也是来自学术界，但不同的意见，转贴自以下的来源： http://scatter.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/anti-intellectualism-in-the-academy/ anti-intellectualism in the academy In this morning’s NYT, there appeared this op-ed, which trots out the old, well-beaten horse that the academy is hopelessly irrelevant and poorly tuned to producing the kind of graduates “we” need, where “we” is defined as something like “people who do really important things, like closing down plants that manufacture widgets, or blowing mind-numbing sums of money in hyperinflated credit markets.” Essentially, the author, Mark Taylor, chair of religion at Columbia, argues that the system of disciplines is outdated and that most Ph.D. students will never get a job in academia. A series of five recommendations for “reform” follow, but first to the two central claims. IMHO the first of these is misguided and the second empirically false. First for the misguided one. It’s been fashionable for a while to argue that academic disciplines are old-fashioned and we ought to just work together to study the “real-world” phenomena without disciplinary constraint. It is out of this impulse, itself in turn the result of the late ’60s hoo-ha about “relevance,” that the -studies departments have tended to emerge. The author suggests a: broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water. The problem is that by providing a selection of approaches and methods from which to examine each of these, the current disciplinary system, imperfect as it may be, does a heck of a lot better of a job of investigating, say, Mind, than would a bunch of smart people tossed into a room and told “okay, talk about Mind!”. Disciplinary traditions and approaches constrain, yes–but they also enable, structure, and guide inquiry. It is a folly to expect that removing the disciplinary constraints would somehow simply reveal the beautiful underlying structure of pure knowledge–a folly, frankly, that even the most casual reader of Foucault ought not commit. Second for the false. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (just from a quick Google search), over 70% of those emerging from Ph.D. programs have “definite” plans for either employment or postdoctoral study. Presumably some significant proportion of the remaining 30% will be at least partially successful. This hardly amounts to a crisis in post-Ph.D. employment, even for humanities students where the number is more like 64%. 1. Restructure the curriculum…. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural. A web of what? What are the nodes? How is this different from what we already do, in which students are encouraged/forced to learn a number of approaches and synthesize? And in what way is academic life less “cross-cultural” than business? 2. Abolish permanent departments and create problem-focused programs. Problems by whose estimation? Focused how? Who decides when the problems are solved? 