IN the coming weeks, two million Americans will earn a bachelor’s degree and either join the work force or head to graduate school. They will be joyous that day, and they will remember fondly the schools they attended. But as this unique chapter of life closes and they reflect on campus events, one primary part of higher education will fall low on the ladder of meaningful contacts: the professors.
在未来几周里，二百万美国人将获得学士学位，之后，他们要么参加工作，要么去读研究生。毕业日将是他们快乐的一天，他们也会思念他们读过的学校。但是，随着人生这一独特篇章的结束，毕业生开始反思校园生活，高等教育的一个主要部分将在有意义的校园接触排名中名落孙山，那就是教授。

That’s what students say. Oh, they’re quite content with their teachers; after all, most students receive sure approval. In 1960, only 15 percent of grades were in the “A” range, but now the rate is 43 percent, making “A” the most common grade by far.
那是学生们的说法。噢，他们对自己的教授很满意；毕竟，大多数学生都得到了肯定的认可。1960年，只有15％的成绩属于“A”的范围，而现在的比例是43％，使“A”成为远高于其他分数的最常见成绩。
Faculty members’ attitudes are kindly, too. In one national survey, 61 percent of students said that professors frequently treated them “like a colleague/peer,” while only 8 percent heard frequent “negative feedback about their academic work.” More than half leave the graduation ceremony believing that they are “well prepared” in speaking, writing, critical thinking and decision-making.
教授们的态度也很亲切。在一项全国调查中，有61％的学生人说教授经常把他们“像同事/同行”那样对待，只有8％的学生经常得到对“他们学习的负面反馈”。有超过半数的学生在毕业典礼结束时认为他们在公开发言、写作、批判性思维和做决策上受到“充分的培养”。
But while they’re content with teachers, students aren’t much interested in them as thinkers and mentors. They enroll in courses and complete assignments, but further engagement is minimal.
不过，虽然对教授们颇为满意，但学生们对教授作为思考者和导师的角色并不怎么感兴趣。他们选教授的课，完成作业，但进一步的接触极少。
One measure of interest in what professors believe, what wisdom they possess apart from the content of the course, is interaction outside of class. It’s often during incidental conversations held after the bell rings and away from the demands of the syllabus that the transfer of insight begins and a student’s emulation grows. Students email teachers all the time — why walk across campus when you can fire a note from your room? — but those queries are too curt for genuine mentoring. We need face time.
对教授有什么信仰、他们除了授课外还拥有什么智慧感兴趣的标志之一，是课堂外的互动。通常是在下课铃声响了之后，与教学大纲的要求无关的地方，洞察力的传授才开始，学生的效仿才形成。虽然学生动不动就给教授发电子邮件——当你能从宿舍房间里轻而易举地发个短信时，干吗要从校园的一头走到另一头呢？——但这种询问从真正指导的角度来看太简短了。我们需要面对面的时间。
Here, though, are the meager numbers. For a majority of undergraduates, beyond the two and a half hours per week in class, contact ranges from negligible to nonexistent. In their first year, 33 percent of students report that they never talk with professors outside of class, while 42 percent do so only sometimes. Seniors lower that disengagement rate only a bit, with 25 percent never talking to professors, and 40 percent sometimes.
但是，正是这方面的数字很糟糕。对于大多数本科生来说，除了每周两个半小时的课堂时间，与教授接触的时间从可忽略不计到不存在。在大学的第一年，有33％学生报告说，他们从未在课堂之外与教授说过话，有42％的学生只是偶尔这样做。大四的学生中与教授完全没有接触的比率略低一点，有25％的学生从来没和教授说过话，40％的学生有时和教授说话。
It hasn’t always been this way. “I revered many of my teachers,” Todd Gitlin said when we met at the New York Public Library last month. He’s a respected professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia, but in the 1960s he was a fiery working-class kid at Harvard before becoming president of Students for a Democratic Society.
并不是从来都这样。当我们上个月在纽约公共图书馆见面时，托德·吉特林(Todd Gitlin)说，“我尊敬我的许多老师。”吉特林是哥伦比亚大学新闻系和社会学系的一位受人尊敬的教授，但在20世纪60年代，他是哈佛的一名来自工薪阶层的激进学生，后来当了学生组织“学生民主社会”(Students for a Democratic Society)的会长。
I asked if student unrest back then included disregard of the faculty. Not at all, he said. Nobody targeted professors. Militants attacked the administration for betraying what the best professors embodied, the free inquisitive space of the Ivory Tower.
我问他，当时的学潮是否包括对教授的蔑视。他说，一点都没有。没有人有针对教授。激进学生攻击了行政部门，因为管理者背叛了教授所代表的最好东西，那就是象牙塔里的自由探索空间。
I saw the same thing in my time at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the early 1980s, when you couldn’t walk down the row of faculty offices without stepping over the outstretched legs of English majors lining up for consultations. First-year classes could be as large as 400, but by junior year you settled into a field and got to know a few professors well enough to chat with them regularly, and at length. We knew, and they knew, that these moments were the heart of liberal education.
