1964.11 面向未来的教育

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Educating for the Future
Novelist, playwright, and critic, ROBERTSON DAVIESis one of Canada’s most urbane and scholarly writers. His novels, TEMPER TOST and LEAVEN OF MALICE,are masterpieces of wit and satire, and he has done several plays for television and the stage. Mr. Davies is Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

By Robertson Davies
NOVEMBER 1964 ISSUE
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by ROBERTSON DAVIES

WHAT would you say was the underlying philosophy of our Canadian education?” I asked the V.I.P. from a great English university. He was a specialist in that realm, and had been taking a long look at our country.


“The Deweyism of the twenties, considerably tempered by Scottish pragmatism and Scottish dourness,” he replied.

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Ah, those Scots again! They are indeed a dominant force in Canadian history, beginning with that Scot in Wolfe’s attacking force who was first to scale the Heights of Abraham, and in response to the sentry’s cry of “Qui va là?” summoned up sufficiently good French to disarm suspicion. This unknown bilingual Scotsman was first among thousands of his countrymen to come to Canada, each convinced that education was, after the fear of God, the foremost of obligations, and equally determined that education was a matter of the uttermost solemnity. Education as a refinement of the intellect, education as an adornment of life — these were Frenchified notions, and in Canada to this day they are found chiefly among the French-speaking population. But education that a man might better himself was understood by the Scots and is a force in modern Canada, though people of Scottish descent are no longer a majority.

The idea of bettering oneself through education persists in form, but its content has undergone marked change. The nineteenth-century Scottish settler wanted some intellectual substance for himself, as well as a farm, shop, or mill; further, though he was too much a pragmatist not to keep one son in the family money-making business, he wanted another son for the church, or to be a professor; this was the son who showed how far the family had traveled from the croft in the Highlands. The greatgrandsons of this man frankly want professional status for the reward it brings in money, and it is law or medicine that claims them rather than the pulpit or the lecture room. Education is estranged, if not positively divorced, from intellectuality.


What has brought about the change? In 1784 not one man in five hundred in Canada could read; one hundred and eighty years later less than 4 percent of the total population cannot read. For the first century of that period, reading, writing, and simple arithmetic were the staples of education, with splendid flights into Latin, Greek, and Hebrew for the learned; but at about the turn of the present century the concepts of Froebel training were adopted, to give place in time to what educationists believed to be the theories of John Dewey.

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All of this is in tune with what is perhaps the greatest revolution of our time — the establishment of universal literacy. A measure of the success of that revolution is the quality of the discontent that great numbers of people feel about it. Forgetful of how new this widespread literacy is, they find fault with it because it has not brought about a revolution in taste. Everybody can read, they say, but great numbers of people do not read, and of those who do, a majority read trash.

These disillusioned idealists apparently expect that instruction in reading will set free some inborn desire on the part of every citizen to read what is of literary worth. This is a hangover from eighteenthcentury idealism; instruction in reading enables every citizen to read what appeals to him, if anything in print does appeal to him, which cannot be guaranteed. The horse has been led to water, but he must provide his own thirst. Those who hoped that universal education would immediately bring about a revolution are blinded by their disappointment to the real progress the revolution has already made.

The revolution progresses in Canada along lines so similar to those understood in the United States that it would be tedious to describe them in detail. The British North America Act, which brought Canada into being as a united country in 1867, established education as a provincial concern; the Dominion might intervene only to safeguard the rights of minorities. Therefore, we have now ten provincial systems of education in Canada, and if we take heed of the fact that Quebec has virtually two systems — one for the French Catholic population and one for the English-speaking Protestants — the number increases to eleven. The systems are much alike on the elementary and secondary levels. Of the teaching body, about three quarters are women. The most significant difference from the U.S. systems is that in Canada, three quarters of the English-speaking pupils learn French as a second language, as opposed to about one eighth of the students in the United States.

We are officially a bilingual country. It is desirable that every Canadian should be able to speak French, and virtually all children are given instruction which would enable them to do so if they wanted to speak another language. So far, however, their desire to speak any language, including English, well and eloquently has not been overmastering.

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THE defects of the eleven systems are obvious, and everyone concerned has a favorite illustrative story. In his recent book about his childhood in Elgin County, Ontario, J. K. Galbraith writes: “Once we had a good teacher, but she was an accident. All the rest were young females diligently but incompetently filling in a few years between puberty and the best available marriage.” But of course! It is unreasonable to expect a female Socrates, or even an educated and cultivated woman, in every classroom; nevertheless, the well-meaning girls from the teachers’ colleges made it possible for hundreds of children — few of them of easy temperament, and some of them ineducable in any formal sense — to read and write and do sums, and for J. K. Galbraith to make a start on a distinguished career. They raised those children immeasurably above their grandparents. This is not the perfection of instruction, but for an unwieldy and expensive structure, it is not a despicable result. Too many critics of education in Canada and elsewhere forget that it works upon the most intractable and varied sort of raw material. They forget that universal education is still an experiment and an unproven one. Within the next century we shall undoubtedly be driven by experience to recognize that no single system of education fits all children, and that some need training so radically different from anything offered now that it cannot be called education in the present sense at all.

What is the present system? “The Deweyism of the twenties,” said the V.I.P. Professor John Dewey might not recognize it, and before he died, he disowned some aspects of it, but the root of his educational philosophy lies buried beneath it and in some measure nourishes it. Dewey turned away from a dead system in which facts were imparted by repetition and little value was given to reasoning. Some facts can be acquired only by memorizing, and the reasoning of children has to be guided if it is to reach conclusions about which there can be no dispute. Therefore, an elaborate teaching method had to be devised and tested in practice. It was inevitable that in this process much of Dewey’s valuable work became distorted or vanished altogether.

Dewey’s ideas were constantly developing and changing, and he was often far ahead of his best pupils. He was intellectually fearless, and often wrong; this did not matter for Dewey, because he could abandon a wrong path and clash off on another. But his less agile followers, seeking a method among his intuitions and brilliant insights, were sure to make mistakes. What were essentially the deeply personal reflections of a brilliant mind were somehow compressed into a methodology and an educational philosophy which could be grasped and put to work by minds which were not always brilliant and were in some cases inferior to those found in the middle ranks of business and the professions.

In Canada, where the world of primary and secondary education tends to be a closed one — for the movement of teachers from province to province is not easy, and study outside the country is discouraged — it was not long before teachers who had themselves been schooled by the methods of Canadian Deweyism were giving instruction in the same general way. No wonder that the infiltration of other educational ideas is slow, and that there is occasional sharp criticism of Canadian university teaching by the teachers in primary and secondary schools. The professors have no method, cry the teachers. The teachers have method, but they don’t understand the subjects they are teaching, reply the professors (who do not have to undergo specific instruction in a methodology). Teach the professors method, and university education can be reduced in length and improved in quality, say the teachers. Put teachers who are educated men and women in the schools, and the first year of university will not be wasted in teaching grammar, elementary logic, and good habits of private study, say the professors. It is a dispute to which there can be no end. It serves, however, to bring us to the third area in Canadian education, the universities.

THERE are thirty-seven Canadian universities,varying greatly in academic standing and range of instruction. The best are by no means wealthy institutions; indeed, their combined endowments do not exceed a billion dollars. It is the more remarkable, therefore, that they exercise a dominant and, some people insist, disproportionate influence on many aspects of the national life. Among our small population it is not altogether a happy thing that so many writers are also academics, and that of these a great number are critics as well as creators. On the other hand, it may be argued that in a land where there is no acknowledged literary capital, and where literary matters do not interest a large public, the universities serve, as did the monasteries in the Middle Ages, to cherish an art that would otherwise languish. Although music has a strong university association, painting has not, and those who talk of university domination assert that it is in painting, of all the arts, that Canada has most distinguished itself. Those who believe that there is some way of comparing achievement in unlike arts may be convinced by such argument.

There can be no doubt that in public affairs Canadian universities have a large and growing influence. It is to them that the Dominion government and the provincial legislatures turn when they want investigation and appraisal in economic and scientific matters, and in some universities there are professors so taken up with this sort of work that it is hard to say whether they are academics or civil servants. The link between our universities and the arts and government is thrown into relief by the smallness of our population. It may also be said that the Scottish pragmatism mentioned by the English V.I.P. as a dominant element in our education extends beyond it, and that Canada feels that the logical place to look for expert appraisal and advice is among experts. More than do some of our sister democracies, we mistrust amateurism.

If this sounds like undue praise of Canadian universities, other facts must be brought forward to establish a balance. In the words of Dean Ernest Sirluck of the graduate school at the University of Toronto, Canada has been “bumming a free ride” too long in the academic world. U.S. foundations have been expected to show a concern for our university welfare not less great than for that of their own country, and in 1962 only 62 percent of the staff members engaged by Canadian universities were Canadians, trained wholly or in part in Canada. We have depended too long on university teachers from Great Britain or the United States. This was chiefly the result of the disparity between university salaries here and in the States, which meant that some of our best young academics went across the border in the old Scots search for betterment. In recent years Canadian university salaries, like those of teachers in primary and secondary schools, have improved, and we are holding more of our own promising young Ph.D.’s. But there is still a great gap to be bridged.

There is also a historic reason for our dependence on Britain and the United States. Not only did we welcome young men from Oxford and Cambridge, and later from Harvard and Yale; we thought them a cut above our home-trained academics, and in most instances we were right. They were better trained, and they brought with them a breath from a larger academic world. This is so no longer. The unusual man who has established himself in some realm of research or scholarship is still sought from abroad, but the Canadian academic, who has probably done some part of his training in the United States, in Britain, or in Europe, is not the backwoods pedant of an earlier day. He must be induced to stay in Canada for pragmatic reasons, not by appeals to patriotism. A Canadian academic knows that, all other things being equal, he serves his country best by doing pretty well for himself; his country will reward him neither with riches nor with a title. It must reward him, therefore, with a decent salary and conditions in which he can do work he believes to be valuable.

