Unit7LettertoaBStudent課文翻譯綜合教程二

1、Unit 7 Letter to a B StudentYour finalgradeforthecourseis B.Arespectable grade.Far superiortothe"Gentleman's C" that served as the norm a couple of generations ago. But in those daysA's were rare: only two out of twenty-five, as I recall. Whatever our norm is, it has shiftedupward,

2、withtheresult thatyouare probablydisappointedatnotdoingbetter.I'mcertain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in aclimate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs.Disappointment. It's the stuff bad dreams are made

3、of: dreams of failure, inadequacy,loss of position and good repute. The essence of success is that there's never enough of itto go round in a zero-sum game where one person's winning must be offset by another'slosing, one person's joy offset by another's disappointment. You'v

4、e grown up in a societywhere winning is not the most important thingit's the only thing. To lose, to fail, to gounder,to go broketheseare deadlysinsina world whereprosperityinthepresent isseen as a sure sign of salvation in the future. In a different society, your disappointmentmight be somethin

5、g you could shrug away. But not in ours.Mypurposeinwritingyouistoputyourdisappointmentinperspectivebyconsidering exactly what your grade means and doesn't mean. I do not propose to arguehere that grades are unimportant. Rather, I hope to show you that your grade, taken atface value, is apt to be

6、 dangerously misleading, both to you and to others.Asa symbolonyourcollegetranscript,yourgradesimplymeansthatyouhavesuccessfully completed a specific course of study, doing so at a certain level of proficiency.The level of your proficiencyhas beendetermined byyourperformanceofratherconventionaltasks

7、:takingtests,writingpapersandreports,andso forth.Yourperformance is generally assumed to correspond to the knowledge you have acquired andwill retain. But this assumption,as we bothknow,is questionable;itmay well bethatyou've actually gotten much more out ofthe course than your grade indicates o

8、rless.Lackingmoreprecisemeasurementtools,wemustinterpretyourBas a ratherfuzzysymbol at best, representing a questionable judgment of your mastery of the subject.Your grade does not represent a judgment of your basic ability or of your character.Courage, kindness, wisdom, good humorthese are the impo

9、rtant characteristics of ourspecies.Unfortunatelythey arenotpartofour curriculum.Buttheyareimportant:crucially so, because they are always in short supply. If you value these characteristics inyourself, you will be valuedand far more so than those whose identities are measuredonly by little marks on

10、 a piece of paper. Your B is a price tag on a garment that is quiteseparate from the living, breathing human being underneath.精選文庫Thestudentas performer;thestudentas humanbeing.Thedistinctionis oneweshould always keep in mind. I first learned it years ago when I got out of the service andwent back t

11、o college. There were a lot of us then: older than the norm, in a hurry to getour degrees and move on, impatientwith thetests and ritualsofacademiclife. Notaneasy group to handle.Oneinstructorhandledusverywisely,it seems to me. On Sundayeveningsinparticular, he would make a point of stopping in at a

12、 local bar frequented by many of theGI-Bill students. Therehe wouldsit anddrink,joke,andswap storieswithmeninhisclass, men who had but recently put away their uniforms and identities: former platoonsergeants, bomber pilots, corporals, captains, lieutenants, commanders, majorseven alieutenant colonel

13、, as I recall. They enjoyed his company greatly, as he theirs. The nextmorning he would walk into class and give these same men a test. A hard test. A test onwhich he usually flunked about half of them.Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it. Nor did they resent himfor shiftingsudden

14、lyfromafriendlygeartoacoerciveone. Rather,theylovedhim,worked harder and harder at his course as the semester moved along, and ended up witha good grasp of hissubject economics.Thetechniqueis stillrather difficultforme toexplain; butI believeitcanbe describedas oneinwhicha cleardistinctionwas madebe

15、tweenthestudentas classroomperformerandthestudentas humanbeing. A gooddistinctionto make.AdistinctionthatshouldputyourBinperspectiveandyourdisappointment.Perspective.It isimportanttorecognizethathumanbeings,despitedifferencesinclass and educational labeling, are fundamentally hewn from the same mate

16、rial and knittogether by common bonds of fear and joy, suffering and achievement. Warfare, sickness,disasters, public and privatethese are the larger coordinates of life. To recognize them isto recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading. It is true that theselabels are nece

17、ssary in the functioning of a complex society as a way of letting us knowwho should be trusted to do what, with the result that we need to make distinctions onthe basis of grades, degrees, rank, and responsibility. But these distinctions should neverbe taken seriously in human terms, either in the w

