The Psychological Solution-6

Yet surely (so runs the argument, Pascal-like, of the Phædo) it will do us no harm to believe, and it may do us and our children immeasurable good.

For we are likely to have trouble with these children of ours if we undertake to explain and justify everything to their simple minds.

We shall have an especially hard time when they arrive at the age of twenty, and face the first scrutiny and test of what they have learned in all their years of equal education.

Then will come a ruthless weeding out; the Great Elimination, we might call it.

That test will be no mere academic examination;

it will be practical as well as theoretical: "there shall also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for them".

prescribe，规定

Every kind of ability will have a chance to show itself, and every sort of stupidity will be hunted out into the light.

Those who fail will be assigned to the economic work of the nation; they will be business men, and clerks, and factory workers, and farmers.

The test will be impartial and impersonal;

impersonal，没有人为干预的

whether one is to be a farmer or a philosopher will be determined not by monopolized opportunity or nepotic favoritism;

the selection will be more democratic than democracy.

[ 00’30” ] Pascal (帕斯卡尔，法国哲学家，数学家，物理学家，其在数学物理方面成就突出。国际单位制中压力的单位帕[斯卡]是以其姓氏命名的单位。其哲学思想可概括为：“人是一根能够思想的苇草”。)

[ 00’52” ] Phædo (斐多篇，柏拉图的著作之一，通过描写苏格拉底在服毒之前，与他的一群朋友和学生的对话中来阐述作者的理念论观点。)

[ 03’08” ] scrutiny (考核)

[ 03’44” ] ruthless (无情的)

[ 03’50” ] weed out (淘汰)

[ 04’46” ] toil (辛苦)

[ 06’38” ] impartial (中立的)

[ 06’40” ] impersonal (没有人为干预的)

[ 07’37” ] nepotic (任人唯亲的)