Reading Like a Citizen

In July 1987, with Ronald Reagan deep into his second term as president, 60 English teachers from across the country assembled at the Wye River Conference Center, in Queenstown, Maryland, about an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C. In the buggy, humid air of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the educators—including faculty from private and state universities, an HBCU, and community colleges, as well as K-12 teachers—spent three weeks on the 100-acre campus contemplating the future of English education.

1987 年 7 月，随着罗纳德·里根 (Ronald Reagan) 进入第二个总统任期，来自全国各地的 60 名英语教师聚集在马里兰州皇后镇的怀伊河会议中心，距离华盛顿特区约一小时车程。在马里兰州东海岸的马车和潮湿的空气中，教育工作者——包括来自私立和州立大学、HBCU 和社区学院的教师以及 K-12 教师——花了三个星期的时间在占地 100 英亩的校园，思考英语教育的未来。

It was a contentious time for the English Coalition Conference to take place, with debates raging about skills vs. information, credentials vs. content knowledge, multiculturalism vs. nationalism, and pluribus vs. unum —issues that had come to define the school reforms of the Reagan era.

对于英语联盟会议来说，这是一个充满争议的时期，关于技能与信息、证书与内容知识、多元文化主义与民族主义、合众性与统一性等问题的争论非常激烈，这些问题决定了里根时代的学校改革。

And unlike other academic conferences, where people could come and go as they pleased, this one was different.

与其他学术会议不同的是，人们可以随意来去，但这次不同。

No one could leave.

没有人可以离开。

It was like being “locked in a cruise ship,” retired University of Florida English professor Gregory Ulmer told me of his experience at the conference.

佛罗里达大学退休英语教授格雷戈里·乌尔默（Gregory Ulmer）向我讲述了他在会议上的经历，这就像“被锁在一艘游轮里”。

Separated from spouses and oath-bound to make the conference all work and no play, Ulmer and the others found commonality in their commitment to literature and language learning—and in their shared opposition to the conference’s keynote speaker: E.

乌尔默和其他人与配偶分开，并宣誓让会议只工作，不娱乐，他们发现了共同点，即他们对文学和语言学习的承诺，以及他们对会议主讲人 E. 的共同反对。

D.

D .

Hirsch, the University of Virginia English professor whose controversial bestseller Cultural Literacy had appeared in the spring.

赫希是弗吉尼亚大学的英语教授，他的颇受争议的畅销书《文化素养》于今年春天出版。

Even before his private jet landed in Maryland, Hirsch had won the endorsement of William Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary, who championed the idea of a canon of shared knowledge as if it were the legend at the bottom of a map, a resource for an increasingly diverse, multilingual student population navigating majority culture.

甚至在他的私人飞机降落在马里兰州之前，赫希就赢得了里根教育部长威廉·贝内特的支持，贝内特拥护共享知识经典的理念，就好像它是地图底部的图例一样，是日益多样化、多语言的学生群体在主流文化中航行的资源。

Hirsch, a Democrat, attempted to split the partisan difference as he sold his thesis, that every American needed to know some 5,000 names, phrases, dates, and concepts.

赫希是一位民主党人，他在推销他的论文时试图消除党派分歧，即每个美国人都需要知道大约 5,000 个名字、短语、日期和概念。

For example: What happened in 1492?

例如：1492 年发生了什么？

Or: Who was W.

或者：谁是 W.

E.

E.

B.

B.

Du Bois?

杜波依斯？

“People hated it,” said Ulmer, characterizing the cold reception the faculty afforded Hirsch’s presentation.

“人们讨厌它，”乌尔默说，他描述了教师们对赫希演讲的冷遇。

The notion that knowledge of a common set of references granted membership in literate culture struck many as “ideologically conservative,” Ulmer said—for many, it smacked of a too-simple type of American patriotism.

乌尔默说，掌握一套共同参考文献的知识就可以成为文学文化的一员，这种观念让许多人觉得“在意识形态上是保守的”——对许多人来说，这带有一种过于简单的美国爱国主义的味道。

Ulmer, however, took a different view.

然而，乌尔默却持不同观点。

“Clearly Hirsch was on to something,” he said.

“显然赫希有所发现，”他说。

“Democracy itself is the invention of the collective self, and that’s connected to language and literacy.”

“民主本身是集体自我的发明，这与语言和读写能力有关。”

In response to Hirsch, the teachers formulated a striking countervision, presented in a report titled Democracy through Language .

作为对赫希的回应，教师们提出了一个引人注目的反对意见，并在题为《通过语言实现民主》的报告中提出。

Published in 1989 by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), two of the eight professional organizations that sponsored the conference, Democracy through Language explored “why different ways of reading can find different meanings in the same text” and how that experience can support students in “understanding and appreciating opposing perspectives” even as they may remain committed to their own.

《通过语言实现民主》由现代语言协会 (MLA) 和全国英语教师委员会 (NCTE)（赞助该会议的八个专业组织中的两个）于 1989 年出版，探讨了“为什么不同的阅读方式可以在同一文本中找到不同的含义”，以及这种经验如何支持学生“理解和欣赏相反的观点”，即使他们可能仍然坚持自己的观点。

The report proclaimed that “enhancing this ability is a major aim of language arts education.” Nearly 40 years later, at a time when many Americans see the country in a state of democratic disrepair because of our inability to find any shared meaning across the political divide, those lines seem particularly apt.

