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1、Letter to a B student Your final grade for the course is B. A respectable grade. Far superior to the "Gentleman's C" that served as the norm a couple of generations ago. But in those days A's were rare: only two out of twenty-five, as I recall. Whatever our norm is, it has shifted upward, with

2、the result that you are probably disappointed at not doing better. I'm certain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in a climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs. Disappointment. It's the stuff bad dreams are

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

4、society where winning is not the most important thing—it's the only thing. To lose, to fail, to go under, to go broke—these are deadly sins in a world where prosperity in the present is seen as a sure sign of salvation in the future. In a different society, your disappointment might be something you

5、 could shrug away. But not in ours. My purpose in writing you is to put your disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what your grade means and doesn't mean. I do not propose to argue here that grades are unimportant. Rather, I hope to show you that your grade, taken at face value,

6、is apt to be dangerously misleading, both to you and to others. As a symbol on your college transcript, your grade simply means that you have successfully completed a specific course of study, doing so at a certain level of proficiency. The level of your proficiency has been determined by your

7、performance of rather conventional tasks: taking tests, writing papers and reports, and so forth. Your performance is generally assumed to correspond to the knowledge you have acquired and will retain. But this assumption, as we both know, is questionable; it may well be that you've actually gotten

8、much more out of the course than your grade indicates—or less. Lacking more precise measurement tools, we must interpret your B as a rather fuzzy symbol at best, representing a questionable judgment of your mastery of the subject. Your grade does not represent a judgment of your basic ability o

9、r of your character. Courage, kindness, wisdom, good humor—these are the important characteristics of our species. Unfortunately they are not part of our curriculum. But they are important: crucially so, because they are always in short supply. If you value these characteristics in yourself, you wil

10、l be valued—and far more so than those whose identities are measured only by little marks on a piece of paper. Your B is a price tag on a garment that is quite separate from the living, breathing human being underneath. The student as performer; the student as human being. The distinction is on

11、e we should always keep in mind. I first learned it years ago when I got out of the service and went back to college. There were a lot of us then: older than the norm, in a hurry to get our degrees and move on, impatient with the tests and rituals of academic life. Not an easy group to handle.

12、One instructor handled us very wisely, it seems to me. On Sunday evenings in particular, he would make a point of stopping in at a local bar frequented by many of the GI-Bill students. There he would sit and drink, joke, and swap stories with men in his class, men who had but recently put away their

13、 uniforms and identities: former platoon sergeants, bomber pilots, corporals, captains, lieutenants, commanders, majors—even a lieutenant colonel, as I recall. They enjoyed his company greatly, as he theirs. The next morning he would walk into class and give these same men a test. A hard test. A tes

14、t on which he usually flunked about half of them. Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it. Nor did they resent him for shifting suddenly from a friendly gear to a coercive one. Rather, they loved him, worked harder and harder at his course as the semester moved along, and ended

15、up with a good grasp of his subject—economics. The technique is still rather difficult for me to explain; but I believe it can be described as one in which a clear distinction was made between the student as classroom performer and the student as human being. A good distinction to make. A distinctio

16、n that should put your B in perspective—and your disappointment. Perspective. It is important to recognize that human beings, despite differences in class and educational labeling, are fundamentally hewn from the same material and knit together by common bonds of fear and joy, suffering and ach

17、ievement. Warfare, sickness, disasters, public and private—these are the larger coordinates of life. To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading. It is true that these labels are necessary in the functioning of a complex society as a way of letting us

18、 know who should be trusted to do what, with the result that we need to make distinctions on the basis of grades, degrees, rank, and responsibility. But these distinctions should never be taken seriously in human terms, either in the way we look at others or in the way we look at ourselves. 　　Even

19、in achievement terms, your B label does not mean that you are permanently defined as a B achievement person. I'm well aware that B students tend to get B's in the courses they take later on, just as A students tend to get A's. But academic work is a narrow, neatly defined highway compared to the unm

20、apped rolling country you will 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 move toward the future. Letter to a B student 寫給中

