新标准大学英语综合教程4 Unit2(5)

Passage 2

Why people should study history

In 1998, I received a scholarship to study for an undergraduate degree at Yale University. During my four years at Yale, I explored a broad array of subjects: economics, German language and literature, mathematics, English literature, etc, but the subject I was most committed to intellectually was history. When I told other Chinese that I was studying history at Yale, many talked as if I were a slacker evading science and engineering programmes, or a loser who couldn’t make it in computer science or electrical engineering; others wondered why I had chosen such an impractical subject.

Both responses reflect the deeply ingrained prejudice of many Chinese against the humanities, and are grossly erroneous. Studying history at a great American university is neither easy nor impractical. In some sense, I learned my most important lessons through struggling with the difficulties of studying history.

Most history classes at Yale require attending two or three lectures a week, a weekly discussion section, relentless reading assignments of 200 or more pages a week, a midterm and final exam, and two papers. At the beginning, just taking notes on lectures and finishing the reading on time were daunting challenges; writing papers was a nightmare. My trouble with papers generally started the moment they were assigned. The topics were indeterminate, e.g. “write about any topic of your choice in ancient Greek history”, “write a book review for a book of your choice” from a reading list of 50 books on medieval history or “compare and contrast selected passages from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America”. The expected end result is a paper making a coherent argument that draws its supporting evidence or ideas from several books or journal articles. The subtext to such assignments is: Whatever you say in the paper has to reflect your own thinking hence simply repeating the professor’s opinions or whatever is in the readings will not get you very far. In the first week of my Yale career it was hammered home to us that plagiarism was the capital crime in the academic world. Each year there are students who are punished for plagiarizing.

Looking at a paper assignment, my mind often went blank. Any topics in ancient Greek History? But which one, and where to start? Even after I was able to narrow the topic down to, say, the career of Pericles, there were still thousands of books and articles written on it. I spent so many nights pacing back and forth in the library, trying to define a topic and choose my arguments. And I was hardly the only person with this problem: Yale students complain about papers as much as Londoners complain about the weather. Pulling all nights to finish a paper is part of the shared memory of those “bright college years”.

I gradually realized the value of such seemingly unguided education. Allowing students great scope in choosing their own paper topics reflects the Western belief in individual initiative. Students are encouraged to make their own choices and go wherever their interests lead them. On a different level, in the process of groping for a topic, then screening the available material, and finally using it to make an intelligent argument, students learn the important lesson of rapidly processing and critically utilizing a large amount of information. This is an important skill not

21

only in historical research, but in many careers outside the academic world, where information comes in the form of a tangled mess, not neat textbook passages to be spoon-fed to passive “learners”.

I find the language skills acquired from history classes highly relevant in the real world. Because of the broad spectrum of subjects that history encompasses — political events, social changes, intellectual and artistic movements, etc — the students of history have to command a wide vocabulary to describe and analyze these different subjects. Intensive reading, writing, and discussion forced me to absorb and master new vocabulary and rhetorical tactics at a rapid pace. And happily, many historians are excellent stylists. Their precise and supple use of English makes their books models of English expository prose at its best.

Writing well is a fine skill, but is it important? Yes, very! Many companies that came to recruit at Yale, including most of the well-known Wall Street finance and consulting firms, made no secret of their preference for candidates with solid writing skills. Each year these firms hire a large number of new graduates with majors such as history, English, and political science, but no formal finance or business education. Curiously, the undergraduate economics or finance curriculum at elite private universities such as Yale, Harvard and Princeton has a strong theoretical bent and is not immediately applicable to a career in a private firm. Indeed, most elite universities don’t even have an undergraduate business programme. In the US one of the most influential and lucrative professions is law, a field in which writing skills are indispensable. Not surprisingly, law school is one of the most popular destinations for Yale grads majoring in history.

The ability to use words well is highly valued and respected in Western culture. The two most “popular” figures on the Yale campus are probably Richard Brodhead, dean of Yale College, and sinologist Jonathan Spence. Both cast their spell on the Yale community through the excellence of their writing and public speaking. From my experience, Chinese students with an excellent command of English receive a lot of respect and attention from Americans.

If the question “Why study history?” had been put to the 204 history majors in my class, chances are that they would have replied, “Because it’s fun.” And it is! The study …… 此处隐藏：12617字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……