报告宣称，“增强这种能力是语言艺术教育的一个主要目标”。近 40 年后，当许多美国人看到这个国家由于无法跨越政治分歧找到任何共同的意义而处于民主失修的状态时，这些话似乎特别贴切。

Political controversy about the purpose of English education is nothing new, of course.

当然，关于英语教育目的的政治争议并不是什么新鲜事。

But in its ambitious vision for the future of the field, as much as in the conflicts it chose to ignore, Democracy through Language offered a script about why the language arts—the intellectual practices of reading, writing, interpreting, speaking, and listening—are essential to civic learning.

但在对该领域未来的雄心勃勃的愿景中，以及在它选择忽视的冲突中，《语言民主》提供了一个剧本，说明为什么语言艺术——阅读、写作、口译、口语和听力的智力实践——对公民学习至关重要。

By the time students leave the sixth grade, the elementary teachers asserted within the report’s 100-plus pages, they will “recognize when language is being used to manipulate, coerce, or control” and “use language as an effective response to such attempts.” As students proceed through secondary education, they “should be invited to read deeply in our diverse literary traditions,” the high school instructors insisted, “including writing by men and women of many racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.” And through a yearlong course, college freshmen would learn how to navigate the “information age.” The professors pronounced that “citizens need to make meaning—rather than merely consume information.”

小学教师在 100 多页的报告中声称，当学生离开六年级时，他们将“认识到语言何时被用来操纵、胁迫或控制”，并“使用语言作为对此类企图的有效回应”。高中教师坚持认为，当学生继续接受中学教育时，他们“应该被邀请深入阅读我们多元化的文学传统，包括来自许多种族、民族和文化群体的男性和女性的作品。”通过为期一年的课程，大学新生将学习如何驾驭“信息时代”。教授们宣称，“公民需要创造意义，而不仅仅是消费信息。”

Democracy through Language seems like a time capsule meant for our present moment, when civic education initiatives are resurgent.

通过语言实现民主似乎是一个时间胶囊，专为我们当前公民教育倡议复苏而设计。

Educating for American Democracy, a national framework for K-12 civic learning spearheaded by the Sandra Day O’Connor–founded nonprofit iCivics, debuted in 2021.

“美国民主教育”是 K-12 公民学习的国家框架，由桑德拉·戴·奥康纳 (Sandra Day O’Connor) 创立的非营利组织 iCivics 牵头，于 2021 年首次推出。

In 2023, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars launched College Presidents for Civic Preparedness; more than 100 campus leaders have responded to the New Jersey–based nonprofit’s push to recenter the civic mission of higher education through programming and course offerings.

2023 年，公民与学者研究所推出了公民准备大学校长项目；超过 100 名校园领导响应了这家位于新泽西州的非营利组织的努力，通过项目和课程设置重新定位高等教育的公民使命。

These movements focus primarily on academic disciplines such as U.S. history, political science, and the law.

这些运动主要关注美国历史、政治学和法律等学科。

What’s missing?

缺少什么？

Language studies and literature—which are, in many ways, the fields that allow us best to make sense of and find meaning in the world.

语言研究和文学——从很多方面来说，这些领域让我们能够最好地理解世界并找到世界的意义。

To the 60 teachers sequestered on the Eastern Shore in 1987, English education was civic education.

对于 1987 年被隔离在东海岸的 60 名教师来说，英语教育就是公民教育。

And if the vision of a one-room schoolhouse where English and civics students sat alongside one another seems hopelessly quaint, the idea behind that vision is far from outdated.

如果英语和公民学生坐在一间单室校舍的愿景看起来非常古怪，那么这一愿景背后的想法却远未过时。

At a time when both reading and the civic fabric of American democracy are at risk, the idea warrants a serious second look.

在美国民主的阅读和公民结构都面临风险之际，这个想法值得认真重新审视。

That democracy emerged as the congealing concept for the English Coalition Conference surprised almost everyone who participated.

民主作为英国联合政府会议的凝固概念而出现，几乎让所有与会者感到惊讶。

“Never in the four years of planning could we have guessed that we would achieve a single coherent consensus about the teaching of English at all levels,” wrote Phyllis Franklin after returning from the conference.

“在四年的规划中，我们从来没有想到我们会就各个级别的英语教学达成一致的共识，”菲利斯·富兰克林从会议回来后写道。

Franklin, who served as MLA executive director from 1985 to 2002, was a central force behind the event.

富兰克林在 1985 年至 2002 年间担任 MLA 执行董事，是该活动背后的核心力量。

As it turned out, the broader political environment induced a sobering urgency that made “democracy through language” an easy theme to ratify.

事实证明，更广泛的政治环境引发了一种令人清醒的紧迫感，使“通过语言实现民主”成为一个容易批准的主题。

In 1983, with plans for the conference already underway, A Nation at Risk, a report published by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, sounded the alarm about America’s poor global position in education.

1983年，随着会议的计划已经开始，国家卓越教育委员会发布的一份报告《国家面临风险》对美国在全球教育领域的糟糕地位敲响了警钟。

When the teachers met four years later, they knew that William Bennett had proposed abolishing his entire department, and that they themselves were viewed as impediments to the administration’s desired education overhauls.

四年后，当老师们见面时，他们知道威廉·贝内特提议废除他的整个系，而他们自己也被视为政府所期望的教育改革的障碍。

A month after the conference ended, a Lynne Cheney–led National Endowment for the Humanities issued American Memory , which invoked Matthew Arnold’s belief that students should read certain texts to learn “the best that has been thought and known in the world.” Hirsch served as an adviser for the report.

会议结束一个月后，林恩·切尼领导的国家人文基金会发布了《美国记忆》，其中引用了马修·阿诺德的信念，即学生应该阅读某些文本来学习“世界上被思考和已知的最好的东西”。赫希担任该报告的顾问。

“Of course, the phrase [ democracy through language ] is hopelessly general and has a patriotic if not sloganeering ring to it,” acknowledged Peter Elbow in his 1990 book that covered the conference, What is English ?

“当然，[通过语言实现民主]这个词太笼统了，即使不是口号，也带有爱国色彩，”彼得·埃尔博 (Peter Elbow) 在他 1990 年报道这次会议的著作《什么是英语？》中承认。

Still, the late University of Massachusetts, Amherst, English professor, best known for his research on the democratization of writing instruction, recognized the rationale.

尽管如此，已故的马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校英语教授（以其对写作教学民主化的研究而闻名）还是认识到了其中的原理。

Elbow understood the theme first as an attempt “to fight against the way Hirsch and many educational conservatives claim a monopoly on patriotism—that anyone not interested in teaching lists and a single culture (and ‘English only’) is anti-American.” But he also saw the slogan as seeking to communicate the aim of English studies to the American public.

埃尔博首先将这个主题理解为一种尝试，“反对赫希和许多教育保守派声称对爱国主义的垄断——任何对教学清单和单一文化（以及‘只英语’）不感兴趣的人都是反美的。”但他也认为这个口号是为了向美国公众传达英语研究的目的。

He wrote that “good work in English needs democracy and democracy needs good work in English.”

他写道，“英语的好工作需要民主，民主也需要英语的好工作。”

That principle is something that Paula Krebs, MLA’s current executive director, takes seriously.

MLA 现任执行董事 Paula Krebs 非常重视这一原则。

“Democracy is under threat at least in part because we haven’t paid enough attention to the values represented by language and literature,” she told me when we spoke last summer.

“民主至少部分受到威胁，因为我们没有对语言和文学所代表的价值观给予足够的关注，”去年夏天我们交谈时她告诉我。

She revisited Democracy through Language in preparation for our conversation and noted that the values the English teachers highlighted in the report—close interpretation and analysis, attention to modes of representation and differing perspectives—remain central to her work in leading the MLA, a professional association composed of roughly 20,000 members, most of whom are employed in higher education.

在准备我们的谈话时，她重新审视了《通过语言实现民主》，并指出英语教师在报告中强调的价值观——细致的解释和分析、对代表模式和不同观点的关注——仍然是她领导 MLA 工作的核心。MLA 是一个由大约 20,000 名会员组成的专业协会，其中大多数在高等教育领域工作。

Krebs, who had a long career as an English professor and dean before taking on the MLA’s top post in 2017, understands why some faculty might worry about mingling values like nationalism or patriotism with English studies.

克雷布斯在 2017 年担任 MLA 最高职位之前，曾长期担任英语教授和院长，他理解为什么一些教师可能担心将民族主义或爱国主义等价值观与英语研究混在一起。

Historically, the teaching of literature in American public schools served the practical purposes of promoting patriotic citizenship for immigrants, often in reductive ways.

从历史上看，美国公立学校的文学教学往往以简化的方式服务于促进移民爱国公民意识的实际目的。

And when Democracy through Language first appeared, one skeptical professor complained that, in rendering the study of reading and writing as “an extension of high school civics courses,” the report ignored the experience of “delight” that is the real reason anyone would want to study English.

当《通过语言实现民主》首次出现时，一位持怀疑态度的教授抱怨说，该报告将阅读和写作的研究视为“高中公民课程的延伸”，忽视了“快乐”的体验，而这正是人们想要学习英语的真正原因。

At the same time, Krebs told me, “democracy demands wisdom,” and so for “the humanities to be left out is deeply flawed.” I thought the phrase might have been Krebs’s coinage—her own slogan for the advocacy of English studies today—but she explained that it comes from the legislation that established the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts more than six decades ago.

与此同时，克雷布斯告诉我，“民主需要智慧”，因此“将人文学科排除在外是有严重缺陷的”。我以为这句话可能是克雷布斯的创造——她自己为当今的英语研究倡导的口号——但她解释说，它来自于六十多年前建立国家人文基金会和国家艺术基金会的立法。

“Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens,” Congress declared in the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965.

“民主需要公民的智慧和远见，”国会在 1965 年《国家艺术与人文基金会法案》中宣称。

Recognizing that a democratic way of life cannot sustain itself on science alone, the act continued, it “must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.”

该法案继续指出，认识到民主生活方式无法仅靠科学来维持，因此“必须培育和支持一种教育形式，以及接触艺术和人文学科的机会，旨在使各种背景、无论身在何处的人们成为技术的主人，而不是不加思考的仆人。”

Now Krebs is advocating to keep that vision alive.

现在，克雷布斯正在倡导保持这一愿景。

In May 2025, the MLA filed a joint lawsuit in federal district court arguing that the executive branch’s cuts to the NEH, whose funds Congress had already appropriated, violated the separation-of-powers principle enshrined in the Constitution, as well as federal statutes.

2025 年 5 月，MLA 向联邦地方法院提起联合诉讼，认为行政部门对 NEH（国会已拨款）的资金削减违反了宪法和联邦法规中规定的权力分立原则。

This past May, a judge sided with the plaintiffs in finding the termination of NEH grants “unlawful.”

今年五月，一名法官站在原告一边，认为终止 NEH 资助是“非法的”。

It was funding from the NEH that in part enabled the 60 teachers to meet in Maryland in 1987.

1987 年，60 名教师得以在马里兰州会面，部分原因是 NEH 的资助。

What is the proper place of English studies in cultivating democratic wisdom?

英语研究在培养民主智慧方面的正确位置是什么？

The answer is not self-evident, despite what the conference’s participants believed.

尽管会议参与者相信这一点，但答案并不是不言自明的。

Civics itself is a decentralized field, with researchers operating in far-flung disciplines such as history, political science, and education.

公民学本身是一个分散的领域，研究人员在历史、政治学和教育等广泛学科领域开展工作。

In the siloed world of academic disciplines, it’s not always easy for a civic-minded English professor to locate an intellectual network, or a like-minded legal researcher to identify a co-investigator in literacy.

在孤立的学科世界中，一位有公民意识的英语教授要找到一个知识网络，或者一位志同道合的法律研究人员要找到一位扫盲合作研究者并不总是那么容易。

In K-12 schools, teacher training and certification enforce disciplinary divides between English language arts (ELA) and social studies.

在 K-12 学校中，教师培训和认证强化了英语语言艺术 (ELA) 和社会研究之间的学科划分。

And the latter, which includes civics, often plays the part of second-class citizen.

而后者，包括公民事务，往往扮演二等公民的角色。

According to a 2018 report from the Center for American Progress, fewer than 10 states mandate a full year of U.S. government or civics instruction.

根据美国进步中心 2018 年的一份报告，只有不到 10 个州强制要求美国政府或公民接受一整年的教育。

A 2022 study performed by the RAND Corporation found few state or federal incentives to improve social studies learning in the face of high-stakes testing, with schools often singly focused on raising students’ reading and math scores.

兰德公司 2022 年进行的一项研究发现，面对高风险的测试，州或联邦几乎没有激励措施来改善社会研究学习，学校通常只专注于提高学生的阅读和数学成绩。

That doesn’t mean educators stay in their assigned disciplinary lanes.

这并不意味着教育工作者会留在指定的纪律范围内。

When I asked Anton Schulzki, a former interim executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCCS), why civic education doesn’t include ELA, he resisted the framing.

当我问国家社会研究委员会 (NCCS) 前临时执行主任安东·舒尔茨基 (Anton Schulzki) 为什么公民教育不包括 ELA 时，他拒绝接受这种框架。

“I give students Federalist 51 and ask them to annotate it, ask them what is the point of view and perspective, what is the argument?” Schulzki said.

“我给学生《联邦党人文集51》，让他们注释，问他们的观点和观点是什么，论据是什么？”舒尔茨基说道。

“That’s ELA.

“那是ELA。

Social studies teachers are ELA teachers.” Schulzki taught history, civics, and American government for 41 years in southern Colorado schools before stepping into a temporary leadership role at the professional association for social studies education.

社会研究老师是 ELA 老师。”舒尔茨基在科罗拉多州南部的学校教授历史、公民学和美国政府 41 年，之后在社会研究教育专业协会担任临时领导职务。

In 2013, the NCCS published the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework that identified ways to bring literacy instruction into the social studies classroom by focusing on such skills as how to read a chart or how to approach sources.

2013 年，NCCS 发布了大学、职业和公民生活 (C3) 框架，该框架确定了将识字教学引入社会研究课堂的方法，重点关注如何阅读图表或如何获取资源等技能。

The NCCS’s report was a response to Common Core State Standards, which required that social studies teachers share in literacy instruction duties.

NCCS 的报告是对共同核心国家标准的回应，该标准要求社会研究教师分担识字教学职责。

When Tonya Perry taught middle school ELA in the 1990s, long before Common Core, she wouldn’t necessarily have labeled herself a civics teacher.

当 Tonya Perry 在 20 世纪 90 年代教授中学 ELA 时，早在 Common Core 之前，她不一定会给自己贴上公民老师的标签。

Still, she wanted students to envision “themselves as active participants in this world of information and not just receivers.” Those aims, she told me, no matter what you call them, are finally about preparing students for democratic citizenship.

尽管如此，她还是希望学生们能够想象“自己是这个信息世界的积极参与者，而不仅仅是接收者”。她告诉我，这些目标，无论你怎么称呼它们，最终都是为了让学生为民主公民做好准备。

Perry shared a moving example, from her fifth year of teaching.

佩里分享了她教学第五年的一个感人的例子。

Following the death of a beloved coach at her urban Alabama school, Perry invited students to compose messages to the late coach in which they reflected on their time together.

