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Videos of American Professors Strike a
Chord in China
美国教授的视频课在中国引起共鸣
By Raymond Li 慎 益/译注
ale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan, who
looks somewhat nerdy1, has been affectionately
called “Professor Desk” by his mainland fans ever
since they saw him in a videotaped lecture sitting
cross-legged on a lecture desk, talking about death.
That is a subject few professors on the mainland lec-
ture about, and the video has drawn hundreds of thou-
sands of viewers.
One of Kagan’s fans is Yan Lu, a journalist from
Liuyang, Hunan, who said the death lecture caught her
interest because Chinese people hardly discuss the
subject in public, and, as a reporter, she wanted to
make sense of how people commit suicide. But she
said that a video lecture course on positive psychology
by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar of Harvard University had im-
pressed her most, as it helped her “see life as not one
dichotomy2 of being happy or being unhappy, but be-
ing happier”.
Yan, who has set up an online study group via
the instant message service QQ to share her studies
with up to 200 enthusiasts, said that what struck
her most in watching the open course videos was
the way the professors interacted with the students.
“Most of the time, you don’t feel they are teachers,
上去有点像书呆子的耶鲁
大学哲学教授 S·Kagan 被
中国大陆的粉丝称为“课桌教授”，
因他们在视频讲座中见他盘腿坐
在课桌上讲死亡。 这种课程大陆没
几个教授会讲，因此该视频吸引了
数十万观众。
Kagan 的粉丝之一严路（音）是
湖南浏阳的记者，她说对死亡讲座
很感兴趣，因中国人很少在公众场
合讨论这种话题。 作为一个记者她
想理解人为何自杀。 不过她说哈佛
大学 T·Ben-Shahar 博士的积极心
理学视频讲座给她印象最深，因为
它帮助她“不要用幸福或不幸福的
二分法来看待生活，而是怎样使幸
福多一些”。
Y 看
Notes: 1. nerdy [＇n藜蘼di] 书呆子般的，蠢的。 2. dichotomy [dai＇k蘅t藜mi] 两分，二分法。
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3. rote memorization 死记硬背。
4. garner [＇ga蘼n藜] 取得，获得。
5. harbour [＇ha蘼b藜] 藏匿，包含。
but someone who wants to share something with you
and someone who is more responsive to questions,” she
said. “Teachers here don’t do that, because they are too
serious and so eager to push their points of view.”
Open courses from Western universities have
become wildly popular since last year, as a con-
trast with what some analysts see as a decline in
the teaching quality of Chinese universities. They
criticise mainland professors for putting ideological
teaching and rote memorization3 ahead of teaching
independent thinking.
Besides Kagan’s and Ben-Shahar’s lectures,
the open course on justice by Harvard Professor
Michael Sandel is a favourite among Chinese
viewers, most of whom are professionals and
students. Ben-Shahar’s positive psychology
course, which was translated as “happiness”
in Chinese, garnered4 million viewers by
the end of April since it was uploaded to the
NetEase website in November, according to
Jerry Zhang, deputy chief editor of NetEase,
who oversees an open course project for
NetEase.
One viewer left a comment after seeing
Sandel’s justice course saying that regardless
of any political and ideological bias some of
the courses could harbour5, people had to ad-
mit that such courses were the best examples
of teachers “passing on moral norms, teaching
know-how and answering queries”. “They lead
us to think about such core issues as justice,
life and happiness,” the post said.
