斯坦福大学英文演讲：别在不断优秀中沦落平庸上
黑龙江大学分数线-中学校长述职报告
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
斯坦福大学英文演讲：别在不断优秀中
沦落平庸（上）
what are
you going to do with that?
教育为何?
by
william deresiewicz
the question my title
poses, of course, is the one
that is
classically aimed at humanities majors. what
practical value could there possibly be in
studying
literature or art or philosophy? so
you must be
wondering why i'm bothering to
raise it here, at
stanford, this renowned
citadel of science and
technology. what doubt
can there be that the world will
offer you
many opportunities to use your degree?
我的题目提
出的问题，当然，是一个传统地面向人文科
学的专业所提出的问题：学习文学、艺术或哲学能有什么实<
br>效价值(practical value)?你肯定纳闷，我为什么在以科技
堡垒而闻名的斯坦
福提出这个问题呢?大学学位给人带来众
多机会，这还有什么需要质疑的吗?
but
that's not the question i'm asking. by
don't
mean a job, and by i don't mean your major.
we
are more than our jobs, and education is more than
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
a
major. education is more than college, more even
than
the totality of your formal schooling,
from
kindergarten through graduate school. by
are you
going to do,
to lead? and by i mean
everything in your
training, formal and
informal, that has brought you to
be sitting
here today, and everything you're going to
be
doing for the rest of the time that you're in
school.
但那不是我提出的问题。这里的“做(do)”并不是指工
作，“那(t
hat)”并不是指你的专业。我们不仅仅是我们的
工作，教育的全部也不仅仅是一门主修专业。教育也
不仅仅
是上大学，甚至也不仅是从幼儿园到研究生院的正规学校教
育。我说的“你要做什么”的
意思是你要过什么样的生活。
我所说的“那”指的是你得到的正规或非正规的任何训练，
那些把
你送到这里来的东西，你在学校的剩余时间里将要做
的任何事。
we should
start by talking about how you did, in
fact,
get here.
我们不妨先来讨论你是如何考入斯坦福的吧。
you got
here by getting very good at a certain set
of
skills. your parents pushed you to excel from the
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
time you were very young. they sent you to
good schools,
where the encouragement of your
teachers and the
example of your peers helped
push you even harder. your
natural aptitudes
were nurtured so that, in addition
to
excelling in all your subjects, you developed a
number of specific interests that you
cultivated with
particular vigor. you did
extracurricular activities,
went to
afterschool programs, took private lessons. you
spent summers doing advanced courses at a
local college
or attending skill-specific
camps and workshops. you
worked hard, you paid
attention, and you tried your very
best. and
so you got very good at math, or piano, or
lacrosse, or, indeed, several things at once.
你能进入这所大学说明你在某些技能上非常出色。你的
父母在你很小的时候就鼓励你追求卓
越。他们送你到好学校，
老师的鼓励和同伴的榜样激励你更努力地学习。除了在所有
课程上都出
类拔萃之外，你还注重修养的提高，充满热情地
培养了一些特殊兴趣。你用几个暑假在本地大学里预习大
学
课程，或参加专门技能的夏令营或训练营。你学习刻苦、精
力集中、全力以赴。所以，你在数
学、钢琴、曲棍球等众多
方面都很出色。
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
now there's nothing wrong with mastering skills,
with wanting to do your best and to be the
best. what's
wrong is what the system leaves
out: which is to say,
everything else. i don't
mean that by choosing to excel
in math, say,
you are failing to develop your verbal
abilities to their fullest extent, or that in
addition
to focusing on geology, you should
also focus on
political science, or that while
you're learning the
piano, you should also be
working on the flute. it is
the nature of
specialization, after all, to be
specialized.
no, the problem with specialization is
that it
narrows your attention to the point where all
you know about and all you want to know about,
and,
indeed, all you can know about, is your
specialty.
掌握这些技能当然没有错，全力以赴成为最优秀的人也
没有错。错
误之处在于这个体系遗漏的地方：即任何别的东
西。我并不是说因为选择钻研数学，所以你的语文能力没
得
到充分发展;也不是说除了集中精力学习地质学之外，你还
应该研究政治学;也不是说你在学
习钢琴时还应该学吹笛子。
毕竟，专业化的本质就是要专业性。可是，专业化的问题在
于它把你
的注意力限制在一个点上，你所已知的和你想探知
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
的东西都限界于此。真的，你能知道的一切就只是你的专业
了。
the
problem with specialization is that it makes
you into a specialist. it cuts you off, not
only from
everything else in the world, but
also from everything
else in yourself. and of
course, as college freshmen,
your
specialization is only just beginning. in the
journey toward the success that you all hope
to achieve,
you have completed, by getting
into stanford, only the
first of many legs.
three more years of college, three
or four or
five years of law school or medical school
or
a program, then residencies or postdocs or years
as a junior associate. in short, an ever-
narrowing
funnel of specialization. you go
from being a
political-science major to being
a lawyer to being a
corporate attorney to
being a corporate attorney
focusing on
taxation issues in the consumer-products
industry. you go from being a biochemistry
major to
being a doctor to being a
cardiologist to being a
cardiac surgeon who
performs heart-valve replacements.