我在加州大学洛杉矶分校(University of California, Los Angeles)就读时也看到了同样的情况，那是在20世纪80年代初，那时候，当你从成排的教授办公室门前走过时，会不得不从在门外排队等待与教授进行磋商的英语专业学生伸出的腿中间迈过。大一的课可能大到有400个学生，但到了大三，你已选好了专业，足够好地认识了几个教授，能经常与他们聊天，而且是长聊。我们知道，他们也知道，这样的时刻才是人文教育的核心所在。
In our hunger for guidance, we were ordinary. The American Freshman Survey, which has followed students since 1966, proves the point. One prompt in the questionnaire asks entering freshmen about “objectives considered to be essential or very important.” In 1967, 86 percent of respondents checked “developing a meaningful philosophy of life,” more than double the number who said “being very well off financially.”
在对指导的渴望方面，我们都是普通人。从1966年开始追踪学生情况的美国大学新生调查(American Freshman Survey)证明了这一点。问卷中的一个问题，问刚入学的大一学生“认为至关重要或非常重要的目标是什么”。在1967年，86%的受访者选择了“形成有意义的人生观”，是选“在经济上非常富足”的人的两倍多。
Naturally, students looked to professors for moral and worldly understanding. Since then, though, finding meaning and making money have traded places. The first has plummeted to 45 percent; the second has soared to 82 percent.
自然，学生指望从教授那里得到道德和世俗方面的感悟。但从那时候起，寻找意义和赚钱就互换了位置。选第一个的比例跌至45%，而选第二个的比例飙升至82%。
I returned to U.C.L.A. on a mild afternoon in February and found the hallways quiet and dim. Dozens of 20-year-olds strolled and chattered on the quad outside, but in the English department, only one in eight doors was open, and barely a half dozen of the department’s 1,400 majors waited for a chance to speak.
2月一个暖和的下午，我回到加州大学洛杉矶分校，发现走廊里非常安静，一片昏暗。几十名20岁的年轻人在外面的四方院里散步聊天，但在英语系，只有八分之一的门开着，并且在该系1400名学生中，等着有机会和教授交谈的还不到五六个人。
When college is more about career than ideas, when paycheck matters more than wisdom, the role of professors changes. We may be 50-year-olds at the front of the room with decades of reading, writing, travel, archives or labs under our belts, with 80 courses taught, but students don’t lie in bed mulling over what we said. They have no urge to become disciples.
当学校更多的是关乎职业而非理念，当薪水比智慧更重要时，教授的角色变了。在教室前面的我们可能50岁了，有几十年的阅读、写作、旅行和在档案馆或实验室研究的经历，教过80门课程，但学生不会躺在床上琢磨我们说的东西。他们没有成为信徒的欲望。
Sadly, professors pressed for research time don’t want them, either. As a result, most undergraduates never know that stage of development when a learned mind enthralled them and they progressed toward a fuller identity through admiration of and struggle with a role model.
悲哀的是，缺乏研究时间的教授也不想让他们成为信徒。结果，大部分本科生永远都不知道有这样一个发展阶段：博学者令他们着迷，他们会通过对某个榜样的仰慕及与那个榜样的斗争，形成更完整的人格。
Since the early 2000s, I have made students visit my office every other week with a rough draft of an essay. We appraise and revise the prose, sentence by sentence. I ask for a clearer idea or a better verb; I circle a misplaced modifier and wait as they make the fix.
从本世纪初开始，我就让学生每隔一周带上文章初稿来我的办公室一趟。我们会逐句逐句地评价和修改文章。我要求他们有更清晰的想法，或是想到一个更好的动词。我会圈出用错的修饰语，等他们自己修改。
As I wait, I sympathize: So many things distract them — the gym, text messages, rush week — and often campus culture treats them as customers, not pupils. Student evaluations and ratemyprofessor.com paint us as service providers. Years ago at Emory University, where I work, a campus-life dean addressed new students with a terrible message: Don’t go too far into coursework — there’s so much more to do here! And yet, I find, my writing sessions help diminish those distractions, and by the third meeting students have a new attitude. This is a teacher who rejects my worst and esteems my best thoughts and words, they say to themselves.
等待时，我心生同情：让他们分心的事情太多了——健身、短信、社团活动——而且校园文化通常把他们当做消费者，而非学生。学生评估和给教授打分的网站把我们描绘成了服务供应商。多年前，在我任教的埃默里大学(Emory University)，一位分管校园生活的院长在对新生讲话时传递了一个糟糕的讯息：不要过多地纠缠于作业，在这里有很多事情可以做！但我发现，我的写作讲习会有助于减少让学生分心的事情。到第三次见面时，学生们就有了新的态度。他们对自己说，这个老师会驳回我最差的表现，尊重我最上乘的想法和文字。
You can’t become a moral authority if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it. If we professors do not do that, the course is not an induction of eager minds into an enlarging vision. It is a requirement to fulfill. Only our assistance with assignments matters. When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.
如果很少在课堂上质疑学生，也很少在课外和他们接触，就无法成为道德上的权威。如果我们教授不这么做，课程就不会引导充满求知欲的学生拓展自己的视野。它会变成要去满足的要求。届时只有我们的作业指导会有意义。对于学生，我们只在一个方面堪称权威：给出的成绩。我们变得不再是令人生畏的智者，或道德标杆、榜样、灵感启发者。我们变成了认证提供者。