That goes to the heart of the issue, ac-
严路通过实时信息服务 QQ 成
立了在线学习小组， 与多达 200 个
热心者分享学习心得。她说，视频课
最打动她的是教授与学生之间的互
动。 “大多数时间
你感觉不到他们
是老师， 而是一
个想与你分享某
种东西的人 ，乐
于 回 答 问 题 的
人。 可中国老师
不这样， 他们太
严肃， 急于把自
己的观点强加给你。 ”
从去年开始西方大学的公开课就火起
来， 这与某些分析家认为的中国大学教学
质量下降形成鲜明对照。 他们批评大陆的
教授强调意识形态教育和死记硬背， 忽视
独立思考。
除了 Kagan 和 Ben-Shahar， 哈佛教授
M·Sandel 关于正义的公开课也很受中国观
众欢迎，其中多数是专业人士和学生。 Jerry
Zhang是网易负责公开课项目的副总编，他
说，Ben-Shahar 的积极心理学课程中文译
为“幸福”，去年 11 月网易上载后，到今年 4
月底已吸引了 270万观众。
一名观众看了 Sandel 的正义课程后评
论说， 不考虑某些课程可能含有政治和意
识形态偏见， 人们不得不承认这样的课程
是老师“传道、授业、解惑”的最佳榜样。 这
个网上帖子说：“他们引导我们思考正义、
生活和幸福等核心问题。 ”
深圳南方科技大学创校校长朱清时教
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cording to Professor Zhu Qingshi, an outspoken educa-
tor and founding president of the South University of
Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen. In an
earlier interview, Zhu said the growing popularity of
open courses from world-renowned universities would
certainly provoke some soul-searching6 among mainland
universities. He said that the world’s top universities
started introducing the open-course initiative7 in the
1980s because they were confident of the material they
could offer and they wanted public feedback to help
boost the quality of their teaching. Not many mainland
universities would dare to in-
troduce similar initiatives,
because they did not have a
regime8 for course quality
control in place9, he said. “If
they did, people could know
for sure how lousy10 the
schools are,” he said.
Zhang Yangting, a sea-
wall engineer from Hangzhou,
Zhejiang, who has followed Ben-Shahar’s entire course
on positive psychology, said he was impressed when
Yale University Professor Craig Wright, in one lecture
of his “listening to music” course, pressed the stop but-
ton one-third through a class to observe copyright. “Our
professors couldn’t care less,” said Zhang, who spent
US$6 to buy an Internet domain name11, ,
which is the literal translation of “open courses”, for a
free bulletin-board service to share his study tips with
like-minded peers. They have designed a virtual class-
授是直言不讳的教育家，在他看来
这触及到核心问题。在较早的一次
采访中，朱说世界知名大学的公开
课越来越受欢迎，这必然会在中国
大陆大学中引发深思。 他说，这些
世界顶尖大学在 20 世纪 80 年代
就开始提供公开课，因为他们对所
讲内容很自信，想得到公众反馈以
提高教学质量。敢于采取相似行动
的大陆大学并不多，因为没有恰当
的课程质量控制体制。他说：“如果
他们这样
做， 人们
就肯定明
白这些学
校多么没
有价值。
张阳
亭（音）是
浙江杭州
一位海堤
工程师，他听完 Ben-Shahar 积极心
理学的全部课程。 他说，为尊重版
权，耶鲁大学教授 C·Wright 在讲
“音乐欣赏”课时，一节课中有三分
之一的音乐不听，对此他印象十分
深刻 。 “中国教授对此根本不在
乎，” 张说。 他花 6 美元买了一个
的因特网域名 （即
“公开课”的直译），得到一个免费
公告牌与志趣相投的同伴分享学
6. soul-searching 深思，反省。
7. initiative [i＇ni蘩i藜tiv] 积极行动。
8. regime [rei＇廾i蘼m] 体制。
9. in place 在适当位置，适当。
10. lousy [＇lauzi] 低级的，无价值的。
11. domain name 域名。
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room setting, with roll calls12 and minitests and even
homework to encourage one another.
Since the lectures are in English, Chinese sub-
titles are necessary, and there are groups who do
that free of charge. Open courses began to reach a
wider audience on the mainland after a unit of
YYeTs13, one of the four biggest volun-
teer television drama and film transcrip-
tion14 teams on the mainland, created
subtitles for Sandel’s justice lecture, to
the delight of thousands of Chinese stu-
dents and professionals, according to
Liang Liang , who leads YYeTs. He said
his team of about 200 volunteers had
completed translating and subtitling 300
lectures, and the four transcription teams had fin-
ished production of 600 lectures.
The courses on justice and death and another
on game theory15 are among the most popular.
The open-courses phenomenon began to attract
attention from a wider community, and NetEase, one
of three commercially run Internet portals on the
mainland, jumped in16 for its piece of open-course
fever in November after a six-month preparation, ac-
cording to Jerry Zhang, the NetEase editor. He said
the open-course transcription initiative at NetEase
was non-profit, as NetEase founder Ding Lei has in-
sisted, because he simply wants to help remove the
language barrier between the Chinese audience and
the premium17 courses from renowned universities.
