谋杀机器(七)：教育的自由

I have claimed elsewhere that the native Irish education system possessed prea- eminently two characteristics: first, freedom for the individual, and, secondly, an adequate inspiration. Without these two things you cannot have education, no matter how you may elaborate educational machinery, no matter how you may multiply educational programmes. And because those two things are pre-eminently lacking in what passes for education in Ireland, we have in Ireland strictly no education system at all, nothing that by any extension of the meaning of words can be called an education system. We have an elaborate machinery for teaching persons certain subjects. and the teaching is done more or less efficiently; more efficiently, I imagine, than such teaching is done in England or in America. We have three universities and four boards of education. We have some thousands of buildings, large and small. We have an army of inspectors, mostly overpaid. We have a host of teachers, mostly underpaid. We have a Compulsory Education Act. We have the grave and bulky code of the Commissioners of National Education, and the slim impertinent pamphlet which enshrines the wisdom of the. Commissioner of Intermediate Education. We have a vast deal more in the shape of educational machinery and stage properties. But we have, I repeat, no education system, and only in isolated places have we any education. The essentials are lacking.

我在别处曾经说过，爱尔兰本土的教育体系具有两个突出的特点：第一，个人的自由；第二，充分的启发。没有这两者就不能有教育，无论其机制如何精巧，无论其计划多么宏伟。但如今的所谓教育中两者极度缺乏，因此严格地讲，当代爱尔兰不存在任何教育体系，没有任何一种可以用词语延伸意义来称之为教育体系的事物。我们有一套复杂的机制来教授人们某些学科，而且这或多或少有一点成效。我理想中的教育，比起在英国或美国的更有效一些。我们有三所大学和四个教育委员会。我们有数千座大大小小的建筑物。我们的如同军队般的督学享受着高薪，而人数更多的教师却仅有微薄的收入。我们有一部强制教育法。我们有国家教育委员会沉重而厚实的法规，以及包含了中等教育委员会智慧的轻薄而无礼的小册子。我们还有许多其他形式的教育机器和舞台道具。但是我重申，我们没有教育体系，而且只有在孤立的地方才有一些教育。我们缺失所有最基本的东西。

And first of freedom. The word freedom is no longer understood in Ireland. We have no experience of the thing, and we have already lost our conception of the idea. So completely is this true that the very organisations which exist in Ireland to champion fieedom show no disposition themselves to accord freedom; they challenge a great tyranny, but they erect their little tyrannies. 'Thou shalt not' is half the law of Ireland, and the other half is 'Thou must.'

首先我们必须讨论。在爱尔兰，自由这个词已不再被理解。我们没有体验过它，我们已经失去了对这个概念的认识。这是如此真实，以至于在爱尔兰存在着为了捍卫自由而建立的各种组织，它们本身却没有表现出给予自由的意愿；它们挑战一个巨大的暴政，但它们却建立了自己的小小的暴政。爱尔兰法律的一半是“禁止”，另一半是“强制”。

Now, nowhere has the law of ‘Thou shall not' and 'Thou must' been so rigorous as in the schoolroom. Surely the first essential of healthy life there was freedom. But there has been and there is no freedom in Irish education, no freedom for the child, no freedom for the teacher, no freedom for the school. Where young souls, young minds, young bodies, demanded the largest measure of individual freedom consistent with the common good, freedom to move and grow on that natural lines, freedom to live their own lives - for what is natural life but natural growth? - freedom to bring themselves, as I have put it elsewhere, to their own perfection, there was a sheer denial of the right of the individual to grow in his own natural way, that is, in God's way, but in the Board's way. The Board, National or Intermediate as the case may be, bound him hand and foot, chained him mind and soul, constricted him morally, mentally, and physically with the involuted folds of its rules and regulations, its programmes, its minutes, its reports and special reports, its pains and penalties. 