What are such conditions of work? Usually they are opportunities to pursue research, with the assistance of a number of capable graduate students, in the laboratories or the libraries that such work makes necessary. In many Canadian universities little or no work is done at the graduate level, the laboratories are for undergraduate instruction, and the libraries are miserable. It is not solely lack of money that creates these conditions. It is often the concept of a university as essentially a school for professional training which quickly established itself in a new country where there was no tradition of scholarship and where hardheaded taxpayers and private benefactors expected that every student should “go through” for something.

For hundreds of years universities have been centers of professional training, in that they gave a man as much as he could absorb of the classical learning which was considered a necessary beginning to any learned profession. Classical learning has lost its prestige everywhere, and in Canada it is little regarded except in Quebec, where French traditional respect for it maintains a lingering influence. Certainly technical training in Quebec lingers far behind that in other provinces, but Quebec universities are still recognizably universities: in the rest of Canada they wear too often the sullen aspect of trade schools, except in the cases of a few large universities where active graduate schools tip the balance in favor of scholarship as opposed to marketable skills.

There is an interesting revolt against this attitude in some of the new universities that are being established, principally, though not wholly, in the East. They are insistent that academic values must be foremost in determining their growth, that a personal relationship between faculty and student must be regained (sometimes by the adoption of a modified tutorial system), and that, whether a student be studying arts, science, or some professional course, he must attend special lectures in the humanities, which expose him to a larger intellectual world.

Although the impetus in this direction has come from the academics, it was warmly approved by many industrialists who have found that technicians may maintain a business yet not have the intellectual training to foresee its future or control its development. In their phrase, “know-why” is of greater value even than “know-how.”

In addition to the formal provincial systems of education and a number of private schools which range in quality from excellent to mediocre, there are three other educational forces at work in Canada which should be mentioned. The first is the National Research Council, founded in 1916 as a Dominion body, which directs research and makes available scientific advice and findings on the highest level which are relevant to Canadian needs. The second is a complementary national body, the Canada Council, founded in 1957 to encourage the arts, humanities, and social sciences by means of grants to institutions, publications, and individuals.

The third educational force continually at work in Canada is its press. To see what it does it is necessary only to compare a newspaper published in a town with a population of 100,000 or less in the United States with a paper in a community of similar size in Canada. The range of news and opinion, international and national, is vastly greater in the Canadian paper.

IT IS difficult for a Canadian to write of Canadian education without falling to some degree into the national habit of discontent because impossibilities have not been made possible. Perhaps, as an indication of the standard reached at matriculation level-grade thirteen in the high schools, in which boys and girls are usually eighteen years of age — the following examination questions may be of use. They are drawn from the history examination put to this group in Ontario last June.

It has been said that the United States Constitution was designed to protect propertied interests. Discuss this view by referring to (a) the underlying weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, (b) the circumstances surrounding the replacement of the Articles of Confederation, and (c) the relevant provisions of the new constitution. . . .

Discuss the role of the protective tariff in United States federal politics beginning with the American system of Henry Clay and continuing to the adoption of the Underwood Tariff in 1913. . . .

Comment briefly upon any five of the following episodes in Canadian-American relations, particularly from the standpoints of the matters in dispute, the means pursued to attain solutions, and the settlements reached. (1) The Maine-New Brunswick Boundary; (2) The Oregon Boundary; (3) Compensation for the Fenian Raids; (4) The Alaska Boundary; (5) The Reciprocity Agreement of 1911; (6) The St. Lawrence Seaway; (7) The North American Air Defence Command (NORAD); (8) The Columbia River Power Project.

These questions are chosen because they relate to matters which are likely to be familiar to U.S. readers. How do you think you would do on an examination of this sort, remembering that the standard of marking, though not cruel, is exacting?

What is Canadian education doing? At the primary school level it is persuading the child that learning is not necessarily disagreeable and that the acquirement of some skills is a part of growing up. In the high schools it is deploying the two main branches of learning, arts and science, and encouraging the pupil to find his bent, without allowing him to specialize in any serious way. In the universities it offers specialist study up to and beyond the graduate level, including much specific professional training. It is performing these tasks in a way which leaves the Canadian citizen, whether he attends a university or not, at no practical disadvantage with a person educated to the same age in either Great Britain or the United States. But Canadians are not satisfied with their education. What can be done to improve it?

My own suggestion is that it might attempt to produce a much greater degree of excellence in a single but important area of study in every child who attends a school, beginning in the earliest grades and continuing straight through the universities, in science as well as in the arts. There are many fancy names for the branch of study I would thus elevate to first importance, but let us call it simply the intelligent use and understanding of language.

