晨读英语美文 Modern American Universities

Modern American Universities

[00:08.95]Before the 1850s, the United States 

[00:18.62]had a number of small colleges, 

[00:20.22]most of them dating from colonial days. 

[00:23.17]They were small, church connected institutions 

[00:26.45]whose primary concern was to shape

[00:29.29] the moral character of their students. 

[00:30.61]Meanwhile, throughout Europe, 

[00:33.23]institutions of higher learning had developed. 

[00:35.65]In German university was concerned primarily with creating 

[00:40.02]and spreading knowledge, not morals. 

[00:42.65]Between mid-century and the end of the 1800s, 

[00:46.36]more than nine thousand young Americans, 

[00:48.77]dissatisfied with their training at home, 

[00:51.17]went to Germany for advanced study. 

[00:53.58]Some of them return to become presidents of venerable colleges  

[00:58.17]Harvard, Yale, Columbia 

[01:01.94] and transform them into modern universities. 

[01:03.86]The new presidents broke all ties with the churches 

[01:07.03]and brought in a new kind of faculty. 

[01:09.44]Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, 

[01:12.83]not because they were of the proper faith 

[01:15.12]and had a strong arm for disciplining students. 

[01:17.86]Drilling and memorizing were replaced

[01:20.53] by the German method of lecturing, 

[01:21.91]in which the professors own research 

[01:24.48]was presented in class. 

[01:25.19]With the establishment of the seminar system, 

[01:28.14]graduate student learned to question,

[01:31.22] analyze, and conduct their own research. 

[01:33.60]At the same time, 

[01:34.51]the new university greatly expanded 

[01:37.55]in size and course offerings, 

[01:38.75]breaking completely out of the old, 

[01:40.83]constricted curriculum of mathematics,

[01:44.00] classics, rhetoric, and music. 

[01:45.64]The president of Harvard pioneered the selective system, 

[01:49.03]by which students were able to choose their own course of study. 

[01:52.54]The notion of major fields of study emerged. 

[01:55.60]The new goal was to make the university 

[01:59.23]relevant to the real pursuits of the world. 

[02:00.85]Paying close attention to the practical needs of society, 

[02:04.45]the new universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, 

[02:08.94]with engineering students being 

[02:11.14]the most characteristic of the new system. 

[02:12.84]Students were also trained as economists, architects, 

[02:16.37]agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers.