（節(jié)選）外文翻譯---對“書”這一教育媒介的前景展望（英文）

1、Frank G. Jennings The prospect for the “book“ as an educational medium 1 It is no prophecy to say that the book willalways be with us. It is simply a statement of low-grade physical fact, useful but trivial. The boo

2、k is not to be defended, but used. Its major technological virtue is its simplicity of construction and, except in its gargantuan form such as elephant folio, it is highly portable. It is important to make the distinc

3、tion suggested by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi between books that hold information and books that use information; that is, between books that are repositories and books that are expositories. The former are used to relieve

4、the mind from self-clutter, the latter to aid the mind in reaching beyond a current condition. The difference can also be expressed as between the position of the artisan and the artist. It is this distinction, howev

5、er, which causes a great deal of trouble, and the book is hoarded and cherished as a treasure. It is easy to learn to read. It is a low-grade skill that can be taught to all but the most severely brain-damaged. But to

6、 use reading too soon and to depend upon it too heavily in the processes of education is to blunt a good tool by inexpert use. Fifty years ago Alfred North Whitehead warned: 'A merely well-informed man is the mo

7、st useles.3 bore on God's earth.' Teachers and librarians know this truth in their Frank G. yennings is director of college relations, Teachers' College, Columbia University, United States. 198 marrow, and

8、if they are uneasy before tech- nology's open-handed advance, it is because they will not allow information to be mistaken for wisdom. It is this impulse that impelled Gordon N. Ray, in his American Library Associ

9、ation address in New York in July I965 (as reported in Publishers' Weekly, I8 July I965) to assert that the profession would be ill-advised to turn from the education of librarians to the manu- facture of infor

10、mation retrievers and the training of servitors in 'systems analysis'. He complained about the long observed 'lack of fellow feeling between librarians and faculty members, who ought to be united... [as he

11、 said] in the com- mon world of learning'. Ray told his audience in New York: 'You should not only be librarians but bookmen .... Make it evident that your interest is in books themselves as well as pro- ce

12、dures for making them available, that you are bookmen first, and administrators, technicians, and efficiency experts second.' Ray argued that: 'a compelling case can still be made for the book as the best sourc

13、e of infor- mation. Once one goes beyond the broad, ele- mentary view of a subject, the opportunities I. This paper was written for To Improve Learning. An Evaluation of lnstructional Technology, prepared by the Commi

14、ssion on Instructional Technology. Edited by Sidney G. Tickton with the Staff of the Academy for Educational Development Inc., New York and it does not worry too much about hurt books and scarred furniture. Clevelan

15、d's branch libraries are community cul- ture centres--not merely places where genteel book-review talks are given on rainy afternoons, but exciting and vital places where the voter registration drives are located,

16、 where issues of housing are not only discussed, but where plans for improvement are worked up--and possibly even implemented. In the worst of the slums there is a branch that is not even called a library. It is known

17、 as the 'Treasure House for Children'. There the chief librarian, miracle of miracles, is the chil- dren's librarian. Everything about the place is there for the child. The furniture, the decor- ation, t

18、he reading materials--are all aimed at the child who is culturally deprived. There are tunnels and other secret passages, amusement devices, game areas--everything is plotted to seduce the children into the building a

19、nd make them feel comfortable in the surrounding. And so Cleveland leads all big cities in the United States in the number of books borrowed not only by children but by adults. This is not to suggest that the uplift

20、ing of the poor should be the library's only concern. Yet ours is the first society in human history in which the poor are a helpless minority. Therefore, one must measure the efficacy of our enterprises by our

21、capacity to make a healthy difference in the lives of the least advantaged of our citizens. The world at large is undergoing great and fundamental changes. We use the word 'ex- plosion' to characterize many of