All teaching is done by means of language, even when what is taught is in effect another mode of expression, such as mathematics or music. In Canada our particular version of embalmed Deweyism has all but banished the study of grammar, and the haste with which demanding courses of study have to be covered has made the carefully written essay a rarity in school experience. Teachers do not have time to mark such essays, and teachers of subjects other than English are often ready to ignore bad writing because they have to give their attention to so much bad thinking and muddled understanding.

Such abdication of responsibility for teaching good English is excused with all the usual nonsense: “popular usage is the true law of grammar,”“no language can remain static,”“rules crush spontaneity,” and so forth. But no answers are given to the questions raised by the excuses: Whose usage is to be taken as a model? Is comprehensibility indistinguishable from stasis? How do you distinguish spontaneity from anarchy? The essential point is avoided: agreement about meaning is necessary to thought, and critical understanding of language is a means toward evaluation of the thought of others.

English as Canadian students use it, up to university graduation and beyond, reflects this neglect of language in all the familiar ways. Where grammar is shaky, thought is woolly and expression ambiguous or cumbrous. As other languages cannot be learned without some attention to their grammar, foreign grammar —often Latin grammar — creeps into written or formal spoken English with effects comparable to the use of imitation marble in shoddy architecture. In universities students eager for means of expression seize on the jargons of science or criticism and use them inappositely. Such commonplaces of good speech and writing as congruities of vocabulary are strangers to them. An intelligent group of first-year scientists presented me, in an examination on a survey course in drama, with such nuggets as “humour wants [once] more enters the picture,” “Boyle is funny in that he has no shame in lying on the Bible,” “she was pregnant for a child,” and “the Widow Quin speaks only of the mundane things of life (e.g., dung).”Of a class of forty, five could not distinguish between “no” and “know’.” They were not stupid but victims of a system that thinks language is taught by nature. Such a system condemns any of them who are not geniuses to a position in the world far below their true capabilities. And part of the wry comedy is that in later life they, as university graduates, will be accepted by many people as leaders, and their opinions heeded in fields far beyond their specialty.




Perhaps what is wanted is a return to the study of rhetoric, and a fresh consideration of what rhetoric means, for the word has taken on a bad color with the passing of years. But it is not too much, surely, to expect a child in grade four to understand the difference between “Come in, Barney” and “Barney, come in”? If such a child matriculated at the age of eighteen with a competency in grammar, logic, and rhetoric, the result within a generation would be a revolution in politics, in journalism, in theology, and, of course, in education.

The V.I.P. who was quoted accused Canadian education of lacking a clear philosophy; at present it aims at development but not at concentration of intellectual power. Insistence upon skill in the use and appreciation of language would tend toward clarity of information in those subjects where information and deduction from language are the principal aims, and clarity of opinion in those subjects where personal opinion is of value. But its greatest influence would be as a check upon unexamined thought.

This sounds like a demand that all Canadian children come out of school with the elementary equipment of philosophers. Well, why not? Every great system of education has had some clear aim. Jesuit education aimed at making children clear-minded and subtle within specific limits; Thomas Arnold’s system of education aimed at producing Christian gentlemen who knew how to rule. Why should not Canadian education aim at producing a nation of people who know what they are saying and what is being said to them, and who cannot be deceived by the insincerities and fatuities of scoundrels and fools?


Is there any educational aim more desirable for a democracy? Is there any principle more important to a nation made up of many races, which officially has two native tongues and practically has a ravaged and half-crazed version of one of them? Has there ever been a time in history when it was so necessary to know what a writer or speaker hoped to achieve by his utterance, how his aims chimed with his assertions, and what the outcome might be if he got what he wanted?

But how can so great a demand be made of an already burdened system? I think the demand may reasonably be made, if first things are to be put first in Canadian education. If it involves retraining of teachers, or a new sort of teacher, and if it explodes some of the gaseous twaddle that has crept into our curricula, that would be no bad thing. The Deweyism of the twenties has had good innings, and on the whole it has served us well; it would be foolish to throw it over. But Scottish pragmatism and Scottish dourness might well be given even greater weight than in the past, and I can think of nowhere that they might be more effective than in demanding a new approach to the study of language. It is the primary instrument of education, and the key, if not necessarily to truth, at least to a superior version of common sense.



面向未来的教育
小说家、剧作家和评论家罗伯逊-戴维斯（ROBERTSON DAVIES）是加拿大最具风度和学术性的作家之一。他的小说《TEMPER TOST》和《LEAVEN OF MALICE》是机智和讽刺的杰作，他还为电视和舞台创作了若干剧本。戴维斯先生是多伦多大学梅西学院的院长。

作者：罗伯逊-戴维斯
1964年11月号
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作者：罗伯逊-戴维斯

