The disadvantages of an elite education精英教育的弊端

The disadvantages of an elite education

精英教育的弊端

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds,not careers.

我们最好的大学已经忘记了他们存在的原因是为了培养人才，而不是职业。

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35 .I’d just bought a house,the pipes needed fixing,and the plumber was standing in my kitchen.There he was,a short guy with a goatee and a thick Boston accent,and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him.So alien was his experience to me,so unguessable his values,so mysterious his very language,that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.with fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees,I could carry on conversations with people from other countries,in other languages,but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

直到35岁左右，我才意识到我的教育可能有一些漏洞。我刚买了一栋房子，水管需要修理，水管工就站在我的厨房里。他站在那里，一个留着山羊胡子和浓重波士顿口音的矮个子男人，我突然知道我根本不知道该对他这样的人说什么。他的经历对我来说是如此陌生，他的价值观是如此难以猜测，他的语言是如此神秘，以至于我无法在他开始工作之前成功地与他进行几分钟的闲聊。

It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation ,because the last thing an lite education will teach you is its own inadequacy.As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me,elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there,and for what being there can do for them.The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable.You learn to think,at least in certain ways,and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards.To consider that while some opportunities are being created,others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed ,others are being crippled is,within this context,not only outrageous but inconceivable.

这并不奇怪，我花了这么长时间才发现我受教育的程度，因为精英教育最不会教你的是它自己的不足。正如在耶鲁大学和哥伦比亚大学的二十多年告诉我，精英大学无情地鼓励他们的学生为自己在那里，以及在那里能为他们做什么而自鸣得意。你学会了思考，至少在某些方面，你建立了必要的联系，使你进入一个富有社会最珍视的回报的生活。想象一下，在一些机会被创造的同时，其他的机会被取消，在发展一些能力的同时，其他的能力被削弱，这种情况不仅是离谱的，而且是不可想象的。

The first disadvantage of an elite education ,as I learned in my kitchen that day,is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity,but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race.with respect to class ,these schools are largely homogeneous .visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white business people and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black,Asian ,and Latino business people and professionals.At the same time,because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes,they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees,Al Gore and John Kerry:one each from Harvard and Yale,both earnest decent,intelligent men,both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

正如我那天在厨房里学到的那样，精英教育的第一个缺点是，它使你无法与那些和你不一样的人交谈。精英学校以其多样性为荣，但这种多样性几乎完全是种族和民族的问题。在阶级方面，这些学校基本上是同质的。访问我们伟大国家的任何精英校园，你可以看到白人商人和专业人士的孩子与黑人、亚洲和拉丁裔商人和专业人士的孩子一起学习和玩耍的温馨场面。同时，由于这些学校倾向于培养自由主义态度，他们的学生处于一种矛盾的境地，既想代表工人阶级进行宣传，又无法与工人阶级的任何人进行简单的对话。见证最近的两位民主党总统提名人，阿尔-戈尔和约翰-克里：各有一位来自哈佛和耶鲁，都是认真正派的聪明人，都完全没有能力与广大选民沟通。

But it isn’t just a matter of class.My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to,regardless of their class.I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me.We were the best and brightest,as these places love to say,and everyone else was,well,something else:less good,less bright.I learned to give that little nod of understanding,that slightly sympathetic “oh”,when people told me they went to a less prestigious college .I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite school ,often precisely for reasons for class.I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.

但这不仅仅是一个阶级问题。我所受的教育让我相信，没有上过常春藤联盟或同等学校的人不值得交谈，无论他们的阶级如何。我得到的明确信息是，这样的人在我之下。我们是最好和最聪明的，正如这些地方喜欢说的那样，其他人是，嗯，其他的东西：不那么好，不那么聪明。我学会了当人们告诉我他们上了一所不那么有名的大学时，我就点点头表示理解，略带同情地 "哦 "一声。我从来没有了解到有一些聪明人不上名校，往往正是因为阶级原因。

The second disadvantage ,implicit in what I’ve been saying ,is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.Getting to an elite college,being at an elite college,and going on from an elite college-all involve numerical rankings:SAT,GPA,GRE.You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers.They come to signify not only your fate,but your identity;not only you identity,but your value.It’s been said what those tests really measures is your ability to take tests,but even if they measure something real,it is only a small slice of the real.The problem begins when students are encouraged to forger this truth,when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense.

第二个缺点，隐含在我所说的内容中，就是精英教育灌输了一种错误的自我价值感。进入精英大学，在精英大学，以及从精英大学继续深造，都涉及数字排名：SAT、GPA、GRE。它们不仅象征着你的命运，而且象征着你的身份；不仅象征着你的身份，而且象征着你的价值。有人说，这些考试真正衡量的是你的考试能力，但即使它们衡量的是真实的东西，它也只是真实的一小部分。当学生被鼓励伪造这一真相时，当学术上的卓越成为某种绝对意义上的卓越，问题就开始了。

There is nothing wrong with taking priding in one’s intellect or knowledge.There is something wrong with the smugness and self-congratulation that elite schools connive at from the moment the fat envelops come in the email.From orientation to graduation,the message is implicit in every tone of voice and tilt of the head,every old-school tradition,every article in the student paper,every speech from the dean.The message is :You have arrived.Welcome to the club.And the corollary is equally clear:You deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get.When people say that students at elite schools have a strong sense of entitlement,they mean that those students think they deserve more than other people because their SAT score are higher.One of the great errors of elite education,then,is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense.But they’re not.Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable that stupid people,or talentless people,or even lazy people.

