If you happen, as I do, to be chief sportswriter of The Times, you will get a lot of letters from young people wondering how to get a job that seems – quite correctly – to combine a reasonable amount of money and prestige.
Did you get a degree in journalism? Or sports studies? Is that what I should do, get a degree in sports studies and journalism? Or what? I have, over the years, evolved a reply. You have a choice, I say. You could either spend three years reading Shakespeare and Joyce, or three years reading me. Work it out for yourself.
I read English language and literature, which doesn’t prepare you for any career whatsoever. It is, however, jolly interesting, being about absolutely everything you could ever want it to be about. And I have been thinking about the purpose of education rather a lot lately, since on Friday, to the amazement and amusement of my friends, especially those I knew at university, I am to be made an honorary doctor of letters by my alma mater, the University of Bristol.
I read obsessively throughout my time at Bristol. I can remember reading Flaubert for the first time, and being struck by a thunderbolt: oh brave new world that has such writers in it! Others I encountered, read and discussed endlessly, include Virgil, Homer, Dante, D. T. Suzuki, Basho, Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse, Bob Dylan, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges. And if that list is a little patchy in terms of quality, that’s growing minds for you.
But as you will notice, few of those count as English literature, and those that do were too recent to be part of my course. I read some of the stuff that was actually on the course as well: but by no means all. It seemed more relevant to pursue the meaning of life by means of the written word. This inevitably included a million wrong turnings: Carlos Castaneda (fun but silly), Kahlil Gibran (God, no) and Jonathan Livingston Seagull (no, not even for a minute).
It was a time when you could discover a new poet, meet a lifelong friend, fall in love and completely alter your world view, all within a single term; and then do it all again next term. I never, for one minute gave thought to what I would do to earn my living. Nor was this view peculiar to the English Department.
Education has changed course since then. Those poor young people at university nowadays send me their CVs and have five-year plans and targets and loans to pay. For them, education is about transforming themselves into an effective economic unit.
Education should be wild, exciting, intoxicating. Engineers, medics and lawyers must of necessity modify that view, but only to an extent. These days, more and more tertiary education establishments specialise in courses that look like a short-cut to a sexy job: you can study sport, or journalism, or television, or pop music, even fashion, for God’s sake. I imagine educationists sitting around a table: “Let’s have a course in sports journalism! They’ll love it! They’ll come flocking in! Brilliant idea! ”
It’s a terrible shame, and I feel horribly sad for the people who must go through it all, carrying the burden of economic expectation rather then the spirit of exploration and adventure. We were all too busy trying to suss out the meaning of life to be sidetracked by such side-issues as careers. The purpose of modern education is to make you a more wealthy person. But when I read English at Bristol, the idea was that you ended up a richer person.
译文:
教育的财富
如果你恰巧像我一样成为了时代杂志运动版的主编，你将会收到许多年轻人的来信，他们会问你怎样的一份工作能让他们既有体面的工资还有不错的地位。
您有新闻学的学位证书吗？您学的是体育吗？我是否也应该像您这样获得体育和新闻的学位证书？或者我应该怎么做呢？这些年来，我的回复也不断在改变。我说，你可以选择。你可以花三年阅读莎士比亚和尤利西斯，也可以三年读我的文章。你自己决定。
我主修英语语言学和英语文学，它们不能为任何职业做准备。然而它却相当有趣，绝对能满足你曾对它所有的期望。直到近来我才真正开始思考教育的目的，因为就在周五，我被母校布里斯托大学授予了荣誉文学博士学位，这让大学里认识我的朋友们都大跌眼镜。
在布里斯托的时候，我将自己沉浸在阅读的世界中。我依旧记得初读福楼拜的时候，感觉就像被惊天霹雳所击中，因为我从其的作品中看到了一个勇敢的新世界。其他我接触过，阅读过并且无休止讨论过的作者还有维吉尔，荷马，但丁，陀思妥耶夫斯基，赫尔曼.黑塞，鲍勃.迪伦，库尔特.冯内古特，约瑟夫.海勒，威廉.巴罗斯，豪尔赫.路易斯和博尔赫斯。如果说这个名单的人物在质量上有些良莠不齐，那么他们至少可以帮你增长心智。
那些日子里你能够在一个学期里发现一位新的诗人，遇见一个终生好友，谈一场恋爱，重塑你的世界观，然后再在第二个学期中将上述的事情通通重复一遍。那时的我一点儿都未曾想过我将来要做什么来养活自己，对于英语专业的人来说大家应该都没有如此的想法。
但从那以后教育就改变了它的方向。如今在大学里那些可怜的年轻人发给我他们的履历，他们有自己的五年计划和目标，还有欠下的贷款要还。于他们而言，教育就是把他们变成一个有效率的经济零件。
教育应该涉猎广泛，让人激动，使人兴奋。当然，工程师，医生和律师有必要调整一下这种观点，也只需稍做调整。如今，越来越多的高等教育机构都设置专业课程，这种专业的课程如同通往一份体面工作的捷径：你可以学习体育，新闻，电视，流行音乐，天哪居然还可以学习时尚。我想象着一群教育工作者围坐在桌子边讨论的情景：“我们开设一门体育新闻的专业吧！他们会喜欢这个专业的！他们会蜂拥而至的！好主意！”
这真是让人遗憾的事情。我为那些身负经济重担而不能够拥有探索冒险精神的人们感到万分悲哀。我们都太急于找寻出人生的意义，以至于将人生的轨道偏离到了职业这种旁枝末节的议题上。现代教育的目的是让你成为一个更有财富的人。但当我在布里斯托读英语的时候，我以为教育不仅让人物质富有，最终应该让人精神富足。