专业化的问题是它让你成为专家，切断你与世界上其他
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
任何东
西的联系，不仅如此，还切断你与自身其他潜能的联
系。当然，作为大一新生，你的专业才刚刚开始。在
你走向
所渴望的成功之路的过程中，进入斯坦福是你踏上的众多阶
梯中的一个。再读三年大学，
三五年法学院或医学院或博士，
然后再干若干年住院实习生或博士后或助理教授。总而言之，
进
入越来越狭窄的专业化轨道。你可能从政治学专业的学生
变成了律师或者公司代理人，再变成专门研究消
费品领域的
税收问题的公司代理人。你从生物化学专业的学生变成了博
士，再变成心脏病学家，
再变成专门做心脏瓣膜移植的心脏
病医生。
again, there's
nothing wrong with being those
things. it's
just that, as you get deeper and deeper
into
the funnel, into the tunnel, it becomes
increasingly difficult to remember who you
once were.
you start to wonder what happened
to that person who
played piano and lacrosse
and sat around with her
friends having intense
conversations about life and
politics and all
the things she was learning in her
classes.
the 19-year-old who could do so many things,
and was interested in so many things, has
become a
40-year-old who thinks about only one
thing. that's why
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
older people are so boring. my dad's a smart
guy,
but all he talks about is money and
livers.
再次，做这些事没有任何错。只不过，在你越来越深入
地进入这个轨道后，
再记得你最初的样子就益发困难了。你
开始怀念那个曾经谈钢琴和打曲棍球的人，思考那个曾经和
朋友热烈讨论人生和政治以及在课堂内容的人在做什么。那
个活泼能干的19岁年轻人已经变成了只想
一件事的40岁中
年人。难怪年长的人这么乏味无趣。“哎，我爸爸曾经是非
常聪明的人，但他
现在除了谈论钱和肝脏外再无其他。”
and there's another
problem. maybe you never really
wanted to be a
cardiac surgeon in the first place. it
just
kind of happened. it's easy, the way the system
works, to simply go with the flow. i don't
mean the work
is easy, but the choices are
easy. or rather, the
choices sort of make
themselves. you go to a place like
stanford
because that's what smart kids do. you go to
medical school because it's prestigious. you
specialize in cardiology because it's
lucrative. you
do the things that reap the
rewards, that make your
parents proud, and
your teachers pleased, and your
friends
impressed. from the time you started high
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
school and maybe even junior high, your whole
goal was
to get into the best college you
could, and so now you
naturally think about
your life in terms of
into
intois victory.
stanford, then johns hopkins
medical school,
then a residency at the university of
san
francisco, and so forth. or michigan law school,
or goldman sachs, or mckinsey, or whatever.
you take
it one step at a time, and the next
step always seems
to be inevitable.
还有另外
一个问题。或许你从来没有想过当心脏病医生，
只是碰巧发生了而已。随大流最容易，这就是体制的力量
。
我不是说这个工作容易，而是说做出这种选择很容易。或者，
这些根本就不是自己做出的选择
。你来到斯坦福这样的名牌
大学是因为聪明的孩子都这样。你考入医学院是因为它的地
位高，人
人都羡慕。你选择心脏病学是因为当心脏病医生的
待遇很好。你做那些事能给你带来好处，让你的父母感
到骄
傲，令你的老师感到高兴，也让朋友们羡慕。从你上高中开
始，甚至初中开始，你的唯一目
标就是进入最好的大学，所
以现在你会很自然地从“进入下个阶段”的角度看待人生。
“进入”
就是能力的证明，“进入”就是胜利。先进入斯坦
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
福，然
后是约翰霍普金斯医学院，再进入旧金山大学做实习
医生等。或者进入密歇根法学院，或高盛集团或麦肯
锡公司
或别的什么地方。你迈出了这一步，下一步似乎就必然在等
着你。
or
maybe you did always want to be a cardiac surgeon.
you dreamed about it from the time you were 10
years
old, even though you had no idea what it
really meant,
and you stayed on course for the
entire time you were
in school. you refused to
be enticed from your path by
that great
experience you had in ap history, or that
trip
you took to costa rica the summer after your
junior
year in college, or that terrific
feeling you got taking
care of kids when you
did your rotation in pediatrics
during your
fourth year in medical school.
也许你确实想当心脏病学家。
十岁时就梦想成为医生，
即使你根本不知道医生意味着什么。你在上学期间全身心都
在朝着这个
目标前进。你拒绝了上大学预修历史课时的美妙
体验的诱惑，也无视你在医学院第四年的儿科学轮流值班
时
照看孩子的可怕感受。
but either way, either
because you went with the
flow or because you
set your course very early, you wake
文档来源为:从网络收集整理.word版本可编辑.欢迎下载支持.
up
one day, maybe 20 years later, and you wonder what
happened: how you got there, what it all
means. not what
it means in the
what it
means to you. why you're doing it, what it's
all for. it sounds like a cliché, this
day,
happens to people all the time.
不管是什么，要么因为你随大流，要么因为你早就选定
了道路，20年后某天醒来，你或许会纳闷到底发
生了什么：
你怎么变成现在这个样子，这一切意味着什么。不是它是什
么，不在于它是否是“大
蓝图”而是它对你意味着什么。你
为什么做它?到底为了什么?这听起来像老生常谈，但这个被
称为中年危机的“有一天醒来”一直就发生在每个人身上。