你认为我们加拿大教育的基本理念是什么？我问来自英国一所著名大学的副校长。他是这一领域的专家，并对我国进行了长期考察。


"他回答说："20年代的杜威主义，被苏格兰的实用主义和苏格兰人的愚昧所调和。

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啊，又是那些苏格兰人! 他们确实是加拿大历史上的一支主导力量，从沃尔夫的进攻部队中的那个苏格兰人开始，他第一个登上了亚伯拉罕高地，并在回应哨兵的呼喊 "Qui va là? "时唤出了足够好的法语来解除怀疑。这位名不见经传的双语苏格兰人是成千上万来到加拿大的同胞中的第一个，每个人都坚信教育是继敬畏上帝之后最重要的义务，并同样认定教育是最庄严的事情。教育是智力的完善，教育是生活的装饰--这些都是法国化的观念，在加拿大，直到今天，这些观念还主要存在于讲法语的人口中。但是，苏格兰人理解教育是为了让人更好地生活，并且是现代加拿大的一种力量，尽管苏格兰人的后裔不再占多数。

通过教育改善自己的想法在形式上仍然存在，但其内容已经发生了明显的变化。十九世纪的苏格兰定居者希望自己有一些智力方面的东西，以及农场、商店或磨坊；此外，尽管他是个实用主义者，不愿意让一个儿子从事家庭赚钱的生意，但他希望另一个儿子去教堂，或成为一名教授；这个儿子表明家族已经从高地的农田走了多远。这个人的曾孙们坦率地想要职业地位，因为它能带来金钱上的回报，是法律或医学要求他们，而不是讲坛或演讲室。教育与知识分子疏远了，甚至完全脱离了。


是什么导致了这种变化？1784年，加拿大每500人中没有一个人能够阅读；180年后，总人口中只有不到4%的人不能阅读。在那个时期的第一个世纪，阅读、写作和简单的算术是教育的主要内容，学识渊博的人还会对拉丁语、希腊语和希伯来语进行精彩的飞行；但大约在本世纪初，弗罗贝尔培训的概念被采用，在时间上让位于教育学家认为是约翰-杜威的理论。

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所有这些都与也许是我们这个时代最伟大的革命--普及识字率的建立--相吻合。衡量这场革命是否成功的一个标准是大量的人对它感到不满的质量。他们忘记了这种广泛的识字是多么新奇，他们认为它有问题，因为它没有带来品味的革命。他们说，每个人都可以读书，但大量的人不读书，而在那些读书的人中，大多数人读的都是垃圾。

这些幻想破灭的理想主义者显然希望阅读指导能使每个公民释放出一些与生俱来的欲望，去阅读有文学价值的东西。这是十八世纪理想主义的遗留问题；阅读指导使每个公民都能读到吸引他的东西，如果印刷品中的任何东西确实吸引了他，这一点无法保证。马已经被牵到了水边，但他必须自己解决口渴的问题。那些希望普及教育会立即带来一场革命的人，被他们的失望蒙蔽了双眼，看不到革命已经取得的真正进展。

革命在加拿大的进展与美国所理解的路线如此相似，以至于详细描述它们将是乏味的。1867年使加拿大成为一个统一国家的《英属北美法案》规定，教育是各省关注的问题；只有在保障少数民族权利的情况下，多米尼加才能进行干预。因此，我们现在在加拿大有十个省级教育系统，如果我们注意到魁北克实际上有两个系统--一个为法国天主教徒，一个为讲英语的新教徒--这个数字就会增加到11个。这些系统在小学和中学阶段都很相似。在教师队伍中，大约四分之三是女性。与美国教育体系最显著的区别是，在加拿大，四分之三的英语学生将法语作为第二语言学习，而在美国，约有八分之一的学生学习法语。

我们正式成为一个双语国家。每个加拿大人都应该能够说法语，而且几乎所有的孩子都得到了指导，如果他们想说另一种语言的话，他们就能做到这一点。然而，到目前为止，他们想把任何语言，包括英语说得很好、很有说服力的愿望还没有被压倒。

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十一种制度的缺陷是显而易见的，每个有关的人都有一个最喜欢的说明性故事。J.K.加尔布雷斯在他最近关于他在安大略省埃尔金县的童年的书中写道："曾经我们有一个好老师，但她是一个意外。其余的人都是年轻女性，勤奋但不称职地填补了青春期和最佳婚姻之间的几年"。但是，当然了! 期望每个教室里都有一个女苏格拉底，甚至一个受过教育和培养的女人，是不合理的；尽管如此，来自师范学院的那些好心的女孩们使数以百计的孩子--他们中很少有性情温和的人，其中一些人在任何正式意义上都无法接受教育--能够阅读和写作，并使J-K-加尔布雷思开始了一个杰出的职业生涯。他们把这些孩子培养得比他们的祖父母高出许多。这并不是完美的教学，但对于一个笨重而昂贵的结构来说，这并不是一个可鄙的结果。在加拿大和其他地方，有太多批评教育的人忘记了，教育是在最难处理和最多样的原材料上进行的。他们忘了，普及教育仍然是一项实验，而且是一项未经证实的实验。在下个世纪，我们无疑会被经验所驱使，认识到没有一种教育体系适合所有的孩子，有些孩子需要的培训与现在提供的任何培训都截然不同，根本不能称之为目前意义上的教育。

