Unfortunately for Socrates, the authorities in Athens eventually grew tired of his pesky11) habit of asking challenging questions, and tried him for corrupting the minds of the youth and heresy12) (for questioning the existence of the gods). They convicted13) him, and he had to drink poison hemlockas punishment. But Socrates' ideas and methods still live on in schools everywhere.
对于苏格拉底的生平细节,人们都知之甚少,不过广为人知的是,他当过兵,做过石匠,到了中年后,这些他都不干了,一门心思做起了那些让他名传千古的事情——在希腊的雅典城教书并进行哲学思考。
事情是这样开始的:苏格拉底的朋友凯勒丰请示阿波罗神谕是否有人比苏格拉底更有智慧,神谕回答说苏格拉底是最有智慧的人。苏格拉底认为自己一点智慧都没有,于是决定验证一下神谕的回答。他找到雅典城里那些自认为最有智慧的人并向他们进行了提问。苏格拉底的问题让所有人都傻了眼,于是他得出结论:神谕是正确的,他自己的确是最有智慧的人,因为他是唯一一个认识到自己无知的人。
苏格拉底最常做的事情就是不断发问并挑战权威,而这已经成为当今社会同时也是现代教育的中心原则。在雅典城,苏格拉底弟子众多,他们中有很多人后来也追随苏格拉底的脚步,成了伟大的思想家和博学之人,比如柏拉图和色诺芬。对于学生们百思不得其解的问题,他的办法是反问学生一系列问题,从而引导他们找到自己对于该问题的答案,这就是后来众所周知的“苏格拉底法”。从那以后,课堂上都纷纷采用这种方法。
不幸的是,雅典城的权贵们对苏格拉底老爱出难题这种令人生厌的做法终于忍无可忍,遂以腐化年轻人的思想和鼓吹异端邪说(即质疑神的存在)为罪名对他进行了审判。苏格拉底被判有罪,不得不服从刑罚喝下毒芹。尽管如此,他的思想和教学法在世界各地的学校里仍然得到了延续。
Maria Montessori 玛丽亚·蒙特梭利
Maria Montessori was a pioneer in the fight to defy educational stereotypes14), and singlehandedly developed radical new education methods. As a girl in a small Italian town in the 1870s, Montessori excelled in elementary school and wished to continue her education, which girls were discouraged from doing at the time. But her modern-thinking mother encouraged her, and she enrolled in an all-boys technical school in Rome when she was thirteen.
This allowed Montessori to defy15) stereotypes and pursue a technical career. She went on to break further gender barriers in education by becoming the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree. As a doctor, she worked with mentally disabled children at a psychiatric clinic and concluded that helping these children was more an issue of teaching method than medical treatment. Her interest in helping such children led her to be placed in charge of a school for "hopeless" children, where her teaching methods saw tremendous success. She stressed personal attention and utilizing what she saw as a child's natural process for learning. This process of natural teaching involved learning through all five senses and letting children find what they are interested on their own—a philosophy now known as the Montessori Method.
Montessori went on to successfully teach many more children previously thought "unteachable", including the mentally disabled and the extremely poor. The Montessori method is employed in schools throughout the world today, and her life serves as an inspiration for countless other teachers.
玛丽亚·蒙特梭利是反对固有教育模式的先驱,她凭一己之力开创了彻底革新的教育方法。
19世纪70年代,在意大利的一个小镇上,身为女孩的蒙特梭利在小学里成绩出类拔萃,她希望继续自己的学业,可当时是不允许女孩这么做的。但开明的母亲却很支持她,后来她进入罗马一所男子技工学校就读,那时她13岁。
从此,蒙特梭利公然挑战固有的教育模式,走上了技术职业道路。后来,她成为意大利首位获得医学学位的女性,进一步打破了教育上的性别障碍。她在一家精神病诊所当医生的时候,接触了很多智障儿童。她最终发现,帮助这些孩子的关键不在于治疗手段,而在于教育方法。由于她有兴趣帮助这些孩子,就被安排到一所专门接收“无可救药”儿童的学校当负责人,在那儿她的教育方法大获成功。她强调给予每个孩子特别关注,并巧妙地利用她所观察到的儿童学习的自然过程。自然教学的过程包括让孩子通过五官感觉体验来学习知识,并找到他们自己感兴趣的东西——这一方法见解现在被人们称之为“蒙特梭利教学法”。
许多以前曾被认为“不可教”的学生都得到了蒙特梭利的成功施教,包括智障和成绩极差的学生。现如今世界各地的学校都纷纷采用了蒙特梭利教学法,而她的生平事迹也一直激励着无数的后来者。
Albert Einstein 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦
It is said that when he was growing up, Albert Einstein flunked16) math. He did so poorly in school that a teacher told Einstein's father that he would never amount to anything17). But this supposedly poor student in fact went on to revolutionize the field of physics, win the Nobel Prize, and become synonymous with the word "genius". And he would also become a much better teacher than the one he had. Despite his struggles (or lack of interest) in school, he held a deep wonder for the world and its natural laws, and later discovered a love for theoretical math. He fell in love with geometry and its clear proofs, and mastered calculus at age 16. Einstein went on to publish his revolutionary physics papers with his theories of thermodynamics18) and relativity. These papers allowed him to take professorship positions at several universities around Europe.After receiving a few too many racist attacks on his academic work, he went on to teach students in Princeton University, becoming one of the most well-known teachers in America.
About teaching, he once said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough", showing he was a truly understanding teacher that sympathized with confused students. He also gave a student those famous and very true words of advice, "Do not worry about your problems with mathematics. I assure you mine are far greater."Perhaps Einstein learned from his own experience with bad teachers in order to become a great one.
据说爱因斯坦小时候数学不及格,由于在学校成绩很差,有一位老师就对爱因斯坦的父亲说他将一事无成。可事实上这位看似很差劲的学生后来却为物理学领域带来了翻天覆地的变化,不但赢得了诺贝尔奖,还被人看作是“天才”的同义词,而且还成了远比他那位老师更优秀的教师。
虽然爱因斯坦在校期间学习很吃力(或者缺乏兴趣),但对这个世界及其自然规律,他却一直深感好奇,后来又喜欢上了理论数学。他还爱上了几何学以及几何学中的定理证明,到16岁时就已经精通微积分了。再后来,爱因斯坦围绕热力学理论和相对论发表了具有开创性意义的物理学论著,凭借这些论著,他成了欧洲好几所大学的教授。在学术上受到很多种族主义者的攻讦后,他远赴美国普林斯顿大学教书,成为美国最有名的教师之一。
对于教学,他曾经说过,“如果你不能简单地把一个东西解释清楚,那是你还没有理解透彻”,这表明他的确是一个通情达理的老师,因为他能够理解和同情那些感到困惑的学生。他也为学生提出过一些名扬四海的真诚建议:“不要担心你在数学上遇到的困难,我敢保证我遇到的困难比你的要大得多。”也许正是因为他自己有过不称职的老师,爱因斯坦才以此为鉴,成了一名伟大的师者。
1. aristocratic [7ArIstE5krAtIk] adj. (属于)贵族的
2. heed [hi:d] vt. 注意,留心
3. espouse [I5spauz] vt. 信奉