现代大学英语精读第二版（第二册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——1A - Another School Year—What For?（又一学年——为了什么？）
Unit 1A - Another School Year—What For?
Another School Year—What For?
John Ciardi
Let me tell you one of the earliest disasters in my career as a teacher.
It was January of 1940 and I was fresh out of graduate school starting my first semester at the University of Kansas City.
Part of the student body was a beanpole with hair on top who came into my class, sat down, folded his arms, and looked at me as if to say "All right, teach me something."
Two weeks later we started Hamlet. Three weeks later he came into my office with his hands on his hips.
"Look," he said, "I came here to be a pharmacist. Why do I have to read this stuff?"
And not having a book of his own to point to, he pointed to mine which was lying on the desk.
New as I was to the faculty, I could have told this specimen a number of things.
I could have pointed out that he had enrolled, not in a drugstore-mechanics school, but in a college and that at the end of his course he meant to reach for a scroll that would read Bachelor of Science. It would not read: Qualified Pill-Grinding Technician.
It would certify that he had specialized in pharmacy, but it would further certify that he had been exposed to some of the ideas mankind has generated within its history.
That is to say, he had not entered a technical training school but a university and in universities students enroll for both training and education.
I could have told him all this, but it was fairly obvious he wasn't going to be around long enough for it to matter.
Nevertheless, I was young and I had a high sense of duty and I tried to put it this way: "For the rest of your life," I said, "your days are going to average out to about twenty-four hours.
They will be a little shorter when you are in love, and a little longer when you are out of love, but the average will tend to hold. For eight of these hours, more or less, you will be asleep."
"Then for about eight hours of each working day you will, I hope, be usefully employed.
Assume you have gone through pharmacy school—or engineering, or law school, or whatever—during those eight hours you will be using your professional skills.
You will see to it that the cyanide stays out of the aspirin, that the bull doesn't jump the fence, or that your client doesn't go to the electric chair as a result of your incompetence.
These are all useful pursuits. They involve skills every man must respect, and they can all bring you basic satisfactions.
Along with everything else, they will probably be what puts food on your table, supports your wife, and rears your children. They will be your income, and may it always suffice.
"But having finished the day's work, what do you do with those other eight hours? Let's say you go home to your family.
What sort of family are you raising? Will the children ever be exposed to a reasonably penetrating idea at home?
Will you be presiding over a family that maintains some contact with the great democratic intellect?
Will there be a book in the house? Will there be a painting a reasonably sensitive man can look at without shuddering? Will the kids ever get to hear Bach?"
That is about what I said, but this particular pest was not interested.
"Look," he said, "you professors raise your kids your way; I'll take care of my own. Me, I'm out to make money."
"I hope you make a lot of it," I told him, "because you're going to be badly stuck for something to do when you're not signing checks."
Fourteen years later I am still teaching, and I am here to tell you that the business of the college is not only to train you,
but to put you in touch with what the best human minds have thought.
If you have no time for Shakespeare, for a basic look at philosophy, for the continuity of the fine arts, for that lesson of man's development we call history—then you have no business being in college.
You are on your way to being that new species of mechanized savage, the push-button Neanderthal.
Our colleges inevitably graduate a number of such life forms, but it cannot be said that they went to college; rather the college went through them—without making contact.
No one gets to be a human being unaided. There is not time enough in a single lifetime to invent for oneself everything one needs to know in order to be a civilized human.
Assume, for example, that you want to be a physicist. You pass the great stone halls of, say, M.I.T., and there cut into the stone are the names of the scientists. The chances are that few if any of you will leave your names to be cut into those stones.
Yet any of you who managed to stay awake through part of a high school course in physics, knows more about physics than did many of those great scholars of the past. You know more because they left you what they knew, because you can start from what the past learned for you.
And as this is true of the techniques of mankind, so it is true of mankind's spiritual resources. Most of these resources, both technical and spiritual, are stored in books. Books are man's peculiar accomplishment. When you have read a book, you have added to your human experience.
Read Homer and your mind includes a piece of Homer's mind. Through books you can acquire at least fragments of the mind and experience of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare—the list is endless. For a great book is necessarily a gift; it offers you a life you have not the time to live yourself, and it takes you into a world you have not the time to travel in literal time. A civilized mind is, in essence, one that contains many such lives and many such worlds.
If you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your own limitations, to accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the minds of Aristotle, or Chaucer or Einstein, you are neither a developed human nor a useful citizen of a democracy.
I think it was La Rochefoucauld who said that most people would never fall in love if they hadn't read about it.
He might have said that no one would ever manage to become human if they hadn't read about it.
I speak, I'm sure, for the faculty of the liberal arts college and for the faculties of the specialized schools as well, when I say that a university has no real existence and no real purpose except as it succeeds in putting you in touch, both as specialists and as humans, with those human minds your human mind needs to include.