什么是目前的体系？"约翰-杜威教授可能不承认这一点，在他去世前，他不承认它的某些方面，但他的教育哲学的根埋在下面，在某种程度上滋养着它。杜威摒弃了一个死气沉沉的系统，在这个系统中，事实是通过重复来传授的，而对推理的重视程度却不高。有些事实只能通过记忆获得，而儿童的推理必须得到指导，才能得出没有争议的结论。因此，必须设计出一种精心设计的教学方法，并在实践中加以检验。在这个过程中，杜威的许多有价值的工作不可避免地被歪曲或完全消失了。

杜威的思想在不断发展和变化，他常常远远领先于他最好的学生。他在智力上无所畏惧，而且经常出错；这对杜威来说并不重要，因为他可以放弃一条错误的道路，转而走另一条道路。但他那些不太敏捷的追随者，在他的直觉和卓越的洞察力中寻找方法，肯定会犯错误。本质上是一个聪明人的深刻的个人思考，却以某种方式被压缩成一种方法论和教育哲学，可以被那些并不总是聪明的、在某些情况下还不如商业和职业的中层人员的头脑所掌握并付诸实施。

在加拿大，中小学教育的世界往往是一个封闭的世界--因为教师从一个省到另一个省的流动并不容易，而且不鼓励在国外学习--不久之后，那些自己曾接受过加拿大杜威主义方法教育的教师就开始以同样的方式进行教学。难怪其他教育思想的渗透很缓慢，而且中小学教师偶尔会对加拿大大学教学提出尖锐的批评。教授们没有方法，教师们哭笑不得。老师们有方法，但他们不理解他们所教的科目，教授们回答说（他们不需要接受具体的方法指导）。教师们说，教给教授们方法，大学教育就可以缩短时间，提高质量。教授们说，把受过教育的男女教师放在学校里，大学的第一年就不会浪费在教语法、初级逻辑和自学的好习惯上。这是一场没有结果的争论。然而，这有助于我们了解加拿大教育的第三个领域，即大学。

加拿大有37所大学，在学术地位和教学范围方面差别很大。最好的大学绝不是富裕的机构；事实上，它们的捐赠总额不超过10亿美元。因此，更难能可贵的是，它们对国民生活的许多方面发挥着主导作用，而且，有些人坚持认为，这种影响不成比例。在我们的小规模人口中，如此多的作家也是学者，而且其中大量的人既是批评家也是创作者，这并不完全是一件令人高兴的事情。另一方面，可以说，在一个没有公认的文学之都的国家，在一个对文学事务不感兴趣的国家，大学的作用就像中世纪的修道院一样，是为了珍惜一种本来会枯萎的艺术。虽然音乐与大学有着密切的联系，但绘画却没有，那些谈论大学统治的人断言，在所有艺术中，加拿大在绘画方面最为突出。那些认为有某种方法可以比较不同艺术的成就的人可能会被这种说法所说服。

毫无疑问，在公共事务中，加拿大的大学有很大的影响力，而且还在不断增长。当多米尼加政府和各省立法机构需要对经济和科学问题进行调查和评估时，就会求助于他们，在一些大学里，有一些教授忙于此类工作，很难说他们是学者还是公务员。我们的大学、艺术和政府之间的联系因为我们的人口太少而变得微不足道。也可以说，英国的V.I.P.提到的苏格兰实用主义是我们教育中的一个主导因素，而且加拿大认为寻找专家评估和建议的合理场所是专家之间。与我们的一些姐妹民主国家相比，我们更不信任业余主义。

如果这听起来像是对加拿大大学的过度赞美，那么必须提出其他事实来建立平衡。用多伦多大学研究生院院长Ernest Sirluck的话说，加拿大在学术界 "搭便车 "的时间太久了。美国基金会一直被期望对我们的大学福利表现出不亚于他们自己国家的关心，而在1962年，加拿大大学聘用的工作人员中只有62%是加拿大人，全部或部分在加拿大接受培训。我们对来自英国或美国的大学教师依赖得太久了。这主要是由于这里的大学工资和美国的大学工资之间的差距造成的，这意味着我们一些最优秀的年轻学者为了寻求更好的发展而越过边界，成为苏格兰人。近年来，加拿大大学的工资，就像小学和中学教师的工资一样，已经有所提高，我们自己也拥有了更多有前途的年轻博士生。但是仍然有很大的差距需要弥补。

我们对英国和美国的依赖也有一个历史原因。我们不仅欢迎来自牛津和剑桥的年轻人，以及后来来自哈佛和耶鲁的年轻人；我们认为他们比我们国内培养的学者高出一截，而且在大多数情况下我们是对的。他们受过更好的训练，而且他们带来了来自更大的学术世界的气息。现在情况不再是这样了。在某些研究或学术领域确立了自己地位的不寻常的人仍然被从国外寻找，但加拿大学者可能在美国、英国或欧洲完成了部分培训，他们不再是早期的乡下学者。必须以务实的理由而不是以爱国主义的诉求来促使他留在加拿大。一个加拿大学者知道，在所有其他条件相同的情况下，他为国家服务的最好方式是把自己做得很好；他的国家既不会用财富也不会用头衔来回报他。因此，国家必须以体面的工资和条件来奖励他，使他能够从事他认为有价值的工作。

