The Decline and Fall of the English Major

Editorial | Sunday ObserverThe Decline and Fall of the English MajorBy VERLYN KLINKENBORG June 29, 2013觀點人文學科不該成為冷門韋爾蘭·克林肯博格 2013年06月29日
In the past few years, I've taught nonfiction writing to undergraduates and graduate students at Harvard, Yale, Bard, Pomona, Sarah Lawrence and Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Each semester I hope, and fear, that I will have nothing to teach my students because they already know how to write. And each semester I discover, again, that they don't.
在過去幾年裡，我曾在哈佛大學(Harvard)、耶魯大學(Yale)、巴德學院(Bard)、波莫納學院(Pomona)、沙拉勞倫斯學院(Sarah Lawrence)和哥倫比亞大學(Columbia)新聞學研究生院(Graduate School of Journalism)為本科生和研究生教授非虛構寫作。在每個學期我都充滿希望又十分恐懼，如果我的學生已經掌握了寫作，我將沒什麼可教。而每個學期我都一再發現，他們還是不會寫作。
They can assemble strings of jargon and generate clots of ventriloquistic syntax. They can meta-metastasize any thematic or ideological notion they happen upon. And they get good grades for doing just that. But as for writing clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts and emotions and the world around them — no.
他們能夠組合起一串串術語，堆砌起大段大段腹語般的句子結構。他們能夠圍繞碰巧得到的主題和意識形態概念四散轉移，而僅僅這麼做就能得到好成績。但說到清晰、簡潔的寫作，毫無障礙地闡明自己的想法和情緒、描述他們身邊的世界——做不到。
That kind of writing — clear, direct, humane — and the reading on which it is based are the very root of the humanities, a set of disciplines that is ultimately an attempt to examine and comprehend the cultural, social and historical activity of our species through the medium of language.
人文學科是一套原則的組合，其最終目的是通過語言這種媒介來分析和理解人類的文化、社會和歷史活動。而這種清楚、直接、人性化的寫作，以及作為這種寫作基礎的閱讀，就是人文學科的根本。

The teaching of the humanities has fallen on hard times. So says a new report on the state of the humanities by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and so says the experience of nearly everyone who teaches at a college or university. Undergraduates will tell you that they're under pressure — from their parents, from the burden of debt they incur, from society at large — to choose majors they believe will lead as directly as possible to good jobs. Too often, that means skipping the humanities.
人文學科的教學已經陷入困境。美國文理科學院(American Academy of Arts and Sciences)的一篇新報告對人文學科的現狀做出了這樣的判斷，而且幾乎每位在高等院校教過書的人，經驗也是如此。本科生會告訴你，他們承受著巨大的壓力，來自父母、來自債務的重擔，總的來說來自全社會，這使得他們去選擇那些他們認為會更快、更有可能帶來好工作的專業。這也經常意味著，逃掉人文學科的課程。
In other words, there is a new and narrowing vocational emphasis in the way students and their parents think about what to study in college. As the American Academy report notes, this is the consequence of a number of things, including an overall decline in the experience of literacy, the kind of thing you absorbed, for instance, if your parents read aloud to you as a child. The result is that the number of students graduating in the humanities has fallen sharply. At Pomona College (my alma mater) this spring, 16 students graduated with an English major out of a student body of 1,560, a terribly small number.
換句話說，在學生和父母考慮在大學裡該學什麼時，有一種新出現的對職業的狹隘強調。正如美國文理科學院報告指出的，這是一系列事情造成的結果，包括文學體驗的整體下降。對文學體驗的汲取，舉例來說，可以從孩提時代父母為你大聲朗讀中得到。其結果是，人文學科的畢業生人數大幅下降。今年春天，在我的母校波莫納學院，英語專業畢業的學生僅有16人，與1560的學生總數相比少得可憐。
In 1991, 165 students graduated from Yale with a BA in English literature. By 2012, that number was 62. In 1991, the top two majors at Yale were history and English. In 2013, they were economics and political science. At Pomona this year, they were economics and mathematics.
在1991年，耶魯大學有165名畢業生獲得英語文學士學位。到2012年，這一數字是62。在1991年，耶魯大學兩個最重要的專業是歷史和英語。到2013年，它們變成了經濟學和政治學。在今年的波莫納學院，它們是經濟學和數學。
Parents have always worried when their children become English majors. What is an English major good for? In a way, the best answer has always been, wait and see — an answer that satisfies no one. And yet it is a rea​​l answer, one that reflects the versatility of thought and language that comes from studying literature. Former English majors turn up almost anywhere, in almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them a rich sense of the possibilities of language, literary and otherwise.
