持的家庭中有民主气息吗？家里有书吗？有一般敏感的人看了不会发抖的画吗？孩子们能听到巴赫的音乐吗？”

这差不多就是我所说的，但是这个讨厌鬼并不感兴趣。“看”，他说，“你们教授以你们的方式培养孩子，我会以自己的方式培养我的孩子。我啊，我会尽一切去挣钱的。”

“我希望你能挣很多钱，”我告诉他，“因为你在开支票的余暇会愁没事干的。”

十四年后的今天，我还在教书，在此我要告诉你们，大学的任务不仅是培训你们，还要使你们接触人类思想的精髓。如果你们没时间看莎士比亚的作品，没时间看哲学入门，没时间欣赏艺术的存续，也没时间学习我们称之为历史的人类发展的课程--那么你们就没必要呆在大学了。你们正在变成那种新型的机械化的野蛮人，那种安装有按钮的尼安德人。我们大学的毕业生不可避免有不少这样的行尸走肉；但是我们不能说它们上过大学，只能说大学曾存在于它们的生活--却没有留下任何痕迹。没有外界的帮助，谁也不会成长为一个文明人。要想成为一个文明人，必须获取文明社会所需的知识和文化，而人生苦短，不足以获取人类历史长河中所有宝贵财产。

比如说你想成为一个物理学家。你走过，比方说，麻省理工学院宏伟的石头大厅，那里的石头上刻着很多科学家的名字。很可能将来，你们当中几乎没有人可以把名字留在那些石头上，如果有的话也是少数。但是只要你们原来上高中物理课时不是从头睡到尾，你们当中任何一个人了解的物理学知识都要比许多那些历史上的伟大的学者多。你知道的多是因为他们将他们知道的传给了你，你可以从他们已了解的知识上起步。

人类的技术发展是如此，人类精神财富的积累也是如此。这些技术和精神的大部分资料都存储在书中。书籍是人类独有的成就。你读完一本书，你就丰富了自己的人生阅历。阅读荷马的作品，那么你的头脑里就有了荷马的思想。通过读书你起码能获得一些维吉尔、但丁、莎士比亚的思想和经历--名单是列不完的。因为一本好书必然是一份礼物；它为你呈现你没时间去亲身体验的生活，带你进入一个你在现实生活中没时间去亲自游览的世界。从本质上说，一个文明的人应该知道许多这样的生活和这样的世界。如果你太过匆忙，或是对自己的无知洋洋得意，以至于不能把一些亚里士多德，乔叟或爱因斯坦的思想当做你的品质的一件礼物来接受，那么你既不是一个先进的人，也不是一个民主社会的有用公民。

我记得拉罗什富科说过，大多数人如果没有读过关于爱情方面的书，他们就不会恋爱；他还可能说过如果没有读过有关人类的书，就没有一个人能成为真正的人。

当我说过只有大学使你们，无论作为专业人才还是普通人，接触到那些你们的头脑应该有的那些人类的思想，它才有存在的意义，才有真正的办学目的时，我敢肯定我在替文学院的教职工，也在替专门学校的教职工说话。教职员工们的存在就暗示了这一点：“在努力使我们自己成为某种人类经验的宝库的过程中，我们得到了许多人的帮助，也得到了很多书籍的帮助。我们教师的任务就是尽最大努力使你们能够获得那些专门知识。”
词汇释义

1.be exposed to 遭受, 暴露于...；面临着，接受，接触

例句：

This liquid is not to be exposed to air, for it will soon evaporate.
这种夜体不可暴露在空气中，因为它会很快蒸发掉。

2.shudder vi.发抖, 打颤, 战栗

例句：

I still shudder when I look back on the past.
想起过去，我仍然不寒而粟。

3.savage 野性的；凶猛的；粗鲁的；荒野的；

例句：

These civilizations flourished while Europeans were still savages living in caves.
当欧洲人还是居住在洞穴中的野蛮人时，这些地方的文化早已十分繁荣昌盛。

4.unaided adj. 未受协助的

例句：

The baby cannot sit unaided she has to be propped up on pillows.
那婴儿还不会坐--得让她倚著枕头才行.

5.arrogantly adv. 傲慢地

例句：

He insisted arrogantly.
他傲慢地坚持己见。

6.implicitly adv.含蓄地, 暗中地

例句：

It is implicitly accepted that each person, whether he is an adult or a child, should be encouraged to make his own decisions, develop his own opinions,

solve his own problems, and have his own possessions.
勿庸置疑，不管对成人还是小孩，应鼓励每个人自己作决定，形成自己的观点，解决自己的问题，以及拥有自己的财产。

难句解析

1.You are on your way to being that new species of mechanized savage, the push-button Neanderthal.

【难句释义】You will soon become an uneducated, ignorant person who can only work machines and operate mechanical equipment.

【难句解析】the push-button Neanderthal为new species of mechanized savage 的同位语。

2.If you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your own limitations, to accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the minds of Aristotle, or Chaucer, or Einstein, you are neither a developed human nor a useful citizen of a democracy.

【难句释义】If you are too eager to make money, or if you are too ignorant of seeing your limitations, to accept some of the thinking of Aristotle,or Chaucer, or Einstein as something that will help cultivate in you the quality of being a human. You will become neither a developed human nor a useful citizen of a democracy.

【难句解析】 注意简单短语too...to“太...以至于不能”在句中的应用。同时此句既是一个省略句，又是一个运用了强调性并列连词neither...nor...的主从复合句。首先，or后面省略了if you are。其次，当我们表达两项并列的成分时，常使用一些固定的强调性并列连词将其加以连接。如：either...or,not only...but (also)..., not...but..., both...and...等等。