Human-Error Processor

the reformers aim to improve education by ratcheting up school requirements, yet a large fraction of the students now in high school seem quite immune to such requirements. These students are educationally purposeless. They attend for reasons quite unrelated to learning: because they need to be kept off the street, because they cannot be allowed to compete with older workers, because most of their friends attend, or because the schools are handy places to solve much other problems as driving ability, health, or nutrition. Opinion surveys show repeatedly that most students, like most adults, do not regard academic work as the primary purpose of schools: they give greater importance to social and vocational matters and to personal development. And whatever their reasons for being in school, students are frequently hostage to circumstances that tend to defeat learning. Many students know, for instance, that when they leave school they probably will not be able to find a job or, if they can find one, that it will require only minimal skill or knowledge. They will work on an assembly line, check out groceries, serve hamburgers, sell shoes. It is easy to say that all citizens need to think critically, reason mathematically, and read and write well, but what sort of learning do such dismal economic prospects imply? Perhaps high school teach students what they most need to know: how to endure boredom without protest. These students’ prospects hardly suggest rewards for hard work or for intellectual curiosity. Students who plan for college in part to avoid such a fate know that they do now need to do much high school work to gain college admission. This, too, does little to build academic commitment.

One consequence of these limits on reform is that most students and teachers will cope with the eighties requirements as they have coped with others. Teachers and students will bargain to ease the effects of the requirements. A second consequence, typically ignored by school reformers, is that educational requirements piled onto high school cannot substitute for real economic and social incentives for study. If many demanding and rewarding jobs awaited well-educated high school graduates, lots of students who now take it easy would work harder. If college and university entrance requirements were substantial, many students who know idle through the college track would step on the gas. But when real incentives that make hard work in high school rational for most students are absent, requirements alone have an Alice-in-Wonderland effect, crazily compounding the problems that shcools already have. pp.304

这是昨天介绍的那本书历史部分最后写道的，也重新唤起了一直以来在我心中所有的疑惑。在我看来这是一个人口大国在普及高中教育是所面临的最终极的问题：高中教育的目标究竟是什么？美国的经验告诉我们（见上面引文），大量的问卷和调查发现学生和家长并不把学专业课放在首要考虑的目标。那么对中国来说——我们的社会发展是如此地不平衡——高中教育的目标是什么？如果大部分的人并不是以大学升学为目标，高中只是他们进入社会的前一站，那是不是意味着我们现有的教育目标应该做出大的调整？

重新审视我自己的高中经历，同样的问题也存在：那些很难得物理、化学课，除了对于一小部分今后致力于这个专业的人而言有切身的作用，对于大部分的人，有作用吗？（有谁在高考之后还记得这些东西？）与此同时和备考相关的课程和训练占据了大部分的高中学习时间——不管是在乡村还是城市——那么对于那些只是想就业的学生来说，是不是迎合了他们的需要？美国的经验告诉我们真正能够让学生铭记的高中回忆也许是运动对，辩论队，兴趣小组和那些课外活动。这些在以高考为导向的高中教育中是没有被得到重视的（也无法）。

对于这些问题我们都没有一个确切的答案，但同时我们也知道，高中教育的目标一定要和经济发展的程度相适应。毕业即失业我想恐怕不是不能在任何情况下被称作成功的教育。那么怎么个适应法？这在目前的政策话语中似乎并没有得到充分的体现。

这是一个很丰富的讨论话题，以后肯定还会反复出现的。