The faculty, by its very existence, says implicitly: "We have been aided by many people, and by many books, in our attempt to make ourselves some sort of storehouse of human experience.
We are here to make available to you, as best we can, that expertise."
参考译文——又一学年——为了什么？
又一学年——为了什么？
约翰·恰尔迪
给你们讲讲我教书生涯刚开始时的一次失败经历吧。
那是在1940年的1月，我刚从研究生院毕业不久，在堪萨斯城大学开始第一学期的教学工作。
一个又瘦又高、就像顶上长了毛的豆角架一样的男生走进我的课堂，坐下，双臂交叉放在胸前，看着我，好像在说：“好吧，教我一些东西。”
两周后我们开始学习《哈姆雷特》。三周后他双手叉腰走进我的办公室。
“嘿，”他说，“我来这儿是学习当药剂师的。我为什么必须读这个？”
由于没有随身带着自己的书，他就指着桌子上我的那本书。
虽然我是位新老师，可我一样可以告诉这个家伙一堆理由。
我本来可以指出，他考入的不是一所制药技工培训学校，而是一所大学，而且在他毕业时，他应该得到一张学位证书，上面写着“理学士”，而不是“合格的磨药工”。
这张证书会证明他专修过药剂学，但它还能进一步证明他曾经接触过一些人类发展史上产生的思想。
换句话说，他上的不是一所技能培训学校，而是一所大学，在大学里，学生既要得到培训，又要接受教育。
我本来可以把这些话都告诉他，但是很明显，他不会在大学呆很长时间，说了也没用。
但是，由于我当时很年轻而且责任感也很强，我尽量把我的意思这样表达出来：“在你的余生中，平均每天有24小时左右。
谈恋爱时，你会觉得它有点短；失恋时，你会觉得它有点长。但平均每天24小时会保持不变。在其中的大约8个小时的时间里，你会处于睡眠状态。”
“然后每个工作日8个小时左右的时间，我希望你会用来做一些有用的事情。
假设你毕业于一所药科大学——或工程大学、法学院，或者其他什么大学——在那8个小时时间里，你会用到你的专业技能。
你要做的是确保氰化物没有和阿司匹林混在一起；确保牛不会跳出篱笆；或保证你的当事人没有因为你的无能而被处以电刑。
这些都是有用的工作，它们涉及的技能每个人都必须尊重，而且它们都能给你带来基本的满足感。
除此之外，这些技能会换来你餐桌上的食物，让你能养活你的妻子，抚养你的子女。它们会成为你的收入来源；但愿你的收入总能够用。”
“但完成一天的工作后，剩下的8小时你做什么呢？比如说你可以回家，和你的家人呆在一起。
你所供养的是一个什么样的家庭呢？孩子们在家里能接触到一点还算是精辟的思想吗？
身为一家之主，你能让你的家人对伟大的民主思想有所了解吗？
家里有书吗？会有一幅能让一个有一定鉴赏力的人看了不至于不寒而栗的画吗？孩子们有机会听到巴赫的音乐吗？”
我当时大概就说了这些，但这个讨厌鬼不感兴趣。
他说：“你看，你们这些教授用你们的方法培养孩子；我会以我自己的方式抚养我自己的孩子。我呀，我会尽一切努力挣钱的。”
“我希望你能赚很多，”我告诉他，“因为你在开支票的余暇会愁没事干的。”
14年后的今天，我仍然在教书，在此我要告诉你们，大学的职责并不只是在于培训你，
它还要使你接触人类思想的精髓。
如果你没时间看莎士比亚的作品，没时间看哲学入门，没时间欣赏艺术的存续，也没时间学习我们称之为历史的人类发展的课程——那么你就没有必要呆在大学里了。
你正在变为那种新型的机械化的野蛮人，那种只会按按钮的尼安德特原始人。
我们大学的毕业生里不可避免有不少这样的行尸走肉；但是我们不能说他们上过大学，只能说大学曾存在于他们的生活——却没能留下任何痕迹。
没有前人的帮助，谁也不会成长为一个文明人。人生苦短，不足以自己创造成为一个文明人所需知道的一切知识。
比如说你想成为一个物理学家。穿过麻省理工学院的宏伟的石材大厅，你会发现那里的石墙上刻着很多科学家的名字。很可能将来，你们当中几乎没有人可以把名字留在那些石墙上，如果有的话也是极少数。
然而，你们中间任何一个人，只要在中学物理课上还有不打瞌睡的时候，那你的物理知识就会比过去很多伟大的学者都要多。那是因为他们将他们知道的传给了你，你可以从他们已了解的知识上起步。
人类的技术发展是如此，人类精神财富的积累也是如此。这些技术和精神的大部分资料都存储在书中。书籍是人类独有的成就。你读完了一本书，你就丰富了你的人生经历。
阅读荷马的作品，你的头脑里就有了荷马的思想。通过读书你起码能获得一些弗吉尔、但丁、莎士比亚的思想和经历——这些名字是不胜枚举的。因为一本好书必然是一份礼物；它为你呈现你没时间去亲自体验的生活，带你进入一个你在现实生活中没时间去亲自游览的世界。从本质上说，一个文明人应该了解许多这样的生活和这样的世界。
如果你太过匆忙，或是对自己的无知洋洋得意，因而没有接受亚里士多德、乔叟或爱因斯坦等人的某些思想作为你为人之道的礼物，那么你既不是一个心智发育完全的人，也不是一个民主社会的有用公民。
我记得拉罗什富科曾说过，大多数人如果没有读过关于爱情方面的书，他们就不会恋爱。
他可能还说过如果没有读过有关怎么做人方面的书，他们就永远不能成为真正的人。