NetEase signed an agreement in January with
习心得。 为互相鼓励，他们设计了虚
拟教室，实行点名，安排小型考试，甚
至布置家庭作业。
由于这些讲座是英语，就需要中
文字幕，因此有一些组织免费做这工
作。 一个名叫“美剧字幕组”的组织使
公开课在大陆
赢得了更多观
众，这是大陆翻
译影视剧四大
志愿组织之一。
该组织负责人
亮亮（音）说，他
们为 Sandel 的
正义课翻译了
字幕，数千名中国学生和专业人士对
此非常高兴。 他说他的约 200名志愿
者的团队完成了 300 门课程的翻译
和加字幕的工作，四个团队共完成了
600 门课程的译制。
关于正义、死亡的课程以及另一
门博弈论课程最受欢迎。
网易编辑 Jerry Zhang 说，公开课
现象开始吸引更广泛社会群体的注
意，经过六个月的准备，大陆商业运
行的三大因特网门户网站之一的网
易去年 11 月加入了公开课的热潮。
他说， 由于网易创始人丁磊的坚持，
网易的公开课活动是非赢利的，因丁
磊只是想帮助中国观众排除与著名
大学优质课程之间的语言障碍。
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12. roll call 点名。
13. YYeTs 美剧字幕组，YY 的含义为
“影音”，YY 倒过来即中文的“人
人”，eTs 指 English TV Show。
14. transcription 改编，转写。
15. game theory 博弈论, 对策论。
16. jump in 投入，欣然参加。
17. premium [＇pri蘼mi藜m] 质量或价值极高的。
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Open Courseware Consortium18 or OCWC, which bands
together more than 200 universities and associated or-
ganisations including Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, promoting open courses. Zhang
said that through its co-operation with OCWC, they
had secured access to more than 14,000 lectures and
transcribed about 800 of them. He said they had made
all 10,000 courses available online and allowed view-
ers to vote and give priority of transcription to those
receiving most votes, and they had also introduced a
Wikipedia-inspired correction mechanism for viewers.
Unlike the viewership pattern for American tele-
vision dramas dubbed19 into Chinese, audience alle-
giance20 for the open courses holds steady. Astro-
physics by Yale Professor Charles Bailyn, a subject
with limited appeal, had garnered nearly 10,000 view-
ers, and almost all of them stayed through to the latest
unit in the course, Zhang said.
He admitted applying a certain degree of censor-
ship21 to uphold “political, moral and cultural correct-
ness” and avoid “radical views”, but it was not a big
issue for NetEase, Zhang said, because most of the
subjects OCWC had provided were in line with22 uni-
versal values anyway.
Zhang said he was personally enlightened when
he first came across Sandel’s justice lecture — a criti-
cal take on the issues of justice, equality and basic
human rights as well as some of the moral issues they
involve. “It’s nothing like what we’ve been taught
from our childhood,” he said.
From South China Morning Post, May 7, 2011
今年 1 月，网易同公开课联盟
（OCWC）签署了协议以促进公开课
的传播。 公开课联盟包括哈佛、耶
鲁、麻省理工学院等 200 多所大学
和相关组织。 Zhang说，通过与公开
课联盟的合作，获得了 14000 多个
讲座，翻译了其中约 800 个。 总共
有 10000 个讲座可在网易在线观
看，观众可投票，对得票最多的优
先翻译。 他们还为观众引入了像维
基百科那样的纠错机制。
Zhang 说， 与看汉语配音的美
国电视剧的观众群不同，公开课观
众的忠诚度很稳定。 耶鲁大学教授
C·Bailyn 的天体物理学课吸引力
有限，观众近 1 万人，但几乎所有
人都听完了该课程最后一单元。
他承认有某种程度的审查以
确保 “政治、 道德和文化的正确
性”，以避免“激进观点”，但他说这
对网易不是大问题，因公开课联盟
提供的大多数课程不管怎么看都
与普世价值相符。
Zhang说， 首次看 Sandel 的正
义课时他本人受到很大启发，该讲
座批判性地看待正义、平等和基本
人权，还谈到与其有关的某些道德
问题。 “这同我们从小受的教育完
全不同。 ”
大学
英语
18. consortium [k藜n＇s蘅蘼ti藜m] 协会，联盟。
19. dub 配音。
20. allegiance [藜＇li蘼d廾藜ns] 忠贞，效忠。
21. censorship 审查制度。
22. in line with 与……一致。
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