Chapter 4 "Those Young Men Who Are Sad" Part 3-1

"A sad attitude doesn't qualify as elegance; what you need is a bored look. If you're sad, it's because you're deficient and have failed at something. It's showing your inferiority. Conversely, if you're just bored, But the one who is low is the one who pleases you in vain.” In the book, Prince Kehashaf taught the lovelorn tutor Julien in this way. So, Julien launched a thrilling psychological game. He stimulated his lover by chasing his lover's friends, so as to achieve the final effect.The comic brutality of this passage captivated me. "Tired look", I always unconsciously fall into the conjecture of this expression.When this young man named Julien walked into the noisy aristocratic salon, what should he look like on his face? There are self-esteem, disdain, inferiority, and shyness and vanity that will never disappear.This face was once installed on Rousseau, relying on this expression full of contradictions and arrogance, Rousseau conquered the ladies of the court.Julien completely defeated the self-righteous Mademoiselle de la Moore.

I used to believe that boredom was an aristocratic emotion full of penetrating power.Because, only when you have the ability to disdain everything, you have the ability to be bored.Therefore, Byron touched me earlier than Julien.In "Don Juan", what kind of tired image did this peerless genius make himself appear.When I was young, I used to be overwhelmed by his conquest of women so easily and so many times.It was boredom that gave Byron this ability. However, whether it is Julien or Byron, they do not seem to have achieved happiness through this kind of conquest.Julien quickly got tired of the noble lady; while Byron had had countless women but never had real love, he seemed to have to be constantly stimulated by the body in order to persuade himself to survive.Compared with Byron, Julien and Rousseau are only superficial borers. They just use coldness to hide their cowardice, and boredom to conceal their desires... But Byron's deep boredom seems to be healed only through death , because this genius simply cannot bear to exist only as a person.

The obsession with boredom peaked when I was 21.I fantasized that I jumped straight up from the dormitory, and drew a perfect arc in the air with a beautiful posture, because death may be more thrilling than just being alive as a student.This thought, two years later, has become a distant memory.I don't know whether to be sad or happy for myself.I want to convince myself that it's a classic example of idyllic adolescence, an infinite longing for qualities I can't possess, or, more directly, childishness; but at the same time I can't help blaming myself that I have lost The desire to pursue a higher quality of life makes it easier for me to be satisfied with life. My spirit is becoming mediocre. Only mediocre people are easy to satisfy the status quo... Maybe this inner conflict means that I am still growing , still bored.

When Yu Dafu was 13 years old, he was admitted to a school in Hangzhou, so he had to leave the pretty girl he had just gotten to know in the town.Yu Dafu, who is sentimental and even amorous, begins to recall the youth after experiencing the perverted youth. "Water-like Spring Sorrow" is one of the most moving texts in the history of Chinese literature. The pure and clean youthful feelings are mixed with obvious shyness and just right sadness. Compared with the hypocrisy of young Werther, this oriental boy entered my heart more comfortably.As I read this, I am 14 and seem to be in a similar mood.I found a map of Hangzhou, and I watched how the curved Fuchun River meanders through the small city called Fuyang.I desperately transformed my identity into that shy 13-year-old boy. In the bitter spring breeze in Beijing mixed with a lot of yellow sand, I fantasized that I was flowing in the slow Fuchun River, and I also fantasized about the girl surnamed Zhao. .For some reason, I still stubbornly believe that the girl's face must be dotted with light freckles.Even though the narration of the whole article is so slow, it still gave me a great thrill at the end.

On the night before leaving, Yu Dafu, who had drunk a small amount of wine, walked into the girl's house, but there was no one there.The candles were then extinguished, and only the moonlight slipped into the house.Taking advantage of Dionysus' tease, the young man boldly held the girl's slender hand.After hesitation or a symbolic refusal, the girl's hand lay quietly in the boy's. The entanglement of these two hands also entangled my heart.This simple action, contains how thrilling.A huge storm was also stirred up in the hearts of the three young people.The two parties involved were swayed by a kind of extreme joy and excitement, and as a reader, I seemed to be also involved in this major conspiracy. Of course, during the tense reading, I also felt a great sense of loss ——Why am I not that boy.