这些工作条件是什么？通常，它们是在一些有能力的研究生的协助下，在实验室或图书馆从事研究的机会，而这种工作是必要的。在加拿大的许多大学里，很少或根本没有研究生的工作，实验室是为本科生教学服务的，而图书馆则是悲惨的。造成这些情况的原因并不仅仅是缺乏资金。它往往是大学作为专业培训学校的概念，在一个没有学术传统的新国家迅速确立了自己的地位，而顽固的纳税人和私人赞助者期望每个学生都能 "通过 "一些东西。

几百年来，大学一直是专业培训的中心，因为它们给人提供了他能吸收的尽可能多的古典学问，这些学问被认为是任何有学问的职业的必要起点。在加拿大，除了魁北克省外，古典学问已经失去了它的威望，在魁北克省，法国人对古典学问的传统尊重保持着挥之不去的影响，所以古典学问很少受到重视。当然，魁北克省的技术培训远远落后于其他省份，但魁北克省的大学仍然是可识别的大学：在加拿大其他地区，除了少数几所大型大学的研究生院积极支持学术研究而不是市场技能外，这些大学往往表现出贸易学校的沉闷。

在一些正在建立的新大学中，对这种态度有一种有趣的反抗，这些大学主要是在东部，虽然不完全是。他们坚持认为，在决定他们的成长时，学术价值必须是最重要的，必须恢复教师和学生之间的个人关系（有时通过采用改良的辅导系统），而且，无论学生是学习文科、理科还是一些专业课程，他都必须参加人文科学方面的特别讲座，使他接触到更大的知识世界。

虽然这个方向的推动力来自学术界，但它得到了许多工业家的热烈赞同，他们发现技术人员可以维持一个企业，但却不具备预见其未来或控制其发展的知识培训。用他们的话说，"知道为什么 "甚至比 "知识 "更有价值。

除了正规的省级教育系统和一些质量从优秀到平庸的私立学校外，在加拿大还有三股教育力量在发挥作用，值得一提。第一个是国家研究委员会，成立于1916年，是一个联邦机构，负责指导研究并提供与加拿大需求相关的最高水平的科学建议和结论。第二个是一个补充性的国家机构，即加拿大委员会，成立于1957年，通过向机构、出版物和个人提供资助的方式鼓励艺术、人文和社会科学。

在加拿大持续发挥作用的第三种教育力量是其新闻界。要了解它的作用，只需将美国一个人口在10万以下的城镇出版的报纸与加拿大一个类似规模的社区的报纸进行比较。在加拿大的报纸上，国际和国内的新闻和观点的范围都要大得多。

对加拿大人来说，要想写出加拿大的教育，而不在某种程度上落入全国性的不满习惯，是很难的，因为不可能的事情还没有成为可能。也许，作为大学预科阶段--高中13年级（男孩和女孩通常都是18岁）--所达到的标准的一种说明，以下的考试题可能会有帮助。这些问题来自去年六月在安大略省举行的历史考试。

有人说，美国宪法的设计是为了保护有产者的利益。讨论这一观点时要提到：（a）《联邦条款》的基本弱点；（b）取代《联邦条款》的情况；以及（c）新宪法的相关规定。. . .

讨论保护性关税在美国联邦政治中的作用，从亨利-克莱的美国制度开始，一直到1913年安德伍德关税的通过。. . .

对下列加美关系中的任何五个事件进行简要评论，特别是从争议事项的角度，为实现解决方案而采取的手段，以及达成的解决方案。(1）美因河-新不伦瑞克河边界；（2）俄勒冈州边界；（3）芬尼亚人袭击事件的赔偿；（4）阿拉斯加边界；（5）1911年的互惠协议；（6）圣劳伦斯航道；（7）北美防空司令部；（8）哥伦比亚河电力项目。

选择这些问题是因为它们与美国读者可能熟悉的事项有关。你认为你在这种考试中的表现如何，要记住评分标准虽然并不残酷，但却很严格？

加拿大的教育在做什么？在小学阶段，它正在说服孩子们，学习不一定是令人不快的，获得一些技能是成长的一部分。在高中，它正在部署学习的两个主要分支，即艺术和科学，并鼓励学生找到自己的方向，而不允许他以任何严肃的方式进行专业化。在大学里，它提供专业的学习，直到并超过研究生水平，包括许多具体的专业培训。在执行这些任务的过程中，加拿大公民无论是否上大学，与在英国或美国接受相同年龄教育的人相比，都不存在实际的劣势。但加拿大人对他们的教育并不满意。有什么办法可以改善它呢？