对自己的智力或知识感到自豪并没有错，但精英学校从收到肥大信封的那一刻起就在纵容这种自鸣得意和自我陶醉的行为。从迎新到毕业，每一种语气和头的倾斜，每一个老式的传统，学生报纸上的每一篇文章，院长的每一次讲话，都隐含着这样的信息：你已经到了，欢迎加入俱乐部。而推论同样清楚：你应该得到你在这里所能得到的一切。当人们说精英学校的学生有强烈的权利感时，他们的意思是这些学生认为他们应该比其他人得到更多，因为他们的SAT分数更高。精英教育的一个巨大错误是，它教你认为智力和学术成就的衡量标准是某种道德或形而上学意义上的价值。

The third disadvantage is that when elite universities boast that they teach their student how to think,they mean that they teach them the analytic and rhetorical skills necessary for success in law or medicine or science or business.But a humanistic education is supposed to mean something more than that,as universities still dimly feel.So when students get to college,they hear a couple of speeches telling then to ask the big question,and when they graduate,they hear a couple more speeches telling them to ask the big questions.And in between,they spend four years taking courses that train them to ask the little questions-specialized courses,taught by specialized professors,aimed at specialized students.Although the notion of breadth is implicit in the every idea of a liberal arts education,the admission process increasingly selects for kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms-the junior journalist,the budding astronomer,the language prodigy.We are slouching,even at elite schools,toward a glorified form of vocational training

第三个缺点是，当精英大学吹嘘他们教学生如何思考时，他们的意思是，他们教他们在法律、医学、科学或商业领域取得成功所必需的分析和修辞技巧。但人文教育应该意味着比这更多的东西，因为大学仍然模糊地感到。而在这中间，他们花了四年时间学习训练他们问小问题的课程--专业课程，由专业的教授教授，针对专业的学生。虽然博雅教育的每一个概念中都隐含着广度的概念，但招生过程中越来越多地选择那些已经开始用专业术语思考自己的孩子--初级记者，崭露头角的天文学家，语言神童。我们正在向一种光荣的职业培训形式滑行，即使在精英学校也是如此。

Indeed,that seems to be exactly what those schools want.There is a reason elite schools speak of training leaders,not thinkers-holders of power,not its critics.And independent mind is independent of all allegiances,and elite schools,which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving,are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty.As another friend,a third-generation Yalie,says the purpose of Yale college is to manufacture Yale alumni.Of course,for the system to work,those alumni.Of course,for the system to work,whose alumni need money.At Yale,the long-term drift of students away from majors in the humanities and basic sciences toward more practical ones like computer science and economics has been abetted by administrative indifference.The college career office have little to say to students not interested in law,medicine,or business,and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street.In fact,they’re showing them the way.The liberal arts university is becoming the corporate university ,its center of gravity shifting to technical fields where scholarly expertise can be parlayed into lucrative business opportunities.

事实上，这似乎正是那些学校想要的。精英学校说要培养领导者，而不是思想家--权力的拥有者，而不是它的批评者，是有原因的。独立的思想是独立于所有的忠诚，而精英学校，其预算的很大一部分来自校友捐赠，在培养机构忠诚度方面有很大的投入。正如另一位朋友，一位第三代耶鲁人所说，耶鲁大学的目的是制造耶鲁的校友。当然，为了让这个系统发挥作用，那些校友需要钱。在耶鲁大学，学生从人文和基础科学专业向计算机科学和经济学等更实用的专业长期漂移，行政部门的漠不关心助长了这一趋势。大学就业办公室对那些对法律、医学或商业不感兴趣的学生没有什么可说的，而精英大学也不会做任何事情来阻止他们中很大比例的毕业生把学位带到华尔街。事实上，他们正在为他们指明方向。文科大学正在成为企业大学，其重心转移到技术领域，在那里学术专长可以转化为有利可图的商业机会。

The world that produced Al Gore and John Kerry is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders.The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring ,the kid whom everyone wants at their college but no one wants in their classroom,the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe,let alone think ,will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government.He/she will have many achievement but little experience,great success but no vision.The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have,and the elite we are going to have.

培养出阿尔-戈尔和约翰-克里的世界确实在为我们提供下一代的领导人。这个孩子在大三时就开始学习AP课程，或者在双修时编辑三份校园出版物，这个孩子是每个人都想在他们的大学里学习，但没有人想在他们的课堂上学习，这个孩子没有一分钟的时间来呼吸，更不用说思考，很快就会管理一个公司、一个机构或一个政府。他/她会有很多成就，但没有什么经验，有很大的成功，但没有远见。精英教育的缺点是，它给了我们现在的精英，以及我们将要拥有的精英。

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