美國高等教育領域最爲驚人的轉變 討好學生
Given all that has happened on so many campuses over the last few years, it’s hard to pick the one that has been roiled the most by struggles over political correctness. But Oberlin College would certainly be in the running.
鑑於過去數年間不平靜的校園實在太多，很難說哪一所學校是被關於政治正確的爭鬥攪動得最厲害的。但歐柏林大學(Oberlin College)絕對應該進入候選名單。
A widely discussed series of events there included the demand for a so-called trigger warning to students who might be upset reading “Antigone”; complaints about the ethnic integrity of the sushi in a campus dining hall; and a petition, signed by 1,300 students, calling for a semester in which the lowest possible grade was a C, so that anyone skipping classes or skimping on studies to engage in social activism wouldn’t pay too steep an academic price.
這裏的一系列事件都受到了廣泛討論：校方曾被要求對可能在閱讀《安提歌尼》(Antigone)時感到心煩意亂的學生髮出所謂的觸發預警；接到過關於一間校園食堂的投訴，認爲那裏的壽司做得相當不講民族工藝操守；還收到一份請願書，敦促其設置一個最低成績只能爲“C”的學期，以便讓那些逃課或爲了參加社會活動而錯過上課的人不必在學業方面付出過於高昂的代價，共有1300名學生在請願書上簽名。
In the view of more than a few observers, these students were taking liberalism to illiberal extremes. But their actions were arguably proof of something else as well.
許多觀察人士都認爲，這些學生把自由主義變成了狹隘的極端主義。但他們的行爲還證明了別的東西。
Students at Oberlin and their counterparts elsewhere might not behave in such an emboldened fashion if they did not feel so largely in charge. Their readiness to press for rules and rituals to their liking suggests the extent to which they have come to act as customers — the ones who set the terms, the ones who are always right — and the degree to which they are treated that way.
歐柏林的學子以及其他大學的學生，如果沒覺得自己基本上掌控了一切，或許就不會如此大膽地行事。動輒敦促校方按其喜好設定規則和秩序，說明他們在很大程度上表現出了消費者的樣子——即設定條件的一方，永遠正確的一方——也說明他們在很大程度上正被當成消費者來對待。
Twinned with colleges’ innovations to attract and serve a new generation of students is a changed relationship between the schools and the schooled. It’s one of the most striking transformations in higher education over the last quarter-century.
大學正通過創新吸引並服務於新一代學子，與此同時，學校和學生之間的關係發生了變化。這是過去四分之一世紀裏，高等教育領域最爲驚人的轉變。
It’s manifest in students’ interactions with colleges even before they enroll, as those institutions, intent on increasing the number of applications they receive and on snagging as many valedictorians, class presidents and soccer captains as they can, come at them as merchants, clamoring for their attention, competing for their affection and unfurling their wares with as much ceremony and gloss as possible.
這種轉變甚至在學生入學前與學校的互動中就有所體現。爲了增加本校收到的入學申請數量，並儘可能招攬到更多的最佳畢業生、年級長和足球隊長，那些學校像商販一樣來到學生面前，想要引起他們的注意，博取他們的好感，並使出渾身解數展示自己的‘貨品’。
And what wares those are. Colleges have spruced up dormitories and diversified dining options, so that students unwind in greater comfort and ingest with more choice than ever before. To lure students and keep them content, colleges have also fashioned state-of-the-art fitness centers, sophisticated entertainment complexes and other amenities with a relevance to learning that is oblique at best.
都有哪些‘貨品’呢？許多大學都裝修了宿舍，並提供多樣化的餐飲選擇，這樣一來學生就能在更加舒適的環境中放鬆身心，也能盡情享用花樣更爲繁多的餐點。爲了招攬學生，並讓他們滿意，一些大學還配備了一流的健身中心、裝備精良的娛樂中心，以及其他的便利設施，而這些東西和學習之間的關聯相當薄弱。
High Point University in North Carolina is in the midst of an upgrade of more than $2 billion that includes millions toward amusements like a putting green, a game arcade, an ice cream truck and a theater with free movies and free popcorn.
北卡羅萊納州高點大學(High Point University)正進行耗資逾20億美元的升級換代，其中數以百萬美元計的資金被用來建造休閒設施，譬如一片果嶺，一個遊戲廳，一輛冰淇淋車，一家可以免費看電影吃爆米花的電影院。
Campus water parks — with pools, slides and man-made rivers — have become just common enough that when Louisiana State University recently plotted its own, it decided that the river should spell out the letters L.S.U., so that it was no mere mimic of all those other, lesser collegiate waterways.