没有哪里的法律比教室里的“禁止“和”强制“更严格。健康生活的首要条件当然是自由，但是在爱尔兰的教育中，没有自由：没有孩子的自由，没有教师的自由，没有学校的自由。当年轻的灵魂、年轻的头脑、年轻的身体，需要与公共利益相一致的最大程度的个人自由时，自由去按照自然的方式移动和成长，自由去过自己的生活——因为什么是自然生活，不就是自然成长吗？——自由去把自己带到自己的完美境界，正如我在别处所说的。那里却完全否认了个人以自己的自然方式成长的权利，换言之，以主的方式中成长，而不是在委员会的方式中成长。委员会，无论是国家委员会还是中级委员会，都捆绑他的手脚，束缚他的思想和灵魂，用它的规则和规定、计划、记录、报告和特别报告、痛苦和惩罚，在道德上、智力上和身体上对他进行限制。

I have often thought that the type of English education in Ireand was the Laocoon: that agonising father and his sons seem to me the the teacher and the pupils of an Irish school, the strong limbs of the man and the slender limbs of the boys caught together and crushed together in the grip of an awful fate. And English education in Ireland has seemed to some like the bed of Procrustes; the bed on which all men that passed that way must lie, be it never so big for them, be it never so small for them: the traveller for whom it was too large had his limbs stretched until he fitted it, the traveller for whom it was too small had his limbs chopped off until he fitted into it - comfortably. It was a grim jest to play upon travellers. The English have done it to Irish children not by way of jest, but with a purpose. 

我常常想，英国在爱尔兰的教育类型就像拉奥孔：那个痛苦的父亲和他的儿子们，在我看来就像爱尔兰学校里的老师和学生们，男人的强壮四肢和男孩们的纤细四肢被一起抓住，压碎在可怕命运的控制之下。英国在爱尔兰的教育对有些人来说就像普罗克鲁斯特斯之床；所有经过那条路的人都必须躺在那张床上，无论对他们而言床是否过大或过小：对于认为床太大的旅行者，他们被拉伸直到适合它；对于认为床太小的旅行者，他们被砍掉四肢——舒服地。这对旅行者是一个残酷的玩笑。然而，英国人对爱尔兰儿童的罪行不是出于娱乐，而是别有目的。

Our English-Irish systems took and take, absolutely no cognisance of the differences between individuals, of the differences between localities, of the differences between urban and rural communities, of the differences springing from a different ancestry. Gaelic or Anglo- Saxon, every school must conform to a type - and what a type! Every individual must conform to a type - and what a type! The teacher has not been at liberty, and in practice is not yet at liberty, to seek and discover the individual bents of his pupils, the hidden talent that is in every normal soul, to discover which and to cherish which that it may in the fullness of time be put to some precious use, is the primary duty of a teacher. I knew one boy who passed through several schools a dunce and a laughing- stock; the National board and the Intermediate Board had sat in judgement upon him and had damned him as a failure before men and angels. Yet a friend and fellow- worker of mine discovered that he was gifted with a wondrous sympathy for nature, that he loved and understood the ways of plants, that he had a strange minuteness and subtlety of observation - that, in short, he was the sort of boy likely to become an accomplished botanist. I knew another boy of whom his father said to me: ‘He is no good at books, he is no good at work. He is good at nothing but playing a tin whistle. What am I to do with him?' I shocked the worthy man by replying (though really it was the obvious thing to reply): ‘Buy a tin whistle for him.' Once a colleague of mine summed up the whole philosophy of education in a maxim which startled a sober group of visitors: ‘If boy shows an aptitude for doing anything better than most people, he should be encouraed to do that, and to do it as well as possible. I don t care what it is - Hopscotch if you like.'

我们英国-爱尔兰制度完全忽视个体、地区、城乡、祖先产生的差异。盖尔语或盎格鲁-撒克逊语，每所学校都必须符合一种类型——而且是什么样的类型！每个个体都必须符合一种类型——而且是什么样的类型！教师没有自由，在实践中也还没有自由：去寻找和发现他学生们个性化倾向、每个正常灵魂中隐藏着的才能，去发现和珍惜，以在成熟的时机能够发挥出宝贵作用。这些才能是老师最基本职责。我认识一个男孩，在几所学校里都被当成傻瓜和笑柄；国家委员会和中级委员会对他进行了评判，并在人类和天使面前谴责他是个失败者。然而，我的一个朋友和同事发现他对植物有天赋，他有一种奇特的细致和敏锐的观察力——总之，他有可能成为一名优秀植物学家。我认识另一个男孩，他的父亲对我说：“他既不擅长念书，也不擅长工作。他除了吹锡笛子什么都不会。我该怎么办？”我的回答（虽然这真的是很明显的事情）让这位正直的人感到震惊：“给他买一个锡笛子。”有一次，我的一个同事用一句格言总结了教育的整个哲学，让一群严肃的访客感到惊讶：“如果一个男孩表现出比大多数人做任何事情都更有才能，他应该被鼓励去做那件事，并尽可能地做好。我不在乎那是什么——如果你喜欢的话，可以是跳房子。”

