中国教育如何扼杀创造力

原作者：
来源How China Kills
译者tchch143

Nowadays people may admire China’seconomy, but not Chinese creativity. Chinese architecture and art, music andmovies are derivative, and many a Chinese enterprise is merely a carbon copy ofan American one. China’s bestschools may produce the world’s best test-takers, but the United States’ best schools producethe world’s most creative talent.

如今中国的经济可能受到世人的青睐，但中国的创造力却另当别论。中国的建筑学、美术、音乐和电影都是舶来品，许多中国企业只不过是美国企业的翻版。中国最好的学校出产世界上最好的考生，而美国最好的学校出产世界最具创造力的人才。

In his book The Social Animal, David Brooksoutlines the four-step learning process that teaches students to be creative:knowledge acquisition (research), internalization (familiarity with material),self-questioning and examination (review and discussion), and the ordering andmastery of this knowledge (thesis formulation and essay writing).

大卫·布鲁克斯在其著作《社会动物》中把培养学生创造力的学习过程概括为四个阶段：知识收集（研究），内在化（熟悉资料），反省和检视（复查和讨论）以及对这些知识的整理和掌握（论题的系统阐述和论文写作）。

However, this isn’t a linear process,Brooks points out, which means that the learner ‘(surfs) in and out of hisunconscious, getting the conscious and unconscious processes to work together –first mastering core knowledge, then letting that knowledge marinate playfullyin his mind, then wilfully trying to impose order on it, then allowing the mindto consolidate and merge the data, then returning and returning until somemagical insight popped into his consciousness, and then riding that insight toa finished product.’

然而，布鲁克斯指出，这并非一个线性过程，意思是说学习者“（游走）在潜意识内外，使意识和潜意识过程协调配合——首先掌握核心知识，再将知识愉快地消化，再有目的地设法加以整理，再让头脑整合信息，再不断重复这个工程，直到某个不可思议的顿悟突然出现他的意识中，再借助这种顿悟形成最终的知识”。

The processwas not easy, but each ounce of effort and each moment of frustration andstruggle pushed the internal construction project another little step,’ DavidBrooks continues. ‘By the end, (the learner) was seeing the world around him ina new way.’

布鲁克斯接着说，‘该过程可不容易，但每一点努力，每一瞬挫折和苦斗都让知识形成的过程迈进了一小步，到最后（学习者）将以新的视角看待周围的世界。’

But what permits our brains to turn a chaoticsea of random facts and knowledge into an island of calm understanding? Believeit or not, it’s our emotions that permit us ultimately to become creativethinkers. In his book The Accidental Mind, the neuroscientist David J. Lindenexplains how emotions organize our memories:

但是，是什么让我们的大脑将随机事实和知识的混沌之海，变成平静的认识之岛呢？信不信由你，是我们的情感让我们最终成为有创造力的思想者。大卫·林登在他的著作《意外的想法》（The Accidental Mind）中解释了情感是如何组织我们的记忆的。

In our lives,we have a lot of experiences and many of these we will remember until we die.We have many mechanisms for determining which experiences are stored (wherewere you on 9/11?) and which are discarded (what did you have for dinnerexactly 1 month ago?). Some memories will fade with time and some will bedistorted by generalization (can you distinctly remember your seventeenth haircut?).We need a signal to say, “This is an important memory. Write this down andunderline it.” That signal is emotion. When you have feelings of fear or joy orlove or anger or sadness, these mark your experiences as being particularlymeaningful…These are the memories that confer your individuality. And thatfunction, memory indexed by emotion, more than anything else, is what a brainis good for.’

‘我们都有大量生活经历，而且会永远记住其中很多经历。我们有许多机制来决定把哪些经历存储下来（911那天你在哪里？），把哪些抛弃掉（一个月前你晚餐到底吃的是什么？），一些记忆将随时间而褪色，还有一些将由于一般化（generalization）而扭曲（你能清楚地想起自己第十七次剪发吗？）。我们需要有一个信号告诉我们，“这是个重要的记忆，存下来，放在醒目位置”。那个信号就是情感，当你心怀恐惧、高兴、爱慕、愤怒或忧伤之情的时候，这些情感会将你的经历标记为特别重要…这些情感就是赋予你个性的记忆。这种由情感标示记忆的功能’比其他功能更有益于大脑。

What this means is that memories areultimately emotional experiences, and that effectively learning must involvethe learner emotionally. The very best US schools are seen as such because theyinspire their students to be curious, interested, and excited; China’s verybest schools gain their reputation by doing the opposite.

这意味着记忆最终是情感体验，并且事实上学习者必须在激动地情况下才能获得知识。美国那些最好的学校就是这样的，因为它们鼓励自己的学生要好奇、有兴趣和充满喜悦。中国最好的学校却以反着干赢得了声誉。

Thinking is the conscious effort ofapplying our memories to understand a new external stimulus, and creativity isasserting individual control over this process to create a synthesis betweenmemory and stimuli. In other words, thinking is really about applying previousemotional experiences to understand a new emotional experience, whilstcreativity is the mixing of old and new emotional experiences to a create anentirely new and original emotional experience.

