大学英语自学教程（下）电子版

to see a wider range of possibilities than technology alone may inspire.

A poet, said Aristotle, has the advantage of expressing the universal; the specialist expresses only the particular. The poet, moreover, can remind us that man's greatest energy comes not from his dynamos bat from his dreams. But the quality of a man's dreams can only be a reflection of his subconscious. What he puts into his subconscious, therefore, is quite literally the most important nourishment in the world.

Nothing rally happens to a man except as it is registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory and where the proof of life is stored. The poet -- and we use the term to include all those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit -- can help to supply the subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it. The poet, too, can help to keep man from making himself over in the image of his electronic wonders. For the danger is not so much that man will be controlled by the computer as that he may imitate it. The poet reminds men of their uniqueness. It is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate on it is a gain.

15-B. Changes to Come in U. S. Education

The biggest \needed for railroads, highways and energy. It is the American school system, from kindergarten through the Ph.D. program and the postgraduate education of adults. And it requires something far scarcer than money -- thinking and risk-taking.

The challenge is not one of expansion. On the contrary, the rapid growth in enrollment over the last 40 years has come to an end. By 1978, more than 93 percent of young people entering the labor force had at least an eighth-grade education. So even if the birthrate should rise somewhat, little expansion is possible for elementary and secondary school enrollments.

The last 30 years of social upheaval are also over. Busing will continue to be a highly emotional issue in a good many large cities. And there will still be efforts to use schools to bring women into fields such as engineering that have traditionally been considered \already been accomplished in many fields: half or more of the accounting students in graduate schools of business, for example, are now women. As for most other social issues, the country will no longer try to use schools to bring about social reform. It's becoming increasingly clear to policy makers that schools cannot solve all the problems of the larger community.

Instead, the battle cry for the '90s will be the demand for performance and accountability. For 30 years, employers have been hiring graduates for their degrees rather than their abilities; employment, pay and often even promotion have depended on one's diploma. Now many major employers are beginning to demand more than the completion of school. Some of the major banks, for example, are studying the possibility of entrance examinations that would test the knowledge and abilities of graduates applying for jobs.

Students and parents, too, will demand greater accountability from schools, on all levels. It will

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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版

be increasingly common to go to law against school districts and colleges for awarding degrees without imparting the skills that are supposed to go along with them. And many young people are already switching to practical \subjects. Caring little about the so-called \culture\into accounting and from black studies into computer programming.

Demand for education is actually going up, not down. What is going down, and fairly fast, is demand for traditional education in traditional schools.

Indeed, the fastest growing industry in America today may be the continuing professional education of highly schooled adults. Much of it takes place outside the education establishment -- through companies, hospitals and government departments that run courses for managerial and professional employees; or through management associations and trade associations. In the meantime, any number of private enterprises are organizing courses, producing training films and tapes and otherwise taking advantage of growth opportunities that universities shy away from.

The demand for continuing education does not take the form that most observers, including this writer, originally expected -- namely, \humanities, the arts, the \of the mind.\We face instead a growing demand for advanced professional education: in engineering and medicine, in accounting and journalism, in law and in administration and management.

Yet the adults who come back for such studies also demand what teachers of professional subjects are so rarely able to supply: a humanistic perspective that can integrate advanced professional and technical knowledge into a broader universe of experience and learning. Since these new students also need unconventional hours -- evenings, weekends or high-intensity courses that stuff a term's work into two weeks ?their demands for learning bring a vague but real threat to the school establishment.

The greatest challenge to education is likely to come from our new opportunities for diversity. We now have the chance to apply the basic findings of psychological, developmental and educational research over the last 100 years: namely, that no one educational method fits all children.

Almost all children are capable of attaining the same standards within a reasonable period of time. All but a few babies, for instance, learn to walk by the age of two and to talk by the age of three, but no two get there quite the same way.

So too at higher levels. Some children learn best by rote, in structured environments with high certainty and strict discipline. Others gain success in the less structured \phere of a \by listening. Some students need prescribed daily doses of information; others need challenge and a high degree of responsibility for the design of their own work. But for too long, teachers have insisted that there is one best way to teach and learn, even though they have disagreed

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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版

about what that way is.

A century ago, the greatest majority of Americans lived in communities so small that only one one-room schoolhouse was within walking distance of small children. Then there had to be \right method\

Today the great majority of pupils in the United States (and all developed countries) live in big cities with such density that there can easily be three or four elementary schools -- as well as secondary schools within each child's walking or bicycling distance. This enables students and their parents to choose between alternative routes to learning offered by competing schools.

Indeed, competition and choice are already beginning to infiltrate the school system. Private schools and colleges have shown an unusual ability to survive and develop during a period of rising costs and dropping enrollments elsewhere. All this presents, of course, a true threat to the public school establishment. But economics, student needs and our new understanding of how people learn are bound to break the traditional education monopoly just as trucks and airplanes broke the monopoly of the railroads, and computers and \are breaking the telephone monopoly.

In the next 10 or 15 years we will almost certainly see strong pressures to make schools responsible for thinking through what kind of learning methods are appropriate for each child. We will almost certainly see great pressure, from parents and students alike, for result-focused education and for accountability in meeting objectives set for individual students. The continuing professional education of highly educated adults will become a third tier in addition to undergraduate and professional or graduate work. Above all, attention will shift back to schools and education as the central capital investment and infrastructure of a “knowledge society.”

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