當孩子們進入英語專業後，他們的父母總會擔心，英語專業有什麼好的呢？從某一方面來說，最好的答案總是：先耐心等等。但這個答案不會讓任何人滿意。然而這卻是正確答案，它能反映出文學學習給思想和語言上帶來的多種才能。從前的英語專業學生分佈在幾乎每一個領域、每一個職業崗位上，他們總是能夠在語言、文學等方面帶來豐富的潛力。
The canon — the books and writers we agree are worth studying — used to seem like a given, an unspoken consensus of sorts. But the canon has always been shifting, and it is now vastly more inclusive than it was 40 years ago. That's a good thing. What's less clear now is what we study the canon for and why we choose the tools we employ in doing so.
從前，經典著作，也就是我們都認為值得學習的書籍和作家，似乎是毫無爭議的，是某種無需討論的共識。但經典卻總是在不停變化，比起四十年前，它如今包括的內容要廣泛得多，這是一件好事。但如今不那麼明確的是，我們學習經典的目的是什麼，為什麼我們選擇使用這些理論和工具來進行學習。
A technical narrowness, the kind of specialization and theoretical emphasis you might find in a graduate course, has crept into the undergraduate curriculum. That narrowness sometimes reflects the tight focus of a professor's research, but it can also reflect a persistent doubt about the humanistic enterprise . It often leaves undergraduates wondering, as I know from my conversations with them, just what they've been studying and why.
專業的狹隘性，這種你可能會從研究生課程中看到的對專門化和理論研究的強調，已經逐漸在本科課程裡顯露了出來。這種狹窄性有時反映的是教授對自己研究領域的狹窄關注，但它同時也顯示出，人們對人文學科研究始終存在的懷疑。這往往讓本科生困惑，他們到底在學些什麼、為什麼學這些，這是我通過與他們的交流發現的。
STUDYING the humanities should be like standing among colleagues and students on the open deck of a ship moving along the endless coastline of human experience. Instead, now it feels as though people have retreated to tiny cabins in the bowels of the ship, from which they peep out on a small fragment of what may be a coastline or a fog bank or the back of a spouting whale.
學習人文學科應該像是站在一個開放的甲板上，你身在同行和學生中間，船兒正沿著人類體驗的無盡海岸線暢遊。相反地​​，現在的感覺卻像是，人們撤回到了船腹的小艙裡，從那裡他們向外看到的可能是海岸線、霧堤或是噴水鯨魚的後背，但僅僅是一鱗半爪的片段。
There is a certain literal-mindedness in the recent shift away from the humanities. It suggests a number of things. One, the rush to make education pay off presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring (though that doesn't explain the current popularity of political science). Two, the humanities often do a bad job of explaining why the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a bad job of teaching the humanities. You don't have to choose only one of these explanations. All three apply.
最近這種偏離人文學科的轉向中，毫無疑問有追求實用性的考慮。這說明了幾個問題。一，急於讓教育產生回報的衝動決定了，只有那些能立刻得到應用的技能才值得學習（然而，這無法解釋當前政治學的熱門）。二，人文學科自身往往沒能很好地闡明其重要性。三，人文學科往往不善教授人文知識。你無須在這三種解釋裡僅選出一個。這三個都適用。
What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.
許多本科生所不知道的，也是他們許多教授未能告訴他們的是，人文學科那些最基本的饋贈未來將會變得多麼珍貴。這種饋贈就是思路清晰、行文簡明，以及一生對文學的​​興趣。
Maybe it takes some living to find out this truth. Whenever I teach older students, whether they're undergraduates, graduate students or junior faculty, I find a vivid, pressing sense of how much they need the skill they didn't acquire earlier in life. They don't call that skill the humanities. They don't call it literature. They call it writing — the ability to distribute their thinking in the kinds of sentences that have a merit, even a literary merit, of their own.
這個真相可能需要有一定的生活經驗才能發現。每當我教授年紀較長的學生，不論他們是本科生、研究生或者是初級教師，我都會從他們身上發現，他們對這種未能及早掌握的技能，有鮮明而迫切的需求。他們不將這種技能稱為人文學科，也不會將它稱為文學，而是將它稱為寫作。這種能力可以將他們的思考化為字句，而這種字句自身有其價值，甚至是文學上的價值。
Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn't merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you.
善寫原本是人文學科的一個根本原則，這就像是數學和統計學在科學領域的角色一樣關鍵。但是，善寫不僅僅是一個實用技能，它是一個人在與周邊世界的交流中所生髮起來的，理性的優雅和能量。
No one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy, and I doubt anyone ever will. But everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.
沒有人找得到一種為這種能力定價的方法，我懷疑也不會有人這麼做。但每一個擁有它的人——不論如何、何時獲得——都知道，這是一種稀有而珍貴的財富。