For a long time, I fell into the watery spring sorrow.I was surrounded by a kind of tension and sadness.I am always looking forward to the appearance of the little hand that I can hold tightly, under the occasional clear moon sky, imagining that subtle but thrilling movement.Looking at it today, this action has had a historic impact on my growth.My entire upbringing was covered by a double curtain of shyness in reality and desire for passion in the inner world. It has been nearly a century since Yu Dafu's Spring Sorrow.That kind of pure emotion is even more valuable against today's reality.This is an era when teenagers refuse to be reserved. Children aged 13 or 14 are no longer satisfied with just holding hands, let alone understand the thrills and joys contained in that simple action.Of course, I don't mean to blame them.I just miss the sadness and shyness infinitely, which is a sign that our hearts are still sensitive rather than numb.

Will you still read? This is the worry of the previous generation.We read more on television and computer screens than on print media.We read more images than words.Most of us are not interested in the so-called ink-smelling books, and even think it is a bit dirty.Thoreau wants us to dedicate our morning hours to, to, the Bible.But every morning, after trying to open our eyes, we turn on the computer and go to "Sina" to read today's news.This is pure waste of time, the information will be digested with the end of breakfast.However, we seem to be unable to give up this futile effort, because reading news seems to have become an important way for us to establish ourselves in this era, and we are afraid that when we wake up, we will suddenly be forgotten by this crazy world.

Reading is changing, and we can't yet tell if it's good or bad.The speed at which words appear in printed matter and the degree to which lead type stimulates our eyes and brain prove that it is suitable for thinking, and it gives the brain enough ease to deconstruct it.Electronic media seems to subvert all this. Jumping text and constantly appearing pictures, is it inhibiting our thinking mechanism? An experiment about TV makes us who have been brought up by TV worry.Two Canadian scientists connected the brain nerves of people watching TV with testing equipment, and concluded that TV is mainly talking to our bodies rather than our minds.Specifically, the human mind takes at least half a second to provide proper sensory closure for complex stimuli.And the TV refuses to give us that half a second.As early as the 1970s, media research expert Klugman believed that books communicate with our left brain, while TV communicates with our right brain, while the left brain is usually responsible for the rational part, and TV makes the rational part of our minds sleep.Thus, for children accustomed to television images, reading print media is excruciating, almost unbearable, and it cannot adapt to the habit of our eyes flicking.

Television makes us superficial, and in order to cater to our short attention spans, TV shows have to forego depth.One reviewer's haughty conclusion certainly hits us where it hurts: "Television is challenging our formerly dominant, cultured ethos and replacing it with its own tactile and collective colloquial state. It Threats to our sacrosanct autonomy through reading and writing.” Reading is noble, and this has been a tradition for thousands of years.In the Middle Ages, the high walls separated the life of the church from the people, and those noble priests knew how to read and communicate directly with God's admonitions.The ability to read symbolizes power.It is hard to say that Gutenberg's invention broke all this.The beautiful and neat "Bible" was printed by Gutenberg's printing press, which broke the church's exclusive right to interpret God.It may also have directly contributed to the end of the Middle Ages.But the nobility of reading and the self-righteous privilege of the reader survived.There is no doubt that this self-righteous tradition of privilege is important in keeping the best of our history alive.

Today, television is making an almost subversive mockery of that tradition, and with great success.Television is a kind of colloquialism, which is closer to our daily life and more trivial.We grow up on things like "Huan Zhu Ge Ge", which is a happy but worrying process of growing up.And then, computers will foster our new reading habits.This is the most powerful library ever in the world, and you can find all kinds of materials.They are uneven, and at the same time you don't have enough time to identify it.Children younger than us will grow up relying on this jumble of data.It is said that the computer is a reversal of the TV, the computer is interactive, it does not flow information one-way like the TV, it can make the user respond.In this sense, reading on the Internet is a real revolution of reading in the traditional sense, which incorporates participation.But the premise of all these changes is still that we are returning from a dominant literate culture to an oral culture.And communication giant Marshall McLuhan even speculated that in the future electronic society, ignorance will become a valuable commodity for the information system controlled by oral language.Because the ignorant are more malleable, they are not bound by the norms of the past, so they have more room to play and can learn new technologies more easily.