思考是我们运用记忆理解新的外部刺激的有意识努力，创造力是对思考的过程进行人为控制，从而创造一种记忆和刺激之间的融合体。换句话说，思考实际上就是运用先前的情感体验理解新的情感体验，而创造力是将新旧两种情感体验结合在一起，创造一种全新的、完全原创的情感体验。

The best US education institutions endowstudents with creativity by providing a relaxed and secure learning environmentin which students share in the refined emotional experiences of humanity byreading books and developing the logic necessary to share in collectiveemotional experiences through debate and essay writing. A dynamic learningenvironment allows students at many US schools to feel joy and despair,frustration and triumph, and it’s these ups and downs that encode the creativelearning process into our neural infrastructure and make it so transformative.

美国最好的教育机构通过提供轻松和安全的学习环境赋予学生创造力，学生们在这样的环境中通过读书和发展逻辑思维分享高雅的人类情感体验，而读书和发展逻辑思维对于共享通过讨论和论文写作的方式获得的集体情感体验来说是非常必要的。一个充满活力的学习环境让美国许多学校的学生们体会到快乐、绝望、挫折和成功，正是这些情感的沉浮将创造性学习过程编码到神经网络中，让它如此充满变革力。

A Chinese school is both a stressful andstale place, forcing students to remember facts in order to excel in tests.Neuroscientists know that stress hampers the ability of the brain to convertexperience into memory, and psychologists know that rewarding students solelyfor test performance leads to stress, cheating, and disinterest in learning.But ultimately, the most harmful thing that a Chinese school does, from acreativity perspective, is the way in which it separates emotion from memory bymaking learning an unemotional experience.

中国的学校是个充满压力和毫无生气的地方，这些学校为了让学生在考试中名列前茅而强迫他们记住一些事实。神经系统科学家知道，压力对大脑将经历转化为记忆的能力具有阻碍作用。心理学家懂得，单纯以考试成绩为指标奖励学生会导致紧张、作弊和失去学习兴趣。但最终来说，从创造力的视角来看，中国学校最具危害性的举动，莫过于它们通过非情感体验的学习，将情感与记忆截然分开的那种方式。

Whatever individual emotions Chinesestudents try to bring into the classroom, they are quickly stamped out. As I havepreviously written, from the first day of school, students who ask questionsare silenced and those who try to exert any individuality are punished. Whatthey learn is irrelevant and de-personalized, abstract and distant, furtherremoving emotion from learning.

If anyemotion is involved, it’s pain. But the pain is so constant and monotonous(scolding teachers, demanding parents, mindless memorization, long hours ofsitting in a cramped classroom) that it eventually ceases to be an emotion.

不管中国学生试图在课堂上表现出怎样的个人情感，这些情感很快就会被浇灭。正如我先前写到的那样，从第一天到校起，提问的学生就被噤声，试图表现个性的学生就受到惩罚。由于他们学到的都是与实际不相干而抹杀个性的，抽象化而晦涩的知识，故而进一步加剧了情感与知识的脱节。如果说其中有情感的话，也是痛苦。但是痛苦如此始终如一和单调乏味（怒声斥责的老师、苛求的家长、机械的记忆、长时间的坐在狭窄的教室里），以至于它最终不再是一种情感。

To understand the consequences of Chinesepedagogy, consider the example of ‘Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalistborn in 1886, who could remember everything,’ whom David Brooks writes about inThe Social Animal:

为了理解中国教学法的后果，让我们考察一下俄国记者所罗门·舍雷舍夫斯基（Solomon Shereshevskii）的事例吧，他出生于1886年，能够回忆起所有事情。大卫·布鲁克斯在《社会动物》中这样描述他：

In oneexperiment, researchers showed Shereshevskii a complex formula of thirtyletters and numbers on a piece of paper. Then they put the paper in a box andsealed it for fifteen years. When they took the paper out, Shereshevskii couldremember it exactly…Shereshevskii could remember, but he couldn’t distil. Helived in a random blizzard of facts, but could not organize them into repeatingpatterns. Eventually he couldn’t make sense of metaphors, similes, poems, oreven complex sentences.’

‘在一个实验中，研究人员给舍雷舍夫斯基出示了一张纸，上面写着一个拥有三十个字母和数字组成的复杂公式。然后他们把纸放在盒子里，将它封存十五年。当他们取出之后，舍雷舍夫斯基能够精确地回忆起来…舍雷舍夫斯基能够记起来，但他不能提取精髓。他记住了大量随机事实，但他不能将它们组织成重复性样式。最终他不能搞清隐喻、明喻、诗歌，甚至于复杂的句子’。

Shereshevskii had a neural defect thatprohibited his brain from prioritizing, synthesizing, and controlling hismemories to permit him to formulate an understanding of self and the world.Like many a Chinese student today, he could experience, but he could not feel.

舍雷舍夫斯基的神经有缺陷，这令他的大脑难以区分优先次序、综合和控制自己的记忆。由于不能控制记忆，他就不能确切阐述对自我和世界的理解。他同今天的许多中国学生一样，能够经历，但不能感受。

Chinese schools are producing a nation ofShereshevskiis, students with photographic memory and instant recall, but whocan never be creative.

中国的学校正在制造舍雷舍夫斯基之国，虽然这些舍雷舍夫斯基一样的学生们拥有照相式记忆和瞬时记忆，但他们永远不可能拥有创造力。

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