18、ay we look at others or in the way welook at ourselves.Even inachievementterms,yourB labeldoes not meanthatyouare permanentlydefined as a B achievement person. I'm well aware that B students tend to get B's in thecourses they take later on, justas Astudentstend to get A's. But academicwo

19、rkis anarrow,neatlydefinedhighwaycomparedtothe unmappedrollingcountryyouwill2精選文庫encounter after you leave school. What you have learned may help you find your way about at first; later on you will have to shift to yourself, locating goals and opportunities in the same fog that hampers us all as we

20、move toward the future.寫給中等生的一封信你的期末成績(jī)是一個(gè)B，一個(gè)過得去的等級(jí)。比許多年以前的及格C 等級(jí)要優(yōu)秀多了。但是 A 等級(jí)在那個(gè)年代是十分少見的，我回想起來25 個(gè)人里只有兩個(gè)人。但不管我們的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)如何， 它們還是在提升的，不過你可能會(huì)因?yàn)檫@個(gè)結(jié)果為自己沒有考好而失望。我相信我說什么都無法消除你們心中的失望情緒，特別是在一個(gè)社會(huì)環(huán)境下等級(jí)的高低直接決定了你考的學(xué)校和拿到的特別項(xiàng)目好壞。你的失望感。負(fù)面的展望由這種情緒形成：失敗、努力不夠、好位置與好名聲的喪失。成功的核心是在零和博弈的游戲中沒有批發(fā)的成功可以供給，有了一個(gè)人的失敗才能成為另一個(gè)人成功的墊腳石。你所

21、生所長(zhǎng)的社會(huì)是唯成功論的，失敗或者破產(chǎn)絕對(duì)是要命的罪惡。因?yàn)樨?cái)富的多少明確的決定了未來能否被拯救。 也許在另一個(gè)不一樣的社會(huì)中， 你對(duì)于失望的情緒能一笑而過，不過在我們的社會(huì)中不可能。我寫這篇文章的目的是客觀判斷你們的失望情緒， 認(rèn)真考慮你的等級(jí)意味著什么與不能說明什么， 我不想在這里爭(zhēng)辯成績(jī)無用論， 相反我希望告訴你們的是， 如果只是被它的外表所蒙蔽，那對(duì)于你們與他人來說，都是一種可怕的導(dǎo)向。作為大學(xué)成績(jī)單的一種象征，你的成績(jī)只能表明你已經(jīng)成功的完成了特定課程的學(xué)習(xí)，達(dá)到了一定等級(jí)的熟練度。不過這種衡量你的表現(xiàn)的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)還是由傳統(tǒng)的任務(wù)決定：參加考試、寫論文報(bào)告等等。因?yàn)檫@種表現(xiàn)普遍認(rèn)為應(yīng)該與所

22、掌握、記住知識(shí)的多少相結(jié)合，但是我們也知道這種假設(shè)是值得推敲的，有可能你學(xué)到的比成績(jī)單上反應(yīng)出來的要多，也有可能要少。在缺少更精準(zhǔn)的測(cè)量工具的情況下，我們只能認(rèn)為你的 B 代表著你對(duì)于這門學(xué)科的掌握不夠，充其量是一個(gè)不明確的標(biāo)志。你的成績(jī)也不能成為衡量基本能力與性格的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。勇氣、善良、智慧、好脾氣，這些才是我們?nèi)祟惖闹匾愿裉卣鳌?雖然它們因?yàn)榕l(fā)量少很重要， 但不幸的是它們無法成為我們課程學(xué)習(xí)中的一部分。當(dāng)然如果你看重自己擁有的這些性格特征，那么就總會(huì)有出頭之日而且遠(yuǎn)比那些只重視紙上那一點(diǎn)可憐分?jǐn)?shù)的人好得多。你的 B 等級(jí)是衣服外的價(jià)格標(biāo)簽，穿上生活的衣裳后就與標(biāo)簽沒有任何關(guān)系了。3精選文庫作為表現(xiàn)者與作為人類這個(gè)身份的學(xué)生是不一樣的，這種差別需要我們時(shí)刻牢記。第一次學(xué)習(xí)這種區(qū)別是在我參軍期重新回到校園的時(shí)候。當(dāng)時(shí)有一大群像我一樣的人，比一般的學(xué)生要老， 著急著趕快獲得學(xué)位繼續(xù)生活，對(duì)學(xué)術(shù)生活里的習(xí)慣和考試極不耐煩。這是一群不怎么好對(duì)付的學(xué)生。我感覺其中一位用了一種明智的方法對(duì)付我們。每當(dāng)星期天的晚上，他就會(huì)來到當(dāng)?shù)鼐瓢?，那里總有許多GI-Bill的學(xué)生光顧。他會(huì)坐