有着游泳池、滑梯和人造河流的校園水上公園如今已經變得頗爲常見。路易斯安那州立大學(Louisiana State University)不久前規劃自己的水上公園時，決定用人造河流拼出“LSU”字樣，這樣一來就不僅僅是對其他學校的水上公園的簡單模仿，而且會讓它們相形見絀。
“We devote all these resources to creating, basically, country clubs with libraries,” Barry Schwartz, a longtime professor of psychology at Swarthmore, told me. Swarthmore, he said, has resisted the trend more than other colleges — no water park there — but has not been immune to it. No institution is, and Mr. Schwartz placed much of the blame on sharp increases in tuition and other expenses. When families are asked to pay $60,000 or more a year, the transaction takes on a more bluntly commercial aspect.
“我們投入所有這些資源打造出來的，基本是帶有圖書館的鄉村俱樂部，”斯沃斯莫爾學院(Swarthmore)長期致力於心理學研究的教授巴里·施瓦茨(Barry Schwartz)告訴我。比起別的學校，他說，斯沃斯莫爾學院較爲抗拒這種趨勢——那裏沒有水上公園——但並未完全免疫。沒有任何一家學校能夠免疫，施瓦茨認爲這種情況在很大程度上是由學費和其他費用的上漲造成的。當學生家裏一年需要支付6萬美元或更多學費的時候，相關交易就具有了明顯的商業色彩。
“Costs go up,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Parents expect to get value for money. They measure value in a different way. We provide that value, which raises costs, which creates more demand, and the cycle continues.”
“費用上漲了，”施瓦茨說，“家長們就希望物有所值。他們衡量價值的方法各不相同。我們提供那種價值，就推高費用，進而催生出更多需求，如此循環往復。”
But amenities aren’t all that is different. The interactions and balance of power between student and teacher are as well. I don’t recall ever filling out a professor evaluation when I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the mid-1980s. It’s possible that such forms existed, but they were not used consistently or presented to us with any sense of urgency.
但不同以往的不僅僅是校園裏的便利設施。我記得自己在1980年代初就讀於北卡羅來納大學教堂山分校(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)時，從未填寫過評估教授教學表現的表格。這類表格當時可能存在，但並未得到持續利用，也沒有人帶着哪怕一點點急迫之情將其拿給我們。
The opposite was true when I taught at Princeton in the spring of 2014. Students could not see their grades for a given class until they had filled out an extensive report card, including numerical ratings, on the class and on the instructor or had formally declined to do so, which few did. The instructor was privy to those ratings, with the students’ names erased.
等到2014年秋天，我在普林斯頓大學(Princeton)教書時，情況反轉了過來。學生要想看到特定科目的成績，必須填寫內容廣泛的報告卡，給該科目及授課教師等多個方面打分，或者正式拒絕填寫報告卡——很少有人會這樣做。學生打出的分數被傳達給授課教師，但打分者的名字會被抹去。
I’m told by many of the professors I know that this practice is more or less the norm. Coupled with websites on which students rate their teachers, it has enormous bearing on how fully enrolled an instructor’s classes are, on his or her reputation and — thus — on his or her career. And what is perhaps the greatest driver of student satisfaction with a professor? The greatest guarantor of glowing reviews? The marks that the professor doles out. Small wonder that grade inflation is so pronounced and rampant, with A’s easy to come by and anything below a B-minus rare.
我認識的很多教授都說，這差不多是通行的做法。這種慣例，連同供學生給老師打分的網站，會極大地影響一名教師的課程能否吸引到足夠多的學生，並影響他或她的聲譽——從而影響他或她的職業生涯。什麼東西最有可能讓學生對教授感到滿意？什麼東西最有可能帶來如潮的好評？是教授打出的分數。因此，分數虛高的情況如此顯眼、如此普遍，就沒有什麼好奇怪的了——學生很容易就能得到“A”，“B-”以下的成績難得一見。
Students get the message that they call the shots. Catharine Bond Hill, the president of Vassar, told me that when she began teaching in the 1980s, students never came in to complain about grades. “And back then,” she added, “you could get a C.”
學生接收到的信息是，一切都由他們做主。瓦薩學院(Vassar College)的校長凱瑟琳·邦德·希爾(Catharine Bond Hill)告訴我，她在1980年代開始授課的時候，學生從來不會跑來抱怨分數太低。她還說，“那時候，你可能拿到‘C’。”
“Now students will come in and complain about a B-plus,” she said.