在阿拉巴马州城市学校一位深受爱戴的教练去世后，佩里邀请学生给已故教练写留言，回顾他们在一起的时光。

Students were so engaged in the assignment that they compiled the letters into an anthology, sold copies for $1 each, and made a $300 donation to the coach’s family.

学生们对这项作业非常投入，他们将这些信件编成选集，每本以 1 美元的价格出售，并向教练的家人捐赠了 300 美元。

Through the experience, Perry reflected, students “saw themselves as citizens in the classroom, citizens in the school, citizens in the country.”

佩里反思道，通过这次经历，学生们“将自己视为课堂上的公民、学校中的公民、国家中的公民”。

An education scholar who is now provost and vice president of academic affairs at Miles College, an HBCU in Fairfield, Alabama, Perry also formerly served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English.

佩里是一位教育学者，现任阿拉巴马州费尔菲尔德 HBCU 迈尔斯学院教务长兼学术事务副院长，他还曾担任全国英语教师委员会主席。

Although today’s NCTE doesn’t necessarily refer to the 1987 meeting or the report the attendees produced, Perry explained, the belief that “language is a powerful tool that we help [students] hone” is central to the organization’s mission.

佩里解释说，尽管今天的 NCTE 不一定指 1987 年的会议或与会者制作的报告，但“语言是我们帮助[学生]磨练的强大工具”的信念是该组织使命的核心。

The NCTE originated from early-20th-century efforts to counter the influence of college-entrance examinations on the high school English curriculum, and secondary school teachers have always represented its largest constituency.

NCTE起源于20世纪初期，旨在抵制高考对高中英语课程影响的努力，而中学教师一直是其最大的支持者。

In 2022, with funding from the Educating for American Democracy initiative, the organization released “Reading, Writing, & Raising Voices: The Centrality of Literacy to Civic Education,” a guide to support ELA teachers and school leaders in activating the civic dimensions of language and literature instruction.

2022 年，在美国民主教育倡议的资助下，该组织发布了《阅读、写作和提高声音：识字对公民教育的核心》指南，以支持 ELA 教师和学校领导激活语言和文学教学的公民维度。

“English language arts is a foundational source of civic learning,” the document states, in words that could well have come from Democracy through Language 35 years earlier.

该文件指出，“英语语言艺术是公民学习的基本来源”，这些话很可能来自 35 年前的《通过语言进行民主》。

This resonance is not lost on Brook Thomas.

布鲁克·托马斯也没有忽视这种共鸣。

From his position as chair of the English department and as director of the Humanities Core Course at the University of California, Irvine, in the late 1990s, Thomas was mounting the case that reading and writing instruction can help students learn “how to think like citizens,” much like law schools claim to train graduates “how to think like lawyers.” Thomas saw the value of this disciplinary approach as distinct from the broader aim of teaching critical thinking.” Pretty much anyone can claim to teach critical thinking— “even the business people,” he quipped.

20 世纪 90 年代末，托马斯担任加州大学欧文分校英语系主任和人文核心课程主任，他一直在证明阅读和写作教学可以帮助学生学习“如何像公民一样思考”，就像法学院声称培养毕业生“如何像律师一样思考”一样。托马斯认为这种纪律方法的价值与教授批判性思维的更广泛目标不同。”几乎任何人都可以声称自己教授批判性思维——“甚至是商界人士，”他打趣道。

Yet Thomas often found the toughest audience in fellow English professors.

然而，托马斯经常发现英语教授同事是最难对付的听众。

“I had more success with that argument outside the department, rather than within it, because there in English, everyone had their own ideas about the function of literature,” Thomas, now an emeritus professor, told me.

“我在系外的论证上取得了更大的成功，而不是在系内，因为在英语中，每个人对文学的功能都有自己的想法，”现在是名誉教授的托马斯告诉我。

By the time I finished my PhD in English in 2012, Thomas was renowned for his books on law and literature, a field he helped to create.

2012 年，当我完成英语博士学位时，托马斯因其有关法律和文学的书籍而闻名，这是他帮助创建的一个领域。

Later I discovered that he also authored the lesser-known Civic Myths .

后来我发现他还创作了鲜为人知的《公民神话》。

The 2007 study made the case for treating American literary works as resources for civic education.

2007 年的研究提出了将美国文学作品视为公民教育资源的理由。

Civic Myths sprung in part from Thomas’s teaching of China Men , Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1980 book about the Chinese-American experience.

《公民神话》部分源于托马斯的《中国男人》一书，这是玛克辛·洪·金斯顿 1980 年出版的关于美籍华人经历的书。

“Not every literature class should be civic education,” Thomas clarified.

“并不是每门文学课都应该是公民教育，”托马斯澄清道。

“But there are areas of opportunity.” After we spoke, Thomas mailed me eight pages of handwritten notes outlining ways that college-level literature and composition courses can support students’ development as citizens.

“但也有机会的领域。”我们交谈后，托马斯给我寄了八页手写笔记，概述了大学水平的文学和作文课程如何支持学生作为公民的发展。

Among the suggestions: asking them to think closely about the meaning of words, having them adjudicate the validity of various arguments, and having them debate difficult questions in a civil manner.