Our habitual reading may be about to be cast aside.Although, we may still be lying lazily on the bed under the dim light, holding a beautifully printed book, to enjoy the joy of printed words.But we may have to admit that this moving picture may be about to linger on us like those vanished relics.And what about our children? We may also justly criticize them, why don’t we study hard, why don’t we read classics? "However, I like the uncomfortable life. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want the right to be old, ugly, and even impotent, I want crime, I want Pain, worry..." It was Bernard Marx, an insatiable man living in a "brave new world" in which Ford's "My Life and Business" replaced the Bible and the children's rhyme " Ford drives a car, how wonderful the world has become", this world advocates "community, uniformity, and stability", all crimes have completely disappeared from here, and the most important thing is that human beings here reproduce through asexual reproduction. A man called The "Central London Incubation and Conditioning Center" controls the population of the entire country. He creates human races with different tasks, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Psilon, who was demanded and manufactured as the nation's labor force, required little intellect, and the Center could keep his intellect low for this need. Because this world is strictly designed by technology, people here never know what pain is, they live a very regular life, and never have spontaneous emotions This is "Brave New World" created by Aldous Huxley. Although this graduate of Oxford University has a grandfather who worships science, Thomas Huxley, he obviously has a lot of "science and technology fetishism" that was popular at the time. With evident distrust, he seems to despise Plato's or More's as much.So in 1932, he gave birth to such a product that combined highly developed technology and absolutism.This year, Ford's Model T car has been widely circulated in the world, and the assembly line he invented is performing Chaplin's non-stop, and Stalin is driving those who differ from his ideas to the Gulag Islands. Reasons to believe that technological supremacy and despotism are unfolding unscrupulously in the world... So adhering to the strong humanism of the British, the 38-year-old Huxley indifferently guessed this "beautiful future society" with his unique sharp words.Then, with the help of this race named Bernard Maxbeta, he sharply tore off the beautiful veil on the surface of the technological age.The story begins with a visit to a breeding and sorting facility in central London, and this Mr. Max was the result of an unfortunate oversight in the invisible breeding process - alcohol entered his bloodstream during fetal life.So the gentleman, apparently out of step with the happy times, even falls in love with an alpha woman of Lena Clooney in the corny way, and abandons the rules of the sex game popular in the "New World" in favor of a She becomes one of those long-gone "lovers."So he took her on a rocket ride to a pristine reserve in New Mexico.The "savages" living in the pristine reserve seem to be suffering, the living environment is dirty, the women have to endure the pain of childbirth, they will get sick, grow old, and have nasty fights... However, all these make them feel miserable. The alcoholic Max was so excited that he shouted the opening words. The ending of the story is sad because the head of the world is afraid of "savages" to destroy their unified thought.Like George Orwell later, Huxley was pessimistic about the future world.It's just that Orwell's language of fear of the world is more about totalitarianism, while Huxley's is about technology.This panic about technology is reminiscent of Spengler's description of technology in "The Fall of the West": "Technology is as eternal and unchangeable as God the Father, it saves mankind like the Son of God, it saves mankind like the Son of God. The Holy Spirit shines on us." Our belief in this God is because it can quickly bring us real happiness, cars, phones, computers, instead of praying all day long for the happiness of the ethereal afterlife.Technology is a utilitarian god of quick results, and it will let us indulge without any rejection.So in the end, we must be alienated by technology itself, and let ourselves lose the most important characteristics of human beings, just like the head of state said in "Brave New World": "Today's world is stable, people are happy, what they want , they can get what they can get, and they will never