The idea of a compulsory programme imposed by an external authority upon every child in every school in a country is the direct contrary of the root idea involved in education. Yet this is what we have in Ireland. In theory the primary schools have a certain amount of freedom; in practice they have none. Neither in theory nor in practice is such a thing as freedom dreamt of in the gloomy limbo whose presiding demon is the Board of Intermediate Education for Ireland. Education, indeed, reaches its nadir in the Irish Intermediate system. At the present moment there are 15,000 boys and girls pounding at a programme drawn up for them by certain persons sitting round a table in Hume Street. Precisely the same textbooks are being read tonight in every secondary school and college in Ireland. Two of Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales, with a few poems in English, will constitute the whole literary pablum of three-quarters of the pupils of the Irish secondary schools during this twelve months. The teacher who seeks to give his pupils a wider horizon in literature does so at his peril. He will, no doubt, benefit his pupils, but he will infallibly reduce his results fees. As an intermediate teacher said to me, ‘Culture is all very well in its way, but if you don’t stick to your programme your boys won’t pass.’ ‘Stick to your programme’ is the strange device on the banner of the Irish Intermediate system; and the programme bulks so large that there is no room for education.

由外部权威机构对国内的所有学校和学生执行强制性计划与教育的根本理念完全相悖。然而这就是爱尔兰的现状。理论上小学尚有一定的自由，但在实践中没有。无论理论还是实践上，以爱尔兰中级教育委员会为首的阴暗地狱中都不存在对自由的梦想。事实上，教育在爱尔兰的中级系统中达到了它的最低点。此时此刻， 1.5万男孩和女孩在为休姆街一张桌子旁的某些人为他们制定的计划而努力。在爱尔兰的每一所中学和大学，今晚都在读着完全相同的教科书。霍桑的两篇《丛林故事》，加上一些英文诗歌，将构成爱尔兰四分之三小学生的全部文学食粮。试图给学生提供更广阔的文学视野的老师是冒着风险的。他无疑会使他的学生受益，但也必然会减少他的收益。正如一位中级老师对我说的那样，“文化当然很好，但如果不坚持计划，学生就没法通过考试。”“坚持计划”是 爱尔兰中级系统旗帜上的奇怪标志。而计划过于臃肿，以至于容不下教育本身。

The first thing I please for, therefore, is freedom: freedom for each school to shape its own programme in conformity with the circumstances of the school as to place, size, personnel, and so on; freedom again for the individual teacher to impart something of his own personality to his work, to bring his own peculiar gifts to the service of his pupils, to be, in short, a teacher, a master, one having an intimate and permanent relationship with his pupils, and not a mere part of the educational machine, a mere cog in the wheel; freedom finally for the individual pupil and scope for his development within the school and within the system. And I would promote this idea of freedom by the very organisation of the school itself, giving a certain autonomy not only to the school, but to the particular parts of the school: to the staff, of course, but also to the pupils, and, in a large school, to the various sub-divisions of the pupils. I do not plead for anarchy. I please for freedom within the law, for liberty, not licence, for that true freedom which can exist only where there is discipline, which exists in fact because each, valuing his own freedom, respects also the freedom of others.

因此，我的首个期望是自由：每个学校能根据它的地点、规模、人员等制定自己的计划。其次自由是对教师，允许他们在工作中传递自己的个性，将自己的独特才能用于服务学生。简言之，既是教师，也是导师，一个与学生有着亲密和永久关系的人，而不是教育机器的一部分，仅仅是轮子上的一个齿轮。最后的自由是对每个学生，在学校和体制内为他们的发展提供空间。我会通过学校本身的组织来促进这种自由的理念，给予不仅是学校，而且是学校各个部分的一定的自治权：当然包括教职工，但也包括学生，以及在大型学校中，由学生组成的各个子部门。我不是为无政府主义辩护。我是为法律内的自由、出于自由而非放纵、只有在有纪律的情况下才能存在的真正自由而辩护。因为每个人都珍视自己的自由，也尊重他人的自由，所以才有了真正的自由。