论电视技术和教育
课文学习台
Television and Education
区分观点、依据、例子与限制，用自己的话准确重建论述。
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第1段
Television is a method of communication. It is about as revolutionary as the invention of printing. Neither printing nor television is in itself an idea, or power, or good or bad. They are simply methods by which ideas and experiences can be communicated faster to more people. It is perhaps because the characteristics of television, which determine what it can best communicate, are so different from those of printing, that professional educationists were reluctant for so long to interest themselves in the newer method.
电视是一种沟通交流的方式。其革命性不亚于印刷术的发明。印刷术和电视，本身都不具有思想或权力，也没有善恶之分。它们只不过是用来更快速地向更广泛受众传播思想和经验的方式而已。电视的特点决定了什么内容传播效果最佳，很可能因为该特点与印刷术差别太大，以致于专业的教育从业者长久以来都不愿意关注更为新颖的方式。
第2段
Printing and television are certainly alike in that both are costly to the producers of the communication and relatively cheap to the receiver. They are both, therefore, mass media which depend upon reaching great numbers. But whereas the printed word, being relatively permanent, can communicate to numbers of like minds over centuries, television is relatively ephemeral and communicates, using both pictures and words, to millions of unlike minds at the same moment in time. Moreover television appeals not only to those who can read but to those who can't.
印刷技术和电视当然有相似的地方，它们对于传播资讯的制作者来说成本都比较高昂，但对于受众则相对便宜。因此，两者都是依靠覆盖大量受众来运作的大众传媒。印刷文字相对而言传播更持久，可以横跨多个世纪，与众多志趣相投的读者交流；而电视传播相对短暂，其只能在同一时间，通过图片和话语，及时传播至数以百万计的不同想法的人们。还有就是，电视对于识字群体和文盲群体都具有吸引力。
第3段
Professional educationists, accustomed to communication through words, and highly valuing reading and the quality of the like minds reachable through books, saw television, in its early years, not only as a rival for attention but as an enemy of the good. Some ten years ago a friend said to me: "We in Oxford may be old fashioned and fuddy-duddy, but most of us think that television is actively detrimental." Even that great pioneer of teaching by radio, the late Mary Somerville, had no faith in television. "It won't last," she said to me. "It's a flash in the pan." And many in the world of education no doubt hoped that this was true.
专业的教育家们不仅把电视看作是注意力的天敌，也把它视为美好事物的敌人。他们早已习惯于通过文字交流，也极为重视阅读。书籍所传播到的志趣相投的读者，其素质也备受教育家们推崇。大约十年前，一位朋友曾跟我说过：“我们牛津的这些人可能思想跟不上时代了，但我们大部分人认为电视是非常有害的。”即便是广播教育先驱，最近刚刚离世的玛丽·萨默维尔，也对电视没有信心。 她曾对我说过“电视无法持续。”“就像昙花一现。”教育界的许多人无疑也希望她这话会成真。
第4段
The situation has now altered. It is clear that television is no flash in the pan. So educationists all over the world are trying to get access to its "power", often by attempting to use traditional methods of academic teaching to inculcate, through television, the ideas and attitudes in which they devotedly believe. But one of the characteristics of television is that it has no power other than that created by the wish of people to watch it. If nobody watches it, then television has no power.
目前情况已经改变了。很显然，电视并非昙花一现。因此全世界的教育家们都在想办法借助电视的 “力量”，经常是用着传统的教学手段，通过电视来灌输他们真挚相信的观念和态度。可是电视的一个特点便是除了创造出人们的观看欲之外，也没有别的力量了。要是没有人观看，电视也自然没有力量了。
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译文与解析据吴应时整理资料及本站首轮审校稿；词伙与练习提示为本站学习设计。原PDF第242—246页，2022年2月第2版。