want what they can't have. They are rich, they are safe, they don't fear death, they are fortunately ignorant of passion and old age..." According to Freud It is said that human happiness is always produced in strong contrast.So, all readers know of the brave new world, too beautiful to live in.No one has questioned technology more successfully for decades than Huxley, and when cloned sheep came along, the book was widely cited.We have reasons to thank Mr. Huxley for his imagination and bleak writing style. Although the world he created is a bit funny and still far away from us, he keeps reminding us with his focus on "people" that technology brings us possibility of deviation. When I was flipping through Benjamin's anthology quickly, a sentence from Goethe jumped out of the dense characters and caught me accurately.This German old man said: "In this restless era, those who can hide in the depths of quiet passion are indeed happy." I don't know the context of this sentence, but the moving language lies in its power to travel through history . "Quiet passion," the phrase perfectly explains the tingling pain in my heart.For every teenager who grew up in the 90s, whether it is "quietness" or "passion" are forgotten words.This is an unprecedented era of openness. Compared with every generation of Chinese youth, we have gained an unprecedented vision.We can see almost anything we desire, and with the help of modern technology, our youth is spent in an environment where there are no restricted areas.However, this kind of richness from the pavement also overwhelms our young souls at once. Our life is like endless links on a web page. From one point to another, we can't concentrate on any point, and youth and talent are consumed in this endless jumping process.We are surrounded by so much noise, our idols are the astonishing rich people in the Internet world, and the postmodernists tell us that this world is created by accident... In such an environment, we lose the ability to quiet ourselves .We must constantly expose ourselves to noise, real or virtual.Because only then can we feel safe.Because there is no tranquility, we must also lose the environment for passion.Passion can only be realized by choosing a narrow breakthrough point with all the strength of body and mind.And our body and mind have too many contact points and too many excitement zones, so we eventually lose the possibility of passion.We may be happy, but that happiness may never be painless. So, we are happy, but not happy.What happiness needs is a kind of spiritual strength, which makes you focus on your interests so much, it may be love, it may be an ideal, or even just a simple toy.So, in this age, we end up being Fausts.Our young bodies are filled with all kinds of knowledge and skills, but there is no soul.Therefore, although our bodies are plump, there is no backbone to support them. There is indeed a certain knowledge which must be spread, and a certain cultivation of faith and character which no one can do without.Evidently every man is a good craftsman, merchant, soldier, or broker only if he does not set his sights on his particular occupation, but strives to be a good and noble, educated man and citizen.This education should not be a preparation for subsistence and the actual functioning of the complex institutions of civilization, but of the idealistic type. — Wilhelm von Humboldt The English town of Oxford at the end of the 13th century was shrouded in a tense atmosphere.The local residents are becoming less and less tolerant of those scholars who wear robes, talk like boastful and self-righteous. Apart from their unruly life and unacceptable behavior, these people have indeed robbed the residents of their living space.These lazy people also look down on these vulgar citizens. They don't know what Socrates is talking about, and they don't mind whether their physical and mental world needs enlightenment and sublimation from the universe.Even for the same woman, the townspeople lack sufficient taste in the eyes of those testosterone-rich Oxford students, because they do not understand the basic characteristics of beauty. Finally, because of a woman, the backlog of anger on both sides broke out.The robed scholars were overwhelmed by the far tougher inhabitants.These failed scholars were already full of contradictions, and this incident accelerated the relocation of some of the teachers and students to another small town-Cambridge. The teachers and students in Cambridge didn’t seem to have learned from it. The crazy teachers and students didn’t seem to