建议包括：要求他们仔细思考词语的含义，让他们判断各种论点的有效性，并让他们以文明的方式辩论难题。

Scholarly interest in democracy and citizenship hasn’t disappeared among college English professors since Thomas’s Civic Myths appeared almost two decades ago.

自从托马斯的《公民神话》近二十年前出现以来，大学英语教授对民主和公民权的学术兴趣并没有消失。

But according to Andrew Newman, who teaches American literature at Stony Brook University (and who studied with Thomas while completing his PhD at Irvine), recent work is “academicizing” the topics, rather than exploring in a more general and practical way what changes could be implemented in the classroom.

但根据在石溪大学教授美国文学的安德鲁·纽曼（在欧文完成博士学位期间与托马斯一起学习）的说法，最近的工作是将这些主题“学术化”，而不是以更普遍和更实际的方式探索可以在课堂上实施哪些改变。

Through NEH professional development seminars that explore the relationship between ELA and citizenship education, Newman has collaborated extensively with high school English teachers, and he’s currently writing a book on the history of the high school canon.

通过 NEH 专业发展研讨会探讨 ELA 和公民教育之间的关系，纽曼与高中英语教师进行了广泛的合作，目前他正在撰写一本关于高中经典历史的书。

Though high schoolers today are as likely as their parents were to encounter To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby , students are also less likely to read complete works, given the shift to excerpts and informational texts in many state standards.

尽管今天的高中生和他们的父母一样有可能读到《杀死一只知更鸟》和《了不起的盖茨比》，但考虑到许多州标准转向摘录和信息性文本，学生阅读完整作品的可能性也较小。

Newman doesn’t want to return to an era when every student read a list of great books.

纽曼不想回到每个学生都阅读一系列好书的时代。

But he added, “I do believe that reading whole books, sharing them with others, and arguing about their significance foster capacities for citizenship and what earlier scholars have called the ‘social imagination.’”

但他补充道，“我确实相信，阅读整本书、与他人分享并讨论其重要性可以培养公民能力以及早期学者所说的‘社会想象力’。”

As they walked the banks of the Wye River between meals and meetings, the Coalition Conference participants might have smelled the smoke rising from the canon wars.

当联盟会议的与会者在用餐和开会间隙沿着瓦伊河畔散步时，他们可能已经闻到了正典战争中升起的硝烟的味道。

Although E.

虽然E.

D.

D .

Hirsch never called for a standardized set of texts that everyone must read, for many attendees, his emphasis on a singular national culture grated against the pluralist campaign to teach more works by women and writers of color.

赫希从未要求制定一套每个人都必须阅读的标准化文本，对许多与会者来说，他对单一民族文化的强调与教授更多女性和有色人种作家作品的多元化运动相冲突。

“We can’t give you any list without creating the whole dynamic we are trying to fight,” Elbow remarked in his 1990 book about the conference, conveying the majority sentiment.

Elbow 在他 1990 年出版的关于这次会议的书中这样评论道：“如果没有造成我们正在努力对抗的整个动态，我们就无法给你任何清单。”这句话传达了大多数人的情绪。

So, the teachers avoided the canon altogether.

因此，老师们完全回避了正典。

Their report affirmed that students should “read widely in both traditional literature and literature that reflects the diversity of American culture.” But it remained silent on what works such reading might include.

他们的报告确认学生应该“广泛阅读传统文学和反映美国文化多样性的文学”。但它对此类阅读可能包括哪些作品保持沉默。

It’s easy to understand why.

原因很容易理解。

The teachers had bonded around their shared identity as educators in the language arts , not literature ; centering the contentious canon question could have splintered that solidarity.

老师们的共同身份是语言艺术教育者，而不是文学教育者。以有争议的正典问题为中心可能会破坏这种团结。

That same summer of 1987, at the Institute on Writing, Thinking, and Citizenship Education held at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Sandra Stotsky was weaving a different story about the civic ends of literature and language learning.

1987 年的同一个夏天，在哈佛大学教育研究生院举办的写作、思维和公民教育研究所上，桑德拉·斯托茨基编织了一个关于文学和语言学习的公民目的的不同故事。

Stotsky earned her education doctorate from Harvard in 1976 and later served as senior associate commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education.

斯托茨基 1976 年在哈佛大学获得教育学博士学位，后来担任马萨诸塞州教育部高级副专员。

She believed that ELA teachers were civic educators and that they ought to teach canonical texts.

她认为 ELA 教师是公民教育者，他们应该教授规范文本。

In a 1997 paper on the “anti-civic forces now at work” in literature curricula, Stotsky decried the disappearance of “the experiences of European ethnic groups” from the expanding canon.

在 1997 年一篇关于文学课程中“反公民力量正在发挥作用”的论文中，斯托茨基谴责“欧洲少数民族的经历”从不断扩大的经典中消失。

“Selections abound in classrooms today that portray members of racial minority groups as saints or as victims of white oppression,” Stotsky wrote in the 1997 paper, referring to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony .

斯托茨基在 1997 年的论文中写道：“今天的课堂上，有很多选择将少数族裔群体的成员描绘成圣人或白人压迫的受害者。”他指的是托妮·莫里森 (Toni Morrison) 的《最蓝的眼睛》(The Bluest Eye) 和莱斯利·马蒙·西尔科 (Leslie Marmon Silko) 的《仪式》。

(Interview requests sent to two publicly available email addresses for Stotsky, who is now in her 90s, went unanswered).

