2010年自學考試英語閱讀輔導八

作者：不明　發(fā)布時間：2010-05-25 10:13:05　來源：網(wǎng)絡(luò)

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　　Changes to Come in U. S. Education
　　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.
　　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.
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.
　　Instead, the battle cry for the '90s will be the demand for performance and accountability. For 30 years, employers have been hiring graduates for their degrees rather than their abilities; employment, pay and often even promotion have depended on one's diploma. Now many major employers are beginning to demand more than the completion of school. Some of the major banks, for example, are studying the possibility of entrance examinations that would test the knowledge and abilities of graduates applying for jobs.
　　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.
　　Demand for education is actually going up, not down. What is going down, and fairly fast, is demand for traditional education in traditional schools.
　　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.
　　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.
　　Yet the adults who come back for such studies also demand what teachers of professional subjects are so rarely able to supply: a humanistic perspective that can integrate advanced professional and technical knowledge into a broader universe of experience and learning. Since these new students also need unconventional hours - evenings, weekends or high-intensity courses that stuff a term's work into two weeks - their demands for learning bring a vague but real threat to the school establishment.
　　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.
　　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.
　　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.
　　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.
　　Today the great majority of pupils in the United States (and all developed countries) live in big cities with such density that there can easily be three or four elementary schools - as well as secondary schools within each child's walking or bicycling distance. This enables students and their parents to choose between alternative routes to learning offered by competing schools.
　　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.
　　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."
　　美國教育將要發(fā)生的變化
　　下一個十年美國所面臨的最大的"基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施"的挑戰(zhàn)并不是鐵路、公路和能源所需的幾十億美元，而是美國的教育體制，從幼兒園到哲學博士的培養(yǎng)項目，到成人的研究教育。而且它需要的是比金錢更難得的東西--思考和冒險。
