243 Special Forms of Teaching
243 独特的教学方式
I came away from my years of teaching on the college and university level with a conviction that enactment, performance, dramatization are the most successful forms of teaching. Students must be incorporated, made, so far as possible, an integral part of the learning process. The notion that learning should have in it an element of inspired play would seem to the greater part of the academic establishment merely silly, but that is nonetheless the case. Of Ezekiel Cheever, the most famous schoolmaster of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, his onetime student Cotton Mather wrote that he so planned his lessons that his pupils "came to work as though they came to play," and Alfred North Whitehead, almost three hundred years later, noted that a teacher should make his/her students "glad they were there."
通过在大专院校从教多年，我坚信量成功的教学模式角色扮演，表演以及使教学内容戏剧化-学生必须尽可能地与进来，使之成为学习过程中不可或—缺的一部分。学习过程应当包含一点受鼓励的游戏成分，这个理念在教育机构的大多数人看来十分可笑，可是，事实就是如此，埃兹基尔·契佛曾经是马萨诸塞海湾殖民地最著名的校长，他的一个叫考顿·梅泽的学生写道，契佛校长把他的课程设计得让学生“来上课就像是来玩儿似的”差不多300年以后，阿尔弗莱德·诺思·怀特海也指出，老师们应该让学生“高高兴兴来听课”。
Since, we are told, 80 to 90 percent of all instruction in the typical university is by the lecture method, we should give close attention to this form of education. There is, I think, much truth in Patricial Nelson Limerick's observation that "lecturing is an unnatural act, an act for which God did not design humans. It is perfectly all right, now and then, for a human to be possessed by the urge to speak, and to speak while others remain silent. But to do this regularly, one hour and 15 minutes at a time for one person to drag on while others sit in silence? I do not believe that this is what the Creator designed humans to do."
据调查，普通大学里80%-90%的教学形式是讲课，既然如此，我们应当特别关注这种教学形式。我觉得帕特里茜娅·尼尔森·利默里克的话中有很多真知，他说：“讲课是一种不自然的行为，这种行为不是上帝为人类所设计的。一个人偶尔会有一种要发表演说而让别人静静地听他讲的强烈欲望，这是完全正常的。但是，要是定期地这么做，每次持续1小时15分钟……一个人不停地讲而别的人都静耿地坐着？我不相信这就是造物主所设计的人类行为。”
The strange, almost incomprehensible fact is that many professors, just as they feel obliged to write dully, believe that they should lecture dully. To show enthusiasm is to risk appearing unscientific, unobjective; it is to appeal to the students' emotions rather than their intellect. Thus the ideal lecture is one filled with facts and read in an unchanged monotone.
一个奇怪的，几乎让人无法理解的事实是，许多教授认为他们应当干巴巴地讲课，正如他们觉得必须干巴巴地写文章一样。他们也认为．表现出热情就是在冒看起来缺乏科学性和不够写实的风险，这样做只能引起学生情感上的兴趣而无益于他们的智力增长。所以，对他们而言，理想的授课形式应当兖
满各种实例，并且要使用一种单调的，一成不变的语调。
The cult of lecturing dully, like the cult of writing dully, goes back, of course, some years. Edward Shils, professor of sociology, recalls the professors he encountered at the University of Pennsylvania in his youth. They seemed "a priesthood, rather uneven in their merits but uniform in their bearing; they never referred to anything personal. Some read from old lecture notes and then haltingly explained the thumb-worn last lines. Others lectured from cards that had served for years, to judge by the worn edges... The teachers began on time, ended on time, and left the room without saying a word more to their students, very seldom being detained by questioners...The classes were not large, yet there was no discussion. No questions were raised in class, and there were no office hours."
当然，正如推崇干巴巴地写文章一样，推崇干巴巴的讲课也有些年头了。社会学教授爱德华，希尔兹回忆起他年轻时在宾夕法尼亚大学所碰到的教授们，他说他们看起来就像神父，尽管每个人的学问有高有低，但行为举止去完全一致。他们从来不提及任何自己的私事。有的照老教案宣读，然后吞吞吐吐地解释最后那几行被翻烂的句子，有的就照着讲义授课，从讲义破损的边缘看出，这些讲义已用了许多年……老师们准时上课准时下课，离开教室从来不跟学生们多说一句话，很少会被提问题的学生缠住，课后没有会见学生的时间。