（向现年 90 多岁的斯托茨基的两个公开电子邮件地址发送采访请求，但没有得到答复）。

Maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that almost everyone I interviewed hesitated when asked about the role of the canon or specific reading lists in English education today.

当被问及经典或特定阅读清单在当今英语教育中的作用时，我采访的几乎每个人都犹豫不决，也许这并不奇怪。

The reasons varied.

原因各不相同。

For K-12 educators, corporate textbooks and prescribed standards mean that text selection is often made for them; pedagogical approaches like student reading clubs, or thematic inquiry around a set of books, also deemphasize a great-works mentality.

对于K-12教育工作者来说，企业教科书和规定的标准意味着文本选择通常是为他们制定的；学生阅读俱乐部或围绕一套书籍进行主题探究等教学方法也淡化了伟大作品的心态。

For college literature teachers, meanwhile, the canon debate feels slightly less urgent than in decades past.

与此同时，对于大学文学教师来说，关于经典的争论感觉比过去几十年稍微不那么紧迫了。

Meanwhile, faculty members who teach composition, who have long struggled to establish their discipline as distinct from English literature and theory, never cathected to the canon as a central concern.

与此同时，教授作曲的教师们长期以来一直努力将自己的学科与英国文学和理论区分开来，但他们从未将正典作为核心关注点。

Still, questions—and controversies—about content endure.

尽管如此，关于内容的问题和争议仍然存在。

The Supreme Court’s June 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v.

最高法院 2025 年 6 月对 Mahmoud v. 案的裁决

Taylor, affirming the religious rights of a group of Maryland public school parents to opt their children out of certain instructional content, turned in part on the justices’ reading of LGBTQ+ storybooks in the ELA curriculum.

泰勒确认马里兰州公立学校的一群家长有宗教权利，可以选择让自己的孩子不参加某些教学内容，部分原因是法官们在 ELA 课程中阅读 LGBTQ+ 故事书。

Morrison’s name surfaced again in a Texas State Legislature hearing about Senate Bill 13, a law passed last summer that prohibits library material containing “indecent content.” And Hirsch carries on the cultural literacy campaign through his nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, whose curriculum emphasizes “citizenship readiness,” and “the ability to speak with, listen to, and respect different perspectives of people from across this country.” Readings included in the Core Knowledge Foundation’s ELA curriculum range from Homer’s Iliad to Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming .

莫里森的名字在得克萨斯州立法机构关于参议院第 13 号法案的听证会上再次出现，该法案于去年夏天通过，禁止图书馆资料包含“不雅内容”。赫希通过他的非营利性核心知识基金会开展文化素养运动，该基金会的课程强调“公民准备”以及“与全国人民交谈、倾听和尊重不同观点的能力”。核心知识基金会 ELA 课程中包含的读物包括荷马的《伊利亚特》和杰奎琳·伍德森的《布朗女孩的梦》。

Controversial or not, texts deserve a central place in civic education in the United States, where the “idea of citizen as interpreter is very, very deep,” Roosevelt Montás told me.

无论是否有争议，文本都应该在美国的公民教育中占据核心地位，罗斯福·蒙塔斯告诉我，“公民作为解释者的观念非常非常深刻”。

Montás, who was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to Queens, New York, two days after his 12th birthday, authored the 2021 book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation .

蒙塔斯出生于多米尼加共和国，12 岁生日两天后搬到纽约皇后区，他于 2021 年撰写了《拯救苏格拉底：伟大的书籍如何改变我的生活以及它们为何对新一代如此重要》一书。

“Any form of teaching, particularly humanistic teaching, runs the risk of being co-opted by an ideological agenda,” Montás said.

蒙塔斯说：“任何形式的教学，尤其是人文主义教学，都有被意识形态议程所利用的风险。”

“You have to be on the alert for that.” Keeping watch means approaching a foundational text like the U.S. Constitution with a spirit of inquiry that encourages students to think in nuanced ways, continued Montás, who, after a long career at Columbia University, began as the Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College last July.

“你必须对此保持警惕。”蒙塔斯继续说道，“保持关注意味着以探究的精神学习美国宪法等基础文本，鼓励学生以细致入微的方式思考。”

“Is it a document that establishes and solidifies slavery in America?

“这是一份在美国建立和巩固奴隶制的文件吗？

Or is it a document that put slavery on the path to its ultimate extinction?”

或者它是一份将奴隶制推向最终灭绝之路的文件？”

“Liberal education lives in the questions, not in the answers,” he said.

“通识教育存在于问题中，而不是答案中，”他说。

“And civic education must be the same way.”

“公民教育也必须如此。”

When I started asking Gregory Ulmer questions about the English Coalition Conference more than two years ago now, the retired University of Florida professor didn’t cite the “democracy through language” theme or the report bearing that name as the most vibrant memories of the gathering.

两年多前，当我开始向格雷戈里·乌尔默询问有关英语联盟会议的问题时，这位退休的佛罗里达大学教授并没有引用“通过语言实现民主”主题或以该名称命名的报告作为这次聚会最生动的记忆。

What stood out to him was the very democratic coming together of primary, secondary, and tertiary educators who might otherwise never have met.