　　這種挑戰(zhàn)并不在于推廣。相反，近40年來，招生人數(shù)的迅速增長已經(jīng)結(jié)束。到1978年，加入勞動大軍的93%以上的年輕人至少受過8年教育。因此，即使出生率有所上升，中小學入學人數(shù)不可能有大的增長。
　　過去30年的社會動蕩也要結(jié)束了。在許多大城市校車接送學生仍將是個極富感情色彩的問題。還需要繼續(xù)作努力，利用學校讓婦女們進入一些傳統(tǒng)上被認為是"男性"的領(lǐng)域，諸如工程之類。但這種轉(zhuǎn)換在許多領(lǐng)域已經(jīng)完成了。例如，現(xiàn)在在商業(yè)研究生院半數(shù)或半數(shù)以上的會計專業(yè)的學生都是女性。至于大多數(shù)其他的社會問題，國家將不同志利用學校引起社會變革。決策者們越來越清楚地認識到學校不可能解決較大社會范圍內(nèi)的全部問題。
　　相反，90年代的強烈呼聲將是要求工作表現(xiàn)和能夠承擔責任。30年來，雇主們雇傭畢業(yè)生是因為其學歷而不是看其能力；職業(yè)、薪水、甚至提升一直依賴文憑�，F(xiàn)在許多大的雇主已經(jīng)開始不僅僅注重學歷了。例如，一些大銀行正在研究進行入行考試的可能性，以此來測試求職者的畢業(yè)生的知識和能力。
　　學生和家長們也將在各個層次對學校的責任提出更高的要求。因為學區(qū)和學院只授予學位而不傳授必要技術(shù)而訴諸于法律的事將越來越普遍。許多年輕人已經(jīng)開始轉(zhuǎn)向具有實用性的、"過硬的"學科。他們不大關(guān)心所謂的"青年文化"和媒介，已經(jīng)在從心理學轉(zhuǎn)向醫(yī)學，從社會學轉(zhuǎn)向會計學，從黑人研究轉(zhuǎn)向計算機程序設(shè)計，
　　對教育的要求實際上正在提高，而不是下降。正在下降，而且爭劇下降的是傳統(tǒng)學校中對傳統(tǒng)教育的要求。
　　實際上，當今美國增長最快的行業(yè)可能是對受過不少教育的成年人的繼續(xù)職業(yè)教育。很多這類教育是在教育機構(gòu)之外進行的--通過公司、醫(yī)院和政府部門，這些單位為其雇傭的管理人員和專業(yè)人員開設(shè)課程，或者通過管理協(xié)會或行業(yè)協(xié)會進行。與此同時，或多或少的私人企業(yè)也在組織課程，制作用于培訓的影片和磁帶并且以其他方式利用各種大學避而不用的增長機會。
　　對繼續(xù)教育的要求不采用包括本文作者在內(nèi)的大多數(shù)觀察者原先所想象的形式--即給想了解的人文學科、藝術(shù)以及心智活動的成年人用"大部頭書"上課。我們面臨的而是對高級職業(yè)教育日益增長的要求：在工程與醫(yī)療、會計與新聞、法律與行管方面。
　　然而回來進行這類學習的成年人所要求的東西卻是專業(yè)課程的老師很少能提供的：一種能把先進的專業(yè)技術(shù)知識融匯到經(jīng)驗和常識的更廣闊的普遍體系中的人文主義的觀點。由于這些新學生還需要非常規(guī)的時間--晚上、周末或者說把一個學期的任務(wù)擠到兩周的高強度課程--他們的學習要求給學校的體制帶來一種不明確的但又是真正的威脅。
　　對教育的巨大挑戰(zhàn)可能來自于我們在多樣性中選擇的新機會中�，F(xiàn)在我們有機會利用過去100年來心理學、發(fā)展和教育等方面研究的基本成果。即沒有一種教育方式適合所有的孩子。
　　在一段合理的時間內(nèi)，幾乎所有的孩子都能達到同樣的標準。例如，除了極小數(shù)嬰兒外，所有的孩子都能在兩歲時學會走路，三歲時學會說話，但是沒有兩個孩子是以同樣的方式達到這一標準的。
　　在較高的層次上也是如此。在非常穩(wěn)定和嚴格的紀律構(gòu)成的環(huán)境里，有的孩子是靠死記硬背學習的。有的孩子是在"進步"學校規(guī)則不甚嚴格的"隨意" 氣氛中取得成績的。有的成年人從書本中學習，有的從實踐中學習，有的則靠聽就能學得最好。有的學生需要規(guī)定每天要獲取的一些信息；有的需要挑戰(zhàn)，為他們的工作設(shè)計出高標準的要求。但是很久以來，教師們一致認為，教與學有一種最佳的方式，盡管他們對那種方式產(chǎn)生了分歧。
　　一個世紀前，絕大多數(shù)美國人所居住的社區(qū)是如此之小，以至于小孩步行的范圍內(nèi)只有一間房的校舍。那時只有"一種好方式"供大家學習。
　　今天，美國絕大多數(shù)的孩子生活在人口稠密的大城市里，每個孩子步行或騎車所能到達的范圍內(nèi)不難找到三、四所小學和中學。這使學生以及家長們能夠在競爭中的各個學校所提供的不同的學習機會中進行選擇。
　　實際上，競爭和選擇已經(jīng)開始滲透到學校的體制中。私立中學和大學在其他地方學費上漲，入學人數(shù)下降的時候展示出了非凡的生存和發(fā)展能力。當然所有這一切對公立教育體制構(gòu)成了真正的威脅。但是經(jīng)濟情況、學生的需要以及我們對人們?nèi)绾螌W習的理解肯定會打破傳統(tǒng)的教育壟斷，就像火車和飛機打破鐵路的壟斷、計算機和芯片正在打破電話的壟斷一樣。
　　在下一個10年或15年里，我們幾乎會肯定地看到強大的壓力迫使學校負責思考什么樣的學習方法適合每一個學生這個問題。我們幾乎肯定地看到同樣來看學生的和家長們的壓力，要求提供注重結(jié)果的教育，要求負責讓每個學生達到所制定的目標，對受過高層次教育的成年人的繼續(xù)職業(yè)教育將是除本科生以及職業(yè)或研究生教育之后的第三種教育。更重要的是，注意力將轉(zhuǎn)回到學校和教育上，把它們看作是"知識社會"的重要的基本投資和基礎(chǔ)結(jié)構(gòu)。

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