appreciate the church, the government, and the secular society. A principal in Cambridge even used his influence in the church to remove the mayor of Cambridge. out of church.The struggle between the Grown and the Town, that is, between the academy and the secular society, has never ceased. In 1381, the mayor of Cambridge even led the citizens to attack Cambridge University aggressively with weapons.This small-scale medieval-style local war burned the archives of Cambridge University, and the detailed life experience of Cambridge has become a mystery for thousands of years. For hundreds of years later, the high walls of Oxford and Cambridge separated the university and the town. They belonged to two completely different spaces with their own laws and regulations.Hong Kong scholar Jin Yaoji wrote in an article that "The tall and thick gates of the ancient colleges of Cambridge symbolize the possession of sovereignty and also the boundary between the 'spiritual world' and the 'secular world'. Standing on the street, you can only see the sudden The chapel in the sky, and the rest are almost half-blocked by heavy gates, walls and iron bars. But when you enter the university, your vision suddenly becomes clear, the spacious square courtyard, the quiet corridor... It's a completely different world... ...within the Quad we see the movement of the centuries, the thirteenth, the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the sixteenth..." This kind of competition has started since the birth of the university. The original meaning of the university is the union of education and students. They instinctively reject the direct interference from the church or the secular society.Like the bloody Oxford and Cambridge, other ancient universities are also between the church and the secular, swinging left and right. In 1229, after a quarrel between the townspeople and the students, many of the students were killed by soldiers sent by the king, with the acquiescence of the bishop of Paris.The teachers of the university immediately suspended classes in protest. When they found it was invalid, the teachers and students of the university destroyed the school automatically, and some of them crossed the English Channel to go to Oxford University.This strenuous protest paid off in 1231.Pope Gregory issued a decree, clearly stipulating and affirming the right of teachers to use the suspension of classes to insist on their own opinions; at the same time, teachers must formulate rules and force their members to accept these rules for self-discipline.With this decree, both the magistrates of the secular society and the rights of the church were weakened. From its initial appearance to the continuous transformation of nearly a thousand years, the university has never been able to fully possess the temperament of "retired and independent". It is always inextricably linked with society, and even to some extent, it is serve this society.But this kind of service is far-sighted. It should not immediately meet the immediate needs of the society, but make commitments and research on the future of society. Only in this respect can universities make the greatest contribution to society.So it must be more idealistic than the secular society. two A Ph.D. from Peking University told the reporter of Sanlian Life Weekly: "Looking at the universities in all countries in the world, no country has so many school-run factories like Chinese universities." This reminds us of a sentence in the book: " A lofty and perfect ideal will become more and more vulgar and more and more materialized. This kind of thing is not uncommon in history. This is how Greece became Rome..." This seems to explain the current situation of Chinese universities. But we know that Greece can become Rome, but we don't know what kind of place our university will become.A training center for computer programmers or other similar handicraft practitioners? Or a new company that exports talents in batches? Universities must face the main battlefield of economic construction. This is the mantra of today's Chinese university presidents.In their view, universities, like running factories or companies, should quickly become a new economic growth point.They no longer care about this society, they no longer care about the future, and they don't care about what the students here will be like. Everything is the most eager for quick success and the easiest to produce benefits.Universities that have lost their idealism have increasingly become an ordinary service institution in society, and universities that