快速查题-中学教师资格证试题

      Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts

in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through

a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage

brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment. Except at harvest time, when

self-preservation requires a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a

warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sun-baked clay, but

with battlements, turrets, loopholes, drawbridges, etc. complete. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its

vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one

another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of social life, in addition to the

convention about harvest-time, a most elaborate code of honour has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The slightest

technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse

population.

       Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the rifle was nowhere more

appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole

new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one’s own house and fire at

one’s neighbour nearly a mile away. One could lie in wait on some high crag, and at hitherto unheard of ranges hit a horseman far below. Even villages could fire at each other without the trouble of going far from home. Fabulous prices were therefore

offered for these glorious products of science. Rifle-thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced.

     The action of the British Government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organizing, advancing,

absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathan made forays into the

plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair),but a whole series of subsequent interferences

took place, followed at intervals by expeditions which toiled laboriously through the valleys, scolding the tribesmen and

exacting fines for any damage which they had done. No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come,

had a fight and then gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the “butcher and bolt

policy” to which the Government of India long adhered. But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to ensure the safety of these

roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went. But the whole of this

tendency to road-making was regarded by the Pathans with profound distaste. All along the road people were expected to

keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and above all not to shoot at travellers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a

whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source.

        The University in Transformation, edited by Australian futurists Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Gidley, presents some 20 highly varied outlooks on tomorrow’s universities by writers representing both Western and non-Western perspectives. Their

essays raise a broad range of issues, questioning nearly every key assumption we have about higher education today.

       The most widely discussed alternative to the traditional campus is the Internet University—a voluntary community to

scholars/teachers physically scattered throughout a country or around the world but all linked in cyberspace. A computerized

university could have many advantages, such as easy scheduling, efficient delivery of lectures to thousands or even millions of students at once, and ready access for students everywhere to the resources of all the world’s great libraries.

     Yet the Internet University poses dangers, too. For example, a line of franchised courseware, produced by a few superstar

teachers, marketed under the brand name of a famous institution, and heavily advertised, might eventually come to dominate

the global education market, warns sociology professor Peter Manicas of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Besides enforcing a rigidly standardized curriculum, such a “college education in a box” could undersell the offerings of many traditional brick and mortar institutions, effectively driving them out of business and throwing thousands of career academics out of work, note

Australian communications professors David Rooney and Greg Hearn.

      On the other hand, while global connectivity seems highly likely to play some significant role in future higher education,

that does not mean greater uniformity in course content—or other dangers—will necessarily follow. Counter-movements are

also at work.

      Many in academia, including scholars contributing to this volume, are questioning the fundamental mission of university

education. What if, for instance, instead of receiving primarily technical training and building their individual careers, university students and professors could focus their learning and research efforts on existing problems in their local communities and the world? Feminist scholar Ivana Milojevic dares to dream what a university might become “if we believed that child care workers and teachers in early childhood education should be one of the highest (rather than lowest) paid professionals?”

     Co-editor Jennifer Gidley shows how tomorrow’s university faculty, instead of giving lectures and conducting independent

research, may take on three new roles. Some would act as brokers, assembling customized degree-credit programmes for

individual students by mixing and matching the best course offerings available from institutions all around the world. A second group, mentors, would function much like today’s faculty advisers, but are likely to be working with many more students

outside their own academic specialty. This would require them to constantly be learning from their students as well as

instructing them.

      A third new role for faculty, and in Gidley’s view the most challenging and rewarding of all, would be as meaning-makers:

charismatic sages and practitioners leading groups of students/colleagues in collaborative efforts to find spiritual as well as

rational and technological solutions to specific real-world problems.

     Moreover, there seems little reason to suppose that any one form of university must necessarily drive out all other options. Students may be “enrolled” in courses offered at virtual campuses on the Internet, between—or even during—sessions at a

real world problem focused institution.

     As co-editor Sohail Inayatullah points out in his introduction, no future is inevitable, and the very act of imagining and

thinking through alternative possibilities can directly affect how thoughtfully, creatively and urgently even a dominant

technology is adapted and applied. Even in academia, the future belongs to those who care enough to work their visions into

practical, sustainable realities.