我认为一所大学存在的意义和目的不外乎使作为专门人才，还是作为一个人的你们接触你们应该吸纳的那些伟人思想。我相信我这种说法既代表人文院校也代表理工院校的教师们的意见。
大学师资队伍的存在本身就说明：“在努力使我们自己成为某种人类经验的宝库的过程中，我们得到了许多人的帮助，也得到了很多书籍的帮助。
我们教师的任务就是尽最大努力使你们能够获得那些知识和技能。”
Key Words:
technical ['teknikəl]
adj. 技术的，工艺的
pharmacist ['fɑ:məsist]
n. 药剂师，药商
qualified ['kwɔlifaid]
adj. 有资格的，有限制的
scroll [skrəul]
n. 卷轴，目录 v. 卷动
specialized ['speʃəlaizd]
专门的 专科的
exposed [iks'pəuzd]
adj. 暴露的，无掩蔽的，暴露于风雨中的 v. 暴露，
tend [tend]
v. 趋向，易于，照料，护理
nevertheless [.nevəðə'les]
adv. 仍然，不过
conj. 然而，不过
suffice [sə'fais]
vi. 足够，合格
vt. 使 ... 足够
incompetence [in'kɔmpitəns]
n. 无能力，不合格，不能胜任
fence [fens]
n. 栅栏，围墙，击剑术
n. 买卖赃物的人<
assume [ə'sju:m]
vt. 假定，设想，承担; (想当然的)认为
obvious ['ɔbviəs]
adj. 明显的，显然的
involve [in'vɔlv]
vt. 包含，使陷入，使忙于，使卷入，牵涉
professional [prə'feʃənl]
adj. 职业的，专业的，专门的
inevitably [in'evitəbli]
adv. 不可避免地
intellect ['intilekt]
n. 智力，理智，才智非凡的人，知识份子
savage ['sævidʒ]
adj. 野性的，凶猛的，粗鲁的，荒野的
democratic [.demə'krætik]
adj. 民主的，大众的，平等的
mechanized ['mekənaizd]
adj. 机械的，呆板的 =mechanised(英)
continuity [.kɔnti'nju:iti]
n. 连续性
exposed [iks'pəuzd]
adj. 暴露的，无掩蔽的，暴露于风雨中的 v. 暴露，
species ['spi:ʃiz]
n. （单复同）物种，种类
pest [pest]
n. 害虫
particular [pə'tikjulə]
adj. 特殊的，特别的，特定的，挑剔的
accomplishment [ə'kɔmpliʃmənt]
n. 成就，完成
spiritual ['spiritjuəl]
adj. 精神的，心灵的，与上帝有关的
humanity [hju:'mæniti]
n. 人类，人性，人道，慈爱，(复)人文学科
essence ['esns]
n. 本质，精髓，要素，香精
acquire [ə'kwaiə]
vt. 获得，取得，学到
democracy [di'mɔkrəsi]
n. 民主，民主制，民主国家
technical ['teknikəl]
adj. 技术的，工艺的
assume [ə'sju:m]
vt. 假定，设想，承担; (想当然的)认为
literal ['litərəl]
adj. 逐字的，字面上的，文字的
n. 错误
invent [in'vent]
vt. 发明，创造，捏造
available [ə'veiləbl]
adj. 可用的，可得到的，有用的，有效的
except [ik'sept]
vt. 除，除外
prep. & conj.
expertise [.ekspə:'ti:z]
n. 专家的意见，专门技术
liberal ['libərəl]
adj. 慷慨的，大方的，自由主义的
n. 自
specialized ['speʃəlaizd]
专门的 专科的
参考资料：
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第二册:U1A Another School Year—What For?(1)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- http://www.kekenet.com/daxue/201612/48289shtml
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第二册:U1A Another School Year—What For?(3)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
- 现代大学英语精读(第2版)第二册:U1A Another School Year—What For?(4)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语
现代大学英语精读(第2版)第二册:U1A Another School Year—What For?(5)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语