Andrew Delbanco must be a great teacher. A longtime faculty member at Columbia, he is devoted to the development of his students as individuals, and recognizes that their time in college should be formative: “They may still be deterred from sheer self-interest toward a life of enlarged sympathy and civic responsibility.” Like most professors devoted to teaching, he has no interest in telling undergraduates what to think, but he does want to draw them toward a sense of skepticism about the status quo and to a feeling of wonder about the natural world. College, he tells us, is a time to learn to “make connections among seemingly disparate phenomena,” to see things from another’s point of view and to develop a sense of ethical responsibility. At a time when many are trying to reduce the college years to a training period for economic competition, Delbanco reminds readers of the ideal of democratic education.

安德魯·德爾班科(Andrew Delbanco)一定是一位偉大的老師。他長期任教于哥倫比亞大學，致力于把他的學生培養(yǎng)成獨立的人，他認識到他們的在校時間應該有助于他們的成長：“徹底的自私可能會阻礙他們擴展同情心，影響他們負起公民的責任。”他跟大多數(shù)獻身于教學的教授一樣，興趣不在于告訴本科生該思考什么，但他確實希望他們擁有對現(xiàn)狀的懷疑精神和對自然界的好奇心。他告訴我們，大學時光真正該學習的是：“把看上去風馬牛不相及的現(xiàn)象聯(lián)系起來”、從他人的角度看待事物、培養(yǎng)道德責任感?，F(xiàn)如今很多人想要縮減學院歲月，將其改造成順應經(jīng)濟競爭的培訓期。而在此時，德爾班科提醒讀者，不要忘記民主教育的理想。

In “College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be,” he recalls this -ideal’s roots in English and American Protestantism. In this country, education was never supposed to be only about imparting information. It has long included character development — turning the soul away from selfish concerns and toward community. Delbanco cites Emerson’s version of this turning: “The whole secret of the teacher’s force lies in the conviction that men are convertible. And they are. They want awakening.” Even secular teachers are trying to “get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep.”

在《大學：過去，現(xiàn)在，以及應當怎樣》("College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be")一書中，他追溯了這一理想在英國和美國新教中的根源。在美國，教育從來不只是傳播信息。它一直包含著性格養(yǎng)成——使靈魂離開對自我的關(guān)注，轉(zhuǎn)向群體。德爾班科引用了愛默生(Emerson)關(guān)于這種轉(zhuǎn)向的敘述：“教師力量的全部秘密在于，相信人是可以改變的。人確實如此。他們希望覺醒?！蹦呐率鞘浪椎睦蠋熞苍谂Α鞍鸯`魂喚醒，從她慣常的沉睡中喚醒?！?/div>

By the end of the 19th century, this commitment to character formation, to sustaining “curiosity and humility,” as Delbanco writes, was in sharp tension with a commitment to professionalization. Colleges were becoming universities, which meant they were getting into the business of research. Community took a back seat to expertise, and schools once exclusively devoted to undergraduate learning sought prestige through the development of graduate and professional schools.

德爾班科在書中寫道，到19世紀末，對性格培養(yǎng)、持久的“好奇與謙卑”的信奉跟對職業(yè)化的信奉產(chǎn)生了尖銳的沖突。大學正在變成綜合性的，這意味著它們將偏向科研。群體讓位給了專家，過去學校只致力于本科生教學，現(xiàn)在要通過發(fā)展研究生和專業(yè)學校來贏得聲譽。

With the substantial increase in the number of students wanting to pursue a college degree and the expansion of the number of fields of learning that schools were expected to cover, the dream of a “common learning experience” for undergraduates faded in favor of offering a plethora of courses from which to choose. Modern universities are meant to produce knowledge through specialization, and they often reward faculty members by giving them “relief” from teaching. Our best universities are adept at steering resources to their most productive researchers, but the undergraduate curriculum gets little more than lip service. “Very few colleges tell their students what to think,” Delbanco notes, and “most are unwilling even to tell them what’s worth thinking about.”

想獲得大學學位的學生越來越多，人們期望大學能夠提供的專業(yè)也增加了，“共同的學習經(jīng)歷”的夢想褪色了，更受歡迎的是大量可供選擇的課程?，F(xiàn)代大學就是要通過專業(yè)化來生產(chǎn)知識，大學獎勵教師的辦法通常是“減輕”他們的教學任務(wù)。我們最好的大學擅長把資源分給最多產(chǎn)的研究者，本科生的課程只得到一堆漂亮話。“只有非常少的學院告訴它們的學生該思考什么，”德爾班科指出：“大部分學院甚至不愿意告訴學生什么值得思考。”

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