#HonorsProgram#養成閱讀習慣#VIS菁英班

【春節連假你讀了什麼書？】

李瑞中教授給菁英班學生出的寒假作業是：讀一本有博士學位（Ph.D., M.D. or J.D./S.J.D.）作者的專書。

同學們這週在課堂上報告自己寒假讀的書，有同學讀了哈佛特聘教授Michèle Lamont的“The Dignity of Working Men“，Lamont教授是李瑞中教授恩師的好朋友，沒想到再次聽到她的名字竟是從高中生的口中；李瑞中教授問學生是如何得知這位學者與她的書，學生說他只是很自然地到Harvard University Press（哈佛大學出版社）的網站上翻看一本本的書，直到找到這本最吸引他的書……。

大部分的人會認為，很多事情必須達到一定歲數才做得來，就連教育者也常會以年紀評估能力。事實上，不要小看孩子們，引發他們的興趣，為他們推開一扇門，他們會自己走進去，開展屬於他們的天地。

以下是菁英班同學們選讀的書單，領域遍佈經濟學、社會學、心理學 與 自然科學，邀請大家一同養成閱讀的好習慣。

而今天要介紹的是：Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. 

【 Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. 】

A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People).

As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass.

Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it.

“Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark….He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America….Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” (The New York Times).