have slowly slipped out of an idealistic atmosphere do not know where their souls are.In a higher education newsletter, various scholars are discussing how Chinese universities should be more closely integrated with enterprises.As the scholar Zhang Rulun said: "Sixty years ago, people rushed out of the study because of the serious national crisis, and there was no room for a peaceful desk on the huge campus. Today's universities really cannot fit a peaceful desk, or there is no need for one. Is there a peaceful desk? As long as you walk around the university campus, it is not difficult to get the answer: companies, businesses, karaoke and supermarkets, even karaoke halls and restaurants, the university has everything, but it lacks its own philosophy.” Faced with this situation In view of the grim reality, we must go back to the source: what role does the university play in society.After witnessing the excessive integration of American universities and society, American scholar Bloom lamented: "Universities must resist the tendency to serve society in everything. As one of many interest groups, universities must always be vigilant against their own interests. more practical, more adapted to reality, and more popular with the public.” Because “the university must defy public opinion, because within itself it has a source of autonomy, that is, to pursue truth and discover truth according to nature. . . . " Zhu Kezhen, the former president of Zhejiang University, once said, "University is the light of society and should not follow the tide." By 1946, Zhejiang University was in exile, and Zhejiang University had increased from 16 departments in three colleges of arts and sciences, agriculture and engineering to 27 departments in seven colleges, and the number of teachers and students had increased from 512 to 2172.Amid the wanderings, Zhejiang University became one of the most famous universities in China.At the same time, the Southwest Associated University, which consists of Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University, is also under constant bombardment, continuing to study tenaciously on the dilapidated campus in Kunming.In the past eight years, Southwest Associated University has trained half of the academic committee members in China, and produced a group of academic masters such as Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao. In 1986, in the "Anthology of the 50th Anniversary of Southwest Associated University" for several years, the alumni of the Alliance University tasted the spirit that still stood firm in the difficult environment of those eight years.Mr. Feng Youlan wrote in the "National Southwest United University Monument": "With its spirit of inclusiveness, the United University has changed the current social atmosphere, built the scale of academic freedom inside, and the title of the Fortress of Democracy outside..." The United University did during the Anti-Japanese War. It is also a spiritual sanctuary for Chinese youth, and it has a huge impact on the quality of Chinese universities. To this day, the spirit of Southwest Associated University is still a certain complex that contemporary scholars cannot get rid of.Scholar Xie Yong argued in his article "The Formation and Decline of the Intellectual Group of Southwest Associated University" that after the Anti-Japanese War, Chinese people generally spoke highly of the success of Southwest Associated University. The spirit of hard work, unity and cooperation.Professor Zhang Shenfu wrote in 1946: "In the past few years (the Anti-Japanese War), Chinese people have behaved more well-behaved, the most fair, the most knowledgeable, the most sensible, the most caring for the country, endured more suffering, and are the least solid. Those who are poor and gentlemen are some university professors." Ren Zhigong also recalled: "Chinese scholars are considered to be the moral leaders in society, and to a certain extent, spiritual leaders...and also national moral and spiritual leaders. expression of value." What about today's universities? They are always complaining that the pressure of the economy is too great, so they have to give up their ideals.However, compared with the plight of the General Assembly, today is nothing.In essence, it is because today's universities lack an inner ethos, they do not value their own status, and they lack a clear sense of responsibility for society.From the perspective of the sponsors and staff of Chinese universities, universities are not a beacon of society, but more like a factory or other office, which only