3. Increase collaboration among institutions. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. This would be great if the principal problem were just “teaching” French or German. It’s not. The principal problem is preserving and extending scholarship in multiple fields–fields in which creativity and cross-communication are crucial. it is here that the article is particularly anti-intellectual, as it assumes that the principal concern is the transmission of skill, not the generation of knowledge, which demands an entirely different kind of organization. 4. Transform the traditional dissertation…. there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text…. develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce “theses” in alternative formats. I can see it now: Service Encounters for X-box; The Averaged American for PlayStation II. The presence of a market for these things is irrelevant to their value. If the question were the market, students would produce these works for HarperCollins and get big advances. The point of the university is to preserve, defend, and extend the production of knowledge beyond what the market will support on its own! 5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world. As I argued above, I don’t think the empirical claim is sound. More generally, the “preparing students for other careers” argument exactly mirrors number 4 above on books. If the job market needs training, let the companies that need it pay for and provide the training. The reason we have universities is because society is better when it has scholarly, scientific, and intellectual production that the market is poorly suited to encourage. As I tell incoming first-year students here: if you wanted job training, there’s no reason why the taxpayers of North Carolina ought to subsidize your salary boost. There’s an adequate, privately funded technical school down the road. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) To sum up: I don’t claim that the contemporary university is as good as it could be as a place to preserve, defend, and extend intellectual, scholarly, and scientific pursuit. To paraphrase Churchill, it is probably the worst way of organizing such pursuit save all the others! More seriously, though, the way to make it a better such institution is not to make it more “relevant”, whether to contemporary social problems or to the needs of the global economy. Rather, the way to make it a better such institution is to honor the specifically intellectual character of academic life and the institutional forms that help preserve that. ※ 引述《shiangkw (no)》之铭言： : 本文节译自纽约时报 End the university as we know it : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html : 本文由哥伦比亚大学宗教系主任Mark Taylor所撰写 : 研究所教育,就像是高等教育里的底特律城一样。美国大学里绝大部分的研究所， : 都是在制造一些没有市场的产品（没有教职市场的研究生），发展未来越来越 : 不被需要的技能（做一些微不足道的研究，写只有几个同事会看的文章），并且还 : 得负担越来越昂贵的开销（有的学生必须负担十万美金以上的学生贷款）。 : 最近大学人事冻结和解雇的状况，让这些问题更为严重。我们研究所制度的问题， : 早在大学制度形成的时候就已经埋下了种子。Kant在1798年就在着作里谈到："大学 : 必须用分工的方法，以大量生产的模式来处理学习内容，所以每个学科的分支领域， : 都应该要有专门的教授来负责”。 : 这样的哲学使得大学的运作模式由合作变成各自专精不同的领域。在我自己的宗教学 : 领域中，我们系上有十个教授，十个人就负责了八个的分支领域。因为各自专精而 : 且没什麽交集，所以我们的研究越来越微不足道。每个学科所产生的局限的知识， : 对於用来解决重要的问题时根本没什麽用。我一个同事最近跟我抱怨，他最优秀的 : 一个学生，所做的论文题目是中世纪的神学家Duns Scotus如何使用引用文献。 : 过分强调偏狭学科的结果，也变相的鼓励教育系统从事复制工作。教授培养学生的时候， : 对学生的要求会和自己以前求学的时候一样，希望他们成为教授，但是也不想想自己的 : tenure（终身聘用制）成为了这些学生追求梦想的阻碍。 : （注：美国的tenure制对中小学老师以及大学教授而言非常重要，是工作生涯里最重要 : 的一关，学校会针对老师4-7年之内的表现进行评估，如果拿到tenure後，几乎不可能被 : 解雇） : 研究所制度最肮脏的秘密，就是给研究生低工资让他们在实验室帮忙，或是当助教， : 不然大学怎麽可能进行研究，或有办法教育数目越来越多的大学部学生。这就是我们鼓 : 励学生来念博士班的主因。因为付学生或兼任老师一学期五千元美金就能开一门课，比 : 雇全职老师便宜多了。 : （注：美金换成台币虽然很多，但是美国税重，加上生活消费高，所以不能直接换算。 : 虽然没有一个标准公式，但有个基本的共识，美国年薪可换得的生活水准，约等於 : 台币月薪的生活水准。例如美金年薪八万，其生活水准与台湾月薪八万差不多。当然 : 与所住的城市又有关系，不过这是个产生基本消费感觉的方法） : 换句话说,年轻人念研究所,努力工作换取微薄薪资,背负沉重学贷,全都只是为了一个 : 能成为教授的虚幻保证。由於经济不景气，加上tenure教授不肯退让的结果，就是永远 : 僧多粥少的局面。 : 大学自治是另一个改革的阻碍。董事会和行政主管理论上有监责权，但实际上，各 : 系所是独自运作的。一旦拿到tenure，这个教授完全自治，没人管得动他，这使得改 : 革之路更加难行。一堆学术专家强烈要求必须要针对金融机构立法规范，但对自己学 : 校的规范却完全背道而驰。 : 美国的高等教育想要在21世纪成功，大学制度就跟华尔街和底特律一样，必须严格规范 : 并重新重整，使高教学习的制度更灵活，更能解决实务问题，我们可以从六大点开始 : 做起： : 1.重新改变课程结构，从研究所教育开始，然後再尽快重整大学部。我们不能再像以前 : 那样每个小领域做自己的事，而是要以网络化或是适性网路的模式来合作。教育与研究 : 一定要跨领域跨文化的共同进行。 : 几星期前，我出席了一个研讨会,许多与会的政治科学学者检讨为什麽国际关系理论从 : 来没有考虑过宗教在社会里所扮演的角色。以今天世界的状态而言，这是一个很严重的 : 疏失。各个学科各自闭门造车，我们永远缺乏足够的知识来解决当今人类所面对的重要 : 危机的。 : 如果学者们能跨领域合作，分析探讨，会更有效的解决宗教，政治，历史，经济，人类 : 学，社会学，文学，艺术，哲学等等的问题。我们重整课程後，不同领域所使用的研究 : 与调查方法也可以被互相运用。 : 2. 终止某些系所，重新设立一些问题导向的系所。各个系所应该要设立落日条款，例如 : 每七年就要被重新评估一次是不是该留下它，关掉它，或是改造它。我们可以根据一个 : 广泛的议题来组议系所，例如心智，人体，法律，资讯，网路，语言，太空，时间， : 媒体，金钱，生命，以及水资源。 : 以水资源问题为例，下一个十年里，水资源的严重性会超越石油。水的量，质，以及水 : 资源分布等等的问题会引起重要的科学，技术，以及环境生态的研究，同时也会造成政 : 治与经济上的挑战。如果没有全面性的考量哲学，宗教与道德的议题，这些问题是无法 : 被解决的。毕竟信念会影响实践，而实践同时也会影响信念。 : 水的问题也能将来自各个专业的学者结合在一起，像是人类，艺术，社会以及自然科学 : 的系所就包括了医学，法律，商务，工程，社会工作，神学以及建筑学的专家。经过多 : 元观点的通力合作，才能发展新观点的理论以及新的方法来解决问题。 : 3. 鼓励跨校的合作。如果学校能合作分享学生与师资，学校就能精简资源并重点扩充。 : 例如法国和德国各有一个资源很好的学校，透过电脑会议和网路，两个学校可以同时教 : 育两边的学生，而只需要用到一半的师资。我已经利用这些工具和赫尔辛基以及墨尔本 : 的大学合作，互相教学一学期之久了。 : 4. 改变传统的论文写作方式。在人文学的领域里，经费被砍的最严重，现在也没有人 : 会买讨探中世纪议题，而且附注比本文还要多的论文了。大学出版社的财务压力越来越 : 严重，出版论文根本赚不到什麽钱。以我的课来做例子，多年来我已经很少要求学生 : 写纸本式的报告，而是会利用超文本和网站，甚至影片和电动来发展他们分析处理能力。 : 我们应该要鼓励研究生制作非传统性的论文作品。 : 5. 提供研究生更多的专业工作选择。大部分研究生永远也没办法从事他们所受的训练的 : 工作，所以我们要培育他们也能在高等教育以外的领域工作。让学生有机会接触新的方 : 法和不同的文化，并且多思考实际的问题，有助於他们到业界或是非营利组织工作。他 : 们在这些改造过後的研究所所学到的知识和技能，还能让他们有能力适应改变并改变世 : 界。 : （注：人文社会科学的博生很难在业界找到工作，这一点可能理工领域的博士很难想像） : 6. 强迫提早退休，并且终止tenure制度。Tenure制度一开始是为了保障学术自由，但最 : 後却造成师资不流动，以及教授守旧的心态。因为一旦拿到tenure，教授也没有什麽动 : 机努力增长自己的专业，或是继续的对行政工作或指导学生卖力付出。我们应该用七年的 : 合约制来取代tenure制，再重新评估是否要结束还是继续和这个老师的合约。这种制度才 : 能鼓励研究者，学者，以及教授继续创新改变，保有创造力和生产力，同时也能让新生代 : 有出头的一天。 : 多年来，我一直对学生说："不要做我做过的事，用我所教过你的，去做任何我做不到的 : 事，再回来让我知道你做了什麽。"我希望大学能够从现在自满的状态里重新蜕变，并 : 且将高等教育的未来开启一道我们现在无法想像的境界。 --

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