What my father told me that evening was true in itself, and it also contains the germ of an idea about what a university education should be. But apparently almost everyone else—students, teachers, and trustees and parents—sees the matter much differently. They have it wrong.
那天晚上，父亲所告诉我的除了本身的真实性，还包括了大学教育应该是什么样子的理念起源。但是显然其他大多数人，学生、老师、校监以及家长们并不以为然，他们都错了。
Education has one salient enemy in present-day America, and that enemy is education—university education in particular. To almost everyone, university education is a means to an end. For students, that end is a good job. Students want the credentials that will help them get ahead. They want the certificate that will give them access to Wall Street, or entrance into law or medical or business school. And how can we blame them? America values power and money, big players with big bucks. When we raise our children, we tell them in multiple ways that what we want most for them is success—material success. To be poor in America is to be a failure—it's to be without decent health care, without basic necessities, often without dignity. Then there are those backbreaking student loans—people leave school as servants, indentured to pay massive bills, so that first job better be a good one. Students come to college with the goal of a diploma in mind—what happens in between, especially in classrooms, is often of no deep and determining interest to them.
当今美国的教育有一个主要的敌人，这个敌人就是教育本身——尤其是大学教育。几乎对每一个人来说，大学教育都是到达终点的一种手段。对学生来说，终点就是一份好的工作，学生想要得到帮助他们前进的证书，他们想要能让他们进人华尔街的证书，能让他们进入法学院、医学院以及商学院的证书。我们怎么能怪他们呢？美国崇尚权力和金钱，喜欢揣着大钱的大玩家。抚养孩子的时候，我们用很多方式告诉他们我们对他们最大的期望就是成功——物质上的成功。在美国，贫穷就是失败——意味着没有像样的医疗保障，没有必需品，通常也没有尊严。还有那些繁重的学生贷款——他们一毕业就成了仆人，必须按照合约偿还巨额贷款，因此，第一份工作必须是好工作。学生来到大学，脑海里的目标就是获得文凭——而大学期间发生什么，尤其是课堂上发生什么，对他们来说通常无法唤起他们的兴趣和决心。
In college, life is elsewhere. Life is at parties, at clubs, in music, with friends, in sports. Life is what celebrities have. The idea that the courses you take should be the primary objective of going to college is tacitly considered absurd. In terms of their work, students live in the future and not the present; they live with their prospects for success. If universities stopped issuing credentials, half of the clients would be gone by tomorrow morning, with the remainder following fast behind.
大学里的生活在别处。生活就是聚会、酒吧、音乐、伙伴，还有运动。生活就是名人怎么过，学生就怎么过。那种认为自己所选课程是读大学的主要目标的想法被默认是可笑的。就学生的任务而言，他们活在未来而不是当下；活在对成功的期望里。如果大学停止颁发证书，到明天早上，会有一半的学生离开，剩下的一半紧随其后。