《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体意见与信念的间接因素》第15节
Were this education merely useless, one might confine one's self to expressing compassion for the unhappy children who, instead of making needful studies at the primary school, are instructed in the genealogy of the sons of Clotaire, the conflicts between Neustria and Austrasia, or zoological classifications. But the system presents a far more serious danger. It gives those who have been submitted to it a violent dislike to the state of life in which they were born, and an intense desire to escape from it. The working man no longer wishes to remain a working man, or the peasant to continue a peasant, while the most humble members of the middle classes admit of no possible career for their sons except that of State-paid functionaries. Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative. At the bottom of the social ladder the system creates an army of proletarians discontented with their lot and always ready to revolt, while at the summit it brings into being a frivolous bourgeoisie, at once sceptical and credulous, having a superstitious confidence in the State, whom it regards as a sort of Providence, but without forgetting to display towards it a ceaseless hostility, always laying its own faults to the door of the Government, and incapable of the least enterprise without the intervention of the authorities.
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段里把矛头从教育内容的空洞转向教育制度造成的社会后果，他的论证逻辑是递进的：光是无用倒也罢了，真正可怕的是这套拉丁式的书本教育制造了一整个阶层的怨气。他举出的是当时法国公立学校的具体现实，小学生被要求死记克洛泰尔诸子的谱系、中世纪的纽斯特里亚与奥斯特拉西亚冲突、或者动物学分类，这些知识对日常生活毫无用处。这样的教育不能给学生任何实际谋生技能，却在…