对他来说最引人注目的是小学、中学和高等教育工作者非常民主地聚集在一起，否则他们可能永远不会见面。

For Annie Abrams, too, the democratic coalition is the point.

对于安妮·艾布拉姆斯来说，民主联盟也是重点。

Abrams has inhabited two different worlds of English education that sometimes feel like different planets.

艾布拉姆斯生活在两个不同的英语教育世界中，有时感觉就像两个不同的星球。

She holds an English PhD, with a focus on American literature, from New York University and has been teaching English in the city’s public schools since 2016.

她拥有纽约大学英语博士学位，主修美国文学，自 2016 年以来一直在该市的公立学校教授英语。

“One of the reasons I became a public school teacher is that I spent so long reading about theories of American democracy, and I wanted to practice American democracy,” Abrams told me during a phone call, as the fifth-period bell rang in the background.

“我成为一名公立学校教师的原因之一是，我花了很长时间阅读美国民主理论，并且我想实践美国民主，”艾布拉姆斯在电话中告诉我，背景音乐响起了第五节课的铃声。

Abrams sees her English classroom as a component of students’ civic education, and she hopes that college faculty members think about their work in the same way.

艾布拉姆斯将她的英语课堂视为学生公民教育的一部分，她希望大学教师以同样的方式思考他们的工作。

But she wonders if forcing ELA and civic education to walk the hallway in single file ought to be the goal.

但她想知道强迫 ELA 和公民教育在走廊上排成一列是否应该成为目标。

“Instead of trying to fit ELA into the civic ed framework, maybe there’s an opportunity to be deliberate about literature’s role in public schools,” said Abrams, whose 2023 book Shortchanged asserts that the Advanced Placement curriculum has veered from its early democratic ambitions into an educationally impoverished testing regime.

艾布拉姆斯说：“与其试图将 ELA 融入公民教育框架，也许我们有机会认真思考文学在公立学校中的作用。”他在 2023 年出版的著作《Shorchanged》中断言，大学先修课程已从其早期的民主雄心转向教育贫困的测试制度。

Abrams wants students to think about the books she assigns as engines for democratic possibility.

艾布拉姆斯希望学生们思考她指定的作为民主可能性引擎的书籍。

Henry David Thoreau kept a commonplace book to record his reading and ruminations; Abrams invites her students to do the same.

亨利·大卫·梭罗保留了一本普通的书来记录他的阅读和思考。艾布拉姆斯邀请她的学生也这样做。

It’s not about using books for some determined end but about learning from their “traditions and habits of mind,” she said.

她说，这不是为了某种确定的目的而使用书籍，而是从他们的“传统和思维习惯”中学习。

From his administrative post in the Somerset Hills School District in suburban Bernardsville, New Jersey, Michael Catelli likewise wonders about what it might mean to bring civics and English together in a public school system already stretched for time and money.

迈克尔·卡泰利 (Michael Catelli) 在新泽西州伯纳兹维尔郊区的萨默塞特山学区担任行政职务，他同样想知道，在时间和金钱都已经捉襟见肘的公立学校系统中，将公民学和英语结合起来可能意味着什么。

“It would sort of be hard for ELA teachers at the middle and high school level to fit their work into the ‘how-the-bill-becomes-a-law’ frame of civics,” he told me.

“对于初中和高中水平的 ELA 教师来说，将他们的工作融入到‘法案如何成为法律’的公民框架中有些困难，”他告诉我。

The former social studies instructor does not doubt that “ELA is a natural partner for lived civics, for a more expansive view of civics.” Earlier in his career, at another New Jersey school, Catelli co-taught an American studies course that blended history with literature.

这位前社会研究讲师毫不怀疑“ELA 是生活公民的天然伙伴，可以让我们对公民有更广阔的视野。”在他职业生涯的早期，卡泰利在新泽西州的另一所学校共同教授了一门将历史与文学融为一体的美国研究课程。

He attributed better student engagement and richer discussions about concepts like personal liberties and civic rights to the interdisciplinary approach.

他将更好的学生参与度和对个人自由和公民权利等概念的更丰富的讨论归功于跨学科方法。

Still, Catelli, who’s writing a dissertation about how teachers and administrators can work together to support the best civic education experience for students, isn’t sure that simply adding civics standards to ELA courses will do much to help matters.

尽管如此，卡泰利正在撰写一篇关于教师和管理人员如何共同努力为学生提供最佳公民教育体验的论文，她不确定简单地将公民标准添加到 ELA 课程中是否能起到很大帮助作用。

Instead, he imagines a future world in which guidelines for civic education might cut across the entire school curriculum, not housed under one subject or discipline but touching, and maybe transforming, all of them.

相反，他想象了一个未来的世界，在这个世界中，公民教育的指导方针可能会贯穿整个学校课程，不再局限于某一学科或学科，而是触及甚至可能改变所有这些学科或学科。

For now, however, there aren’t enough minutes in the day, Catelli said, and overworked teachers naturally expend their energy on reading and math instruction, the subjects that students are tested on and that consequently attract the resources of time and money.

然而，卡泰利说，目前一天中的时间不够，过度劳累的老师自然会把精力花在阅读和数学教学上，这些科目是对学生进行测试的，因此会吸引时间和金钱资源。

“Literacy and numeracy are king.”

“识字和算数才是王道。”