“如今，學生會跑來抱怨自己得了一個‘B-’，”她說。
That’s not all bad. Students should absolutely have a voice in their education, and guaranteeing them one keeps professors and administrators accountable. “Faculty can be very resistant to change,” Mr. Schwartz said, “and ‘entitled’ students apply needed pressure.”
這也並非完全是壞事。學生對自己的教育絕對該有發言權，而且可以用這種辦法來督促教授和管理人員，讓他們更加負責。“教職人員可能會非常抗拒改變，”施瓦茨說，“而自認握有權利的學生會對他們施加必要的壓力。”
The old approach certainly wasn’t perfect. “Professors used to be a bit of a priesthood,” Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who has written extensively about campus unrest over recent years, told me. “That could dissuade challenge and argument.” Both are essential to learning.
舊有的做法顯然並不完美。“教授以前有點兒像是神職人員，”以近年來的校園騷亂爲題寫過大量文章的社會心理學家喬納森·海特(Jonathan Haidt)告訴我。“這可能會讓質疑和爭論受到壓制。”而這兩者對學習而言都是必不可少的。
The rightful passing of that paradigm created a need for new ones, and Mr. Haidt said that the two in vogue now were “the therapeutic model and the consumer model.” In accordance with the first of those, students regard colleges as homes and places of healing. In accordance with the second, they regard colleges as providers of goods that are measurable and of services that should meet their specifications.
那種模式順理成章地過時之後，就產生了對新模式的需求，海特說當前最盛行的兩種分別是“治療模式和消費者模式”。在第一種模式中，學生把大學當成家和治癒場所。在第二種模式中，學生把大學當成供應商——提供具有可量度性的商品和理應達到其要求的服務。
And that has imperfections all its own, the best laundry list of which appeared in “Customer Mentality,” an essay by Nate Kreuter, an assistant professor of English at Western Carolina University, that was published by Inside Higher Ed in 2014.
這種模式本身有許多不足之處。西卡羅萊納大學(Western Carolina University)英語系助理教授內特·克羅伊特爾(Nate Kreuter)在題爲《消費者心態》(Customer Mentality)的文章裏對此做了很好的總結。這篇文章於2014年發表在了《高等教育界》(Inside Higher Ed)上。
He noted a “hesitance to hold students accountable for their behavior,” be it criminal or a violation of what is too frequently a “laughable university honor code.” He noted an expectation among many students that their purchase of a college education should be automatically redeemable for a job, as if college were that precisely vocational and the process that predictable.
他提到，校方“會在該讓學生對其行爲負責之際猶豫不決”——不論後者是犯了罪，還是違反了常常“頗爲可笑的大學裏的道義規定”。他還指出，許多學生都抱有這樣一種期望：他們購買大學教育之後，自然能夠得到一份工作。彷彿上大學本身就是精準的職業培訓，彷彿這個過程是可以預料的。
“That’s simply not how life works,” he said in a recent interview. “So we have a lot of students who are disenchanted.”
“生活顯然不是這樣的，”他最近接受採訪時說。“所以我們會看到很多感到幻滅的學生。”
But what does the customer model do to their actual education?
但消費者模式會對他們的實際教育狀況產生怎樣的影響呢？
“There’s a big difference between teaching students and serving customers,” said Mr. Schwartz at Swarthmore. “Teachers know things, and they should be telling students what’s worth knowing and what’s not, not catering to demands.”
“教導學生和服務消費者之間有着巨大的差異，”斯沃斯莫爾學院的施瓦茨教授說。“老師見多識廣，他們應該告訴學生哪些東西值得學，哪些不值得學，而非迎合需求。”
Too often, he said, “we’ve given students a sense that they’re in just as good a position to know what’s worth knowing as we are, and we’ve contributed to the weakening of student resilience, because we’re so willing to meet their needs that they never have to suffer. That makes them incredibly vulnerable when things go wrong, as they invariably do.” He was speaking in the context of sharp upticks at many colleges in the number of students reporting anxiety and depression and turning to campus mental health clinics for help.
但極其常見的情況是，他說，“我們讓學生以爲，他們有能力像我們一樣知道哪些東西值得學。我們還對學生的適應力越來越差負有責任，因爲我們總是竭力滿足他們的需求，以致於他們從來沒有遭受過挫折。這樣一來，等到出了岔子的時候，他們就會變得驚人地脆弱。而岔子常常是不可避免的。”他說這番話的背景是，在許多大學裏，出現焦慮和抑鬱症狀並前往校園心理健康診所尋求幫助的學生人數急劇增加。
“I see this as a collective abdication of intellectual and even moral responsibility,” he said.
“我將其視爲對智識乃至道德責任的一併放棄。”