我自己的建议是，可以尝试在一个单一但重要的学习领域为每一个上学的孩子培养更多的优秀人才，从最早的年级开始，一直到大学，在科学和艺术方面。我想把这个研究分支提升到第一重要的位置，有很多花哨的名字，但让我们把它简单地称为对语言的智能使用和理解。

所有的教学都是通过语言来完成的，即使所教的内容实际上是另一种表达方式，如数学或音乐。在加拿大，我们特定版本的杜威主义已经完全驱逐了语法研究，而且由于必须匆忙地完成高要求的学习课程，精心撰写的论文在学校的经验中已经变得非常罕见。教师们没有时间批改这样的文章，而英语以外的科目的教师往往准备忽视糟糕的写作，因为他们不得不把注意力放在许多糟糕的思维和混乱的理解上。

这种放弃教授好英语的责任被用所有常见的废话来推脱："流行的用法是真正的语法法则"，"没有语言可以保持静止"，"规则压制自发性"，等等。但对于这些借口所提出的问题，却没有给出答案。谁的用法应被作为一个模型？可理解性与静止性是不可区分的吗？如何区分自发性和无政府状态？基本要点被回避了：对意义的认同是思想的必要条件，对语言的批判性理解是评价他人思想的一种手段。

加拿大学生使用的英语，直到大学毕业和以后，都以所有熟悉的方式反映了这种对语言的忽视。语法不稳定，思维不清晰，表达不明确或不流畅。由于其他语言的学习离不开对其语法的关注，外国语法--通常是拉丁语语法--悄悄地进入书面或正式的英语口语中，其效果堪比伪劣建筑中使用的仿制大理石。在大学里，学生们急于寻求表达方式，抓住科学或批评的行话，并不恰当地使用它们。词汇的一致性等良好的言语和写作的常识对他们来说是陌生的。一群聪明的一年级科学家在一次关于戏剧调查课程的考试中，向我展示了这样的锦囊妙计："幽默要[再]一次进入画面"，"博伊尔很有趣，因为他在圣经上撒谎并不感到羞耻"，"她为一个孩子怀孕了"，"昆寡妇只说生活中的世俗事物（例如粪便）。"在一个40人的班级中，有5人不能区分 "不 "和 "知道"。他们并不愚蠢，而是一个认为语言是由天性所教的系统的受害者。这样的制度将他们中任何一个不是天才的人判处为远远低于其真实能力的世界地位。而狡猾的喜剧的一部分是，在以后的生活中，他们作为大学毕业生，将被许多人接受为领导人，他们的意见在远远超出他们专业的领域被听取。




也许我们需要的是回归修辞学的研究，重新考虑修辞学的含义，因为这个词随着岁月的流逝已经带上了不好的色彩。但是，期望一个四年级的孩子理解 "进来吧，巴尼 "和 "巴尼，进来吧 "之间的区别，肯定不会太过分吧？如果这样的孩子在18岁时就能掌握语法、逻辑和修辞，那么在一代人的时间里，政治、新闻、神学，当然还有教育，都会发生革命。

被引用的V.I.P.指责加拿大教育缺乏明确的哲学；目前它的目标是发展，但不是集中智力。坚持使用和欣赏语言的技巧，在那些以信息和语言推导为主要目的的学科中，会使信息清晰，在那些以个人意见为价值的学科中，会使意见清晰。但它最大的影响是对未经审视的思想的制约。

这听起来像是要求所有加拿大儿童从学校出来时都要有哲学家的基本装备。那么，为什么不呢？每个伟大的教育体系都有一些明确的目标。耶稣会的教育旨在使儿童在特定的范围内头脑清晰和精明；托马斯-阿诺德的教育体系旨在培养懂得如何统治的基督教绅士。为什么加拿大教育的目标不应该是培养一个知道自己在说什么和别人在说什么的民族，而且不能被恶棍和傻瓜的不真诚和愚蠢所欺骗？


对于一个民主国家来说，还有什么教育目标更值得期待吗？对于一个由许多种族组成的国家来说，还有什么原则比它更重要吗？历史上是否曾有过这样一个时期，人们如此需要了解一个作家或演讲者希望通过他的言论达到什么目的，他的目的与他的断言是如何吻合的，以及如果他得到他想要的东西，结果可能是什么？

但是，怎么能对一个已经负担沉重的系统提出如此巨大的要求呢？我认为，如果在加拿大的教育中要把第一件事放在首位，那么这个要求是可以合理提出的。如果这涉及到教师的再培训，或者是一种新的教师，如果它能引爆一些已经悄悄进入我们课程的气态的废话，那也不是坏事。二十年代的杜威主义有很好的发展，总的来说，它为我们提供了很好的服务；如果把它扔掉，那就太愚蠢了。但是，苏格兰的实用主义和苏格兰的无聊可能会比过去更受重视，而且我认为没有什么地方比要求对语言的研究采取新的方法更有效。它是教育的主要工具，也是关键，如果不一定是真理，至少是卓越的常识版本。