给你读一段话：
关于历史叙述的先验命题是：基于计划动词及叙述句子的先验时间性是历史认识得以可能的先验条件。历史叙述因此总是先天地包含对单纯语言复写或复制的内容超出的部分，而非过去实在面貌的重现，因此历史叙述在意义上高于年鉴学派主张对原始信息的罗列。鲍姆加特纳对丹图的评论认为这种先验论会在推进到对历史语言的整体分析中出现断裂。
我猜大部分人不知所云。
让我们放下这诘屈聱牙的文字。回到下面这篇文章。我会对其中一些难以理解的概念做出解读。读完这篇文章你或许会理解：学习英语的目的与手段，都指向同一句话---用这门语言更好地理解世界！
In The End of Education, Neil Postman returns to a question he has explored on and off since he began his career as an elementary school teacher: education. It's a topic that has dominated the cultural debate in America, with varying degrees of intensity, for the better part of the twentieth century. You would think that everything that could be said on the subject would have been said well enough by now. But no. Every year a new spate of books appears tackling the same old themes: diversity in the classroom, the pros and cons of various teaching methods, declining standards, core curricula, violence in our schools, etc. But Postman sidesteps these issues and takes a broader view. His aim in this book, he says, is to redefine the crisis of education in America—from means to ends.
The "school problem" has two dimensions, as he sees it. One is the engineering aspect: the means by which young people acquire an education. The other is the metaphysical aspect: the underlying purpose or mission—the "end"—of education. Postman believes that the debate over the future of America's schools focuses too much on engineering concerns—curricula, teaching methods, standardized testing, the role of technology, etc.—while very little attention is paid to the metaphysics of schooling. As the title suggests, he feels that "without a transcendent and honorable purpose schooling must reach its finish, and the sooner we are done with it, the better."
从两个维度看学校教育存在的问题：1、engineer ing aspect，可以理解为“技术层面”：获得教育的途径（课程、教学方法、考试等）；2、metaphysical aspect“形而上层面”：形而上者谓之道，探讨生命的价值等等这些抽象而高大上的道理。教育当下的问题正在于此，就是过于功利。
For education to be meaningful, Postman contends, young people, their parents, and their teachers must have a common narrative. Narratives are essential because they provide a sense of personal identity, a sense of community life, a basis for moral conduct, and explanations of that which cannot be known. The idea of public education requires not only shared narratives, but also the absence of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness. "What makes public schools public," writes Postman, "is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods." As Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, John Dewey and other great educators understood, public schools do not serve a public so much as create a public. But in order to do that they depend on the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling.
这里出现第二个可能导致困惑的概念：共同叙事（common narrative）。这里先了解一下什么是“叙事”，你可以简单理解为“讲故事”。
道德行为需要通过叙事框架来理解：我们只有在一个故事中，才能解释为什么某个行为是正当的，或为什么某个角色需要负责，从而形成共识和身份认同。比如，《圣经》《论语》等文化经典，其叙事不仅是宗教或哲学文本，也是塑造伦理观念的重要工具。
你或许听过一句话叫“宏大叙事”。后现代主义者认为，我们需要警惕所谓“大叙事”（grand narratives），即那些试图解释一切、统一一切的宏大故事，因为它们常以压制其他声音为代价。
Postman's most compelling argument, in my view, revolves around what he takes to be the "false gods" of modern education. What keeps our schools from being effective, he says, is the lack of commonly accepted stories, or the inadequacy of those we have in giving meaning and direction to schooling. At the moment, he says, education is geared toward economic utility, consumerism, technology, multiculturalism and other bogus objectives. Narratives such as these are incapable of providing a rich and sustaining rationale for public education.
这里出现第三个概念：假神。我们是无神论国家，不能理解god的所指，你可理解false god即被人们过度追求的价值和目标。如上面所说的“技术层面”的追求，例如考试、教材等。
He goes on to describe five narratives that may serve us better: "Spaceship Earth" (the notion of humans as stewards of the planet); "The Fallen Angel" (a view of history and the advancement of knowledge as a series of errors and corrections); "The American Experiment" (the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument); "The Laws of Diversity" (the view that difference contributes to increased vitality and excellence, and, ultimately, to a sense of unity); and "The Word Weavers/The World Makers" (the understanding that the world is created through language—through definitions, questions, and metaphors).
波兹曼认为教育应有的叙事方式是什么呢？第一个是spaceship earth（地球飞船、也被译作“宇宙叙事”）：我们人类都是这艘飞船上的乘务员，为我们共同的家园负起责任；第二、堕落天使：历史的进步和知识的追求，是一个不断试错的过程，突出的是批判性思维；第三、American experiment（世界公民叙事）这里是把美国的价值观放大到全球；第四、多元法则叙事，顾名思义说的是文化的多元和兼容；第五、世界缔造者，强调语言文字的作用。
这几条基本涵盖了教育应该追求的育人目标：全球化、多样性、批判性、责任感、以及对真理的追求。回答了“为什么要学习”、“我们学习为什么”这样的哲学问题。
Postman also offers a number of admittedly radical innovations toward making schools more effective. He argues that textbooks should be altogether eliminated because they have a deadening effect on students and promote a view of education as the acquisition of immutablefacts. He proposes that teachers offer incentives to students who find errors in their teachers' lessons. And he feels that the subjects of archeology, geology and astronomy be given the highest priority since they imbue students with a sense of awe and global interdependence.
These proposals notwithstanding, Postman stresses that his main purpose is to promote a serious conversation about the underlying reasons for education — not about policies, management, assessment, and other engineering matters. While these are important, he states, "they ought rightfully to be addressed after decisions are made about what schools are for."
你可能会认为尼尔·波兹曼是个激进分子—他说的这都是什么啊，难道我上学不是为了高考找、工作吗？先思考一些更高、更层次的问题，再去解决当下的技术问题，这本身就是我们教育的应有之义。
Overall, this is a very convincing argument, and, as usual, Postman makes it most eloquently. At one point in the book, he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to George Orwell, one of his intellectual heroes. This seems fitting, I think, since Postman writes much the way Orwell did. The prose is clear, informal, and strikingly persuasive.
In one of my favorite essays, "The Prevention of Literature," Orwell wrote: "To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox." If Postman's book is written off by some as hopelessly impractical, or vaguely utopian in nature, as it no doubt will, don't be fooled. That's the voice of political orthodoxy. No genius I know of has ever said, "Oh, that's impractical." Brilliant thinkers say, "Let's look at this from a new angle." That, in effect, is what Postman has done with this book.
“要用简洁有力的语言写作，就必须无所畏惧地思考，而如果一个人能够无所畏惧地思考，他就不可能完全遵循politics上的正统思想。”
的确。这需要眼界和勇气。