produces people who can work. three 1992 was an important year in Chinese history. In addition to the great changes in politics and economy, it also had a profound impact on higher education.This year, the south wall of Peking University was demolished.This highly symbolic move has been reported by domestic and foreign media, because it marks that the symbol of Chinese universities has fully unfolded to the society.The person in charge of Peking University explained the controversy: "We don't argue, let's do it first." This sentence is poignant. When a university with a symbolic significance made such a major move, it said it would not argue.University is an extension of history, it represents the core of a nation, and this argument is used when she undergoes a huge change in an unknown direction. Chinese universities have focused on the most popular majors, and lost patience with those basic and slow-moving departments.It is foolish to introduce the market mechanism into universities. For example, economics and management can bring wealth to students at present, so they are popular, but this cannot reduce the importance of disciplines such as literature, history and philosophy.Foreign universities are in a more mature market, but they tend to have a more mature view of their role.Henry Rosofsky, former dean of Harvard's School of Arts and Sciences, said: "Students' demands for teaching should be met, but this is part of a larger mission, our task is to preserve and explain culture. We will Great traditions are passed down from generation to generation. We teach those disciplines and methods that may not be needed at present, or may appear to be irrelevant to current concerns, but we know that there is a difference between really important ideas and current current ideas. Often it doesn't matter much. At Harvard University, even if no students choose to study Latin, we have a duty to keep the department alive. Why, because the French, Spanish and Italian classics are the precious heritage of mankind. Losing them The impact on real life is equivalent to going back to the European Middle Ages. A university cannot be run by a cost accountant, nor can it be a commercial enterprise that only follows the changing market. That would be very bad for us. And it's even worse for the society we seek to serve." The tussle and township struggle between universities and society in the West seems to be no problem at all in China.For hundreds of years, first-class universities such as Oxford and Cambridge have insisted on resisting the secular society.However, in the spring breeze brought by the southern tour, the most famous university in China took the step of reform and opening up without hesitation, because Peking University has forgotten that it is not a profit-making institution, nor is it a market-oriented institution. Collective, what it advocates should be spiritual construction and waiting. Facing the economic temptation of the 1990s, Chinese universities, which have never formed an independent school, gave up the aristocratic atmosphere they lacked, and quickly adjusted themselves to adapt to the market.Real estate, finance, stock, management, finance, and computer have become the most popular majors in a university, and they occupy the main funds of the university. In the 1930s, Principal Mei Yiqi laughed at himself while chatting with the education circles in Beijing. The education circle is to the government like a prostitute is to a client. Because they pay, you have to meet their requirements.President Mei is really dissatisfied. The sharpness and autonomy of the university at that time made many scholars today feel moved. In 1992, in addition to the political and economic impact on China, China's higher education also ushered in a stormy wash, which was mixed with huge sludge.Compared with President Mei's sense of humiliation, today's Chinese higher education is full of obvious pleasure. The president of Oxford University said at the "World University Presidents Forum" held in Beijing in May 1998: "Universities should become an important force to clean up this increasingly developed material world... Although universities and society cannot be completely separated, the role of universities One is to use conscience to criticize the society.” At this conference, Chen Wei-zhao, president of National Taiwan University, who has a similar background to Chinese universities, said in a speech: “Taiwan’s rapid industrialization and commercialization in the past few decades have brought great impact to our university campuses. There is an obvious air of pragmatism... If measures are not taken as soon as possible, I am worried that the humanistic ideals and spirit advocated by universities will be lost, and universities will be reduced to a vulgar educational place." Compared with these university worries, China of university presidents expressed great optimism.Chen Jiaer, President of Peking University, said that universities should move from the periphery to the center and become the engine of social economy.Tang Honggao, Director of University Affairs of the University of Science and Technology of China, said that universities should be in line with the socialist market economy and modernization.Wang Jinhua, President of Northern Jiaotong University, said that universities should "actively adapt and serve actively"... In the speech collection of the University President Forum, compared with the speeches of famous Western university presidents, the speeches of Chinese university presidents have a certain impact on our university ideals. A chillingly clear confession—university unprincipled adaptation to society. 人格力量的教育在这个时代变得越来越枯萎，即使在我们大声疾呼“素质教育”，大叫如何进行创造性人才的同时，我们的大学依旧没有关注到学生的个人的发展，所谓素质教育创造性的培育，不过是把这些年轻人看作一样可以更快产出经济效益的工具。我们的教育家在不断呼唤，我们应该培养出比尔·盖茨这样的人物，因为他有创造性，他可以让自己的财富到达一千亿以上。在这些人所看中的不过比尔·盖茨这样的金钱标志符号。真正的大学是培养学生健全的人格的。正如纽曼所说：“大学不应满足于培养伟大的人物，尽管大学里有这样的人才。但是大学训练是达到一种伟大而又平凡的目的的伟大而又平凡的手段，它旨在提高社会的思想格调，提高公众的智力修养，纯洁国民的情趣，为大众的热情提供真正的原则，为大众的志向提供确定的目标，扩展时代的思想……这种教育使人对自己的意见和判断能有一种清醒的状态，推进政治权力的运用以及使个人生活之间的交往文雅化……” 就在我们的大学还未意识到大学真正的理想是什么，大学生的培养的方向是什么的时候，“人力资本论”又把学生打人工具行列。在这个时代，知识经济成为教育界最时髦的口号，而科教兴国再次使人们认识到这一点，我们的教育是为具体事物服务的，而不是为了学生或者教育本身而存在。 美国经济学家弗里茨·马克卢普在1959年，发表了有关理论的第一篇论文《人力投资——一个经济的观点》。在接下来的一系列论文与讲演中，这位后来的诺贝尔经济奖得主强调，传统的经济理论仅仅包含了生产资料和货币，而忽视了重要的生产要素——人的能力。如果忽视人的能力，经济增长无法得出合理的结论。在这个倾向于数字结论的经济学家眼力，人力与物力是平行关系，他在论文中写道：“(教育)主要是一种投资活动，其目的在于获取本领，以便进一步得到满足，或增加个人作为一个生产者的未来收入。因此它的一部分是类似于普通耐用消费晶的消费品，另一部分是生产物资。所以我主张将教育看作一项投资，将其结果看作资本的一种形式。” 但是，显然教育对利益的重要作用，在50年代之后被迅速地失去控制地强调，原因是科学技术在经济中越来越大的比重。加里·贝克尔在1964年的著作《人力资本》中估计，大学四年的投资，按一名男性毕业生的平均工龄来看，每年可得到大约13％的利益。这一估计与马克卢普的看法遥相呼应：“大学毕业生同高中毕业生相比有更大的赚钱技能。”在这种情况下，大学迅速被异化成一个争取未来利益的场所，教育中关于人的要求因素被大大忽略。这也衍生出一个学历社会，专业证书成了被教育者的最重要，的追求，几乎进入一种盲从阶段。MIT经济学家莱斯特·瑟罗在1972年著文认为：“随着受过教育的劳动力的供应增加，人们发现必须提高教育水平以保护他们目前的收入。如果他们不提高，别人会提高，然后他们就会发现自己目前的工作不能再得到什么。教育成为一种好投资……是因为如果别人受到教育，而他们没有的话，他们就不可能保证未来的收入。实际上，教育成为保护人们'市场分额'的一项必要的保护性开支。”丹尼尔·贝尔等“后工业社会”的鼓吹者一样，他们都把大学视作科技的产生地，经济的原动力。丹尼尔·贝尔认为，大学等研究机构不但不会消失，而且会在社会中占据更加重要的地位，这是因为大学可以不断产生新的技术发明。而关于人的位置，这些经济学家、社会学家似乎缺乏关注。大学似乎是在训练一种人力，而不是人格。但是这种教育迅速暴露了他的致命弱点——对于人的精神世界的漠视，人文学科在大学没有得到足够重视。1984年，31位美国知名学者组成美国高校人文科学学习状况调查小组，经过几个月努力，完成《必须恢复文化遗产应有的地位——关于高等学校人文学科的报告》，报告认为：“人文学科是一套知识体系，一种探索的途径，把严肃的真理，合理的判断和有意义的思想传达出来。它告诉我们国家的及其他世界的人们是如何设法对付生活中永恒不变的基本问题的。那就是，正义是什么，应该爱什么，应该保卫什么，什么是勇气，什么是高尚的，什么是卑鄙的，某些文化为什么繁荣，某些文化为什么衰落。”而美国联邦政府教育部门也认为，当前美国高等教育的主要问题之一是，过分强调教育的经济目的和经济作用，学生只是为了今后的职业的需求而上大学，课程过分专业化，低估了人文科学对于培养人的道德创造力和人际关系的能力的作用。 几乎与此同时，日本文部省在对1967年后20年中的教育反思，认识到这20年来的“教育荒废”。为了迅速赶超工业文明，从而忽略了青年学生的精神需求，使日本青年在接受教育之后却变得更加沉沦。而耸人听闻的奥姆真理教的成员中竟然有相当部分是日本各大学的尖子学生，他们接受奥姆真理教的影响，成为野心家与阴谋家，并试图制造大规模杀人。 真正的教育的终极目的从来都是对于人的完美性的追求。就像康德所说的：“人不应该被作为手段，不应被作为一部机器上的齿轮。人是有自我目的的，他是自主、自律、自觉、自立的，是由他自己来引导内心，是出于自身的理智并按自身的意义来行动的。”尽管这种理想在现代社会被不断扭曲，大学越来越被看作职业训练场所，但是对于那些真正具有良知，对于人类抱有深切忧患意识的教育家来讲，大学必须保持“对人的培养”这一根本性原则。如费希特所说的：“教育必须培养人的自我决定能力，而不是去培养人们去适应传统的世界。教育不是首先着眼于实用性的，不是首先去传授知识和技能的，而是要去'唤醒'学生的力量，培养他们的自我性、主动性，抽象的归纳力和理解力，以使他们能在目前还无法预料的未来局势中自我作出有意义的选择。教育是全民族的事，要教育的是整个民族。” 中国的高等教育在此时被前所未有地进行扩充，它的任务是“科教兴国”与“拉动国民经济增长，扩大内需”。历史告诉我们，当教育过于执着地为别的目的，而非自身服务时，它的效果往往很糟糕。我们错误地估计了教育对于刺激经济的作用，真正的教育应该是发挥长远的作用，而非短期内的效益。 华中师范大学博士杜时忠在考察教育对经济的影响力时发现有关“人力资本”的学说至少存在三个主要缺陷： 一、教育投资论把国民仅仅看作生产的手段，是经济增长的工具，这从根本上是非人性的。 二、人力资本理论把教育制度的目标限定在为经济增长服务上，把重点放在职业培训上，这在实际上根本行不通。一方面，在急剧的社会变化和技术革新的条件下，准确地预测未来的人力需要不可能。第二方面，作为经济发展的一部分，要求学校培养大量的科学家和技术人员，却造成其中大量的学非所用，以致造成一个学历社会。 三、教育投资论鼓励人们，要想取得高收入，就要求高学历，结果带来没有任何好处的学历膨胀社会。 于是我们发现那些所谓的大学生，在没有理想的牵引下，他们似乎有点像爱因斯坦所说的“一只受过训练的狗”，这位伟大的人物说道：“青年人离开学校时，应是作为一个和谐发展的人，而不只是作为一位专家。否则，他连同他的专业知识就像一条受过训练的狗，而不像一个和谐发展的人。而要成为一个和谐发展的人，则需要培养全面的自我辨别力，这取决于自由而全面的教育。” 任何一所优秀的大学都应以培养学生这种不懈地对于生命本质的追求为自己的责任。这种精神的培养关乎到生命的全过程。人不仅仅是动物，生命从一段黑暗到另一段黑暗，这中间他们有幸走过一段光明的称作人的道路，因此，他们应该在这段光明之中，探究人的意义，寻到灵魂。而理想便是灵魂生活的寄托。 哲学家周国平曾说：“我喜欢美国剧作家奥尼尔的剧本《天边外》，其中你可以感受到，一方面幻想毫无价值，美毫无价值，在现实生活中，一个幻想家总是失败者，一个美的追求者总是处处碰壁的倒霉鬼；另一方面，对天边外的秘密的幻想，对美的憧憬，仍然是人生的最高价值，那种在实际生活中即使一败涂地还始终如一地保持幻想和憧憬的人，才是真正的幸运儿。”这种幻想观念其实是每一个学生都应该拥有的。 我想起了哈佛校长陆登庭在北大讲演时所说的一句话，它激起了长久的掌声：“大学帮助学生寻求实用和令人满意的职业是必要的。然而，更重要的是，大学教育的杰出性是无法用美元和人民币来衡量的。最好的教育不仅使我们在自己的专业中提高生产力，而是使我们善于观察、勤于思考、勇于探索，塑造健全完善的人。它帮助我们的科学家欣赏艺术，艺术家欣赏科学，它帮助我们看到用其他方法无法掌握的不同学科之间的联系，它使我们作为个人和我们社区的成员的生活更加丰富多彩。” 看，这个激动人心的地方 “大学不是诗人的生地，但一所大学如果不能激起年轻人的一些诗心的回荡，一些对人类问题的思索，那么，这所大学之缺少感染力是无可置疑的。” ——纽曼