21、等生的一封信 你的期末成績是一個B，一個過得去的等級。比許多年以前的及格C等級要優(yōu)秀多了。但是A等級在那個年代是十分少見的，我回想起來25個人里只有兩個人。但不管我們的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)如何，它們還是在提升的，不過你可能會因?yàn)檫@個結(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，特別是在一個社會環(huán)境下等級的高低直接決定了你考的學(xué)校和拿到的特別項目好壞。 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，有了一個人的失敗才能成為另一個人成功的墊腳石。你所生所長的社會是唯成功論的，失敗或者破產(chǎn)絕對是要命的罪惡

22、。因?yàn)樨敻坏亩嗌倜鞔_的決定了未來能否被拯救。也許在另一個不一樣的社會中，你對于失望的情緒能一笑而過，不過在我們的社會中不可能。 我寫這篇文章的目的是客觀判斷你們的失望情緒，認(rèn)真考慮你的等級意味著什么與不能說明什么，我不想在這里爭辯成績無用論，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)成績單的一種象征，你的成績只能表明你已經(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、寫論文報告等等。因?yàn)檫@種表現(xiàn)普遍認(rèn)為應(yīng)該與所掌握、記住知識的多少相結(jié)合，但是我們也知道這種假設(shè)是值得推

23、敲的，有可能你學(xué)到的比成績單上反應(yīng)出來的要多，也有可能要少。在缺少更精準(zhǔn)的測量工具的情況下，我們只能認(rèn)為你的B代表著你對于這門學(xué)科的掌握不夠，充其量是一個不明確的標(biāo)志。 你的成績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ｋm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等級是衣服外的價格標(biāo)簽，穿上生活的衣裳后就與標(biāo)簽沒有任何關(guān)系了。 作為表現(xiàn)者與作為人類這個身份的學(xué)生是不一樣的，這種差別需要我們時刻牢

24、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候。當(dāng)時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付的學(xué)生。 我感覺其中一位用了一種明智的方法對付我們。每當(dāng)星期天的晚上，他就會來到當(dāng)?shù)鼐瓢?，那里總有許多GI-Bill的學(xué)生光顧。他會坐下來和他們喝酒、開玩笑，和班上的學(xué)生們分享各種故事。那些學(xué)生們最近剛換下他們參軍的制服，有曾經(jīng)排里的中士、轟炸機(jī)駕駛員、下士、陸軍上尉、中尉、指揮官、陸軍上校，其中甚至有陸軍中校。所有人都十分享受與他交流，他自己也是。第二天早上，他會走進(jìn)教室后分發(fā)卷子給所有人考試，一場會有一半人掛掉

25、的艱難考試。 奇怪的是，掛掉的那些人也不會討厭他。他們也不會厭惡他身份的變化，從一個友善的朋友變成壓迫性的老師。相反他們喜歡他所以會在他的課上不斷努力學(xué)習(xí)，最終學(xué)期結(jié)束的時候很好的掌握這門課程——經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)。這樣的教書技巧我都無法解釋清楚，但我相信，他很好的區(qū)分了學(xué)生們的身份，作為教室里的學(xué)習(xí)者和單純的人類身份。這樣的區(qū)分客觀的判斷了你的失望與你得到的B。 客觀性。盡管人們在階層上、獲得教育的程度都不一樣，但從根本上大家吸收的知識都來自相同的生活素材，也因?yàn)橛泄餐那楦芯o密連接，開心也好害怕也罷，遭受的痛苦與獲得的成就。認(rèn)識到這點(diǎn)是重要的。戰(zhàn)爭、疾病、公共和私人中的重大變故，這些是生活中更大的

26、共通點(diǎn)。意識到這點(diǎn)后會發(fā)覺社會標(biāo)簽其實(shí)是一種基本的無關(guān)與誤導(dǎo)。這些標(biāo)簽在復(fù)雜的社會職責(zé)分配中確實(shí)很有必要，我們需要知道能相信誰，他又能做什么，所以就有分?jǐn)?shù)、等級、職位、責(zé)任的差異。但是從人性出發(fā)的時候這些真的不需要太過看重，看待自身還是別人都一樣。 即便是從成就看，B這個標(biāo)簽也并不意味著你永遠(yuǎn)就是只能達(dá)到B成就的人。我清楚的知道B檔的學(xué)生以后還可能得到B就像A檔學(xué)生還會更容易取得A。但是學(xué)術(shù)學(xué)習(xí)只是一條窄窄的限定好的高速公路，畢業(yè)出去后碰到的就是雜亂無章的田野，充滿波折。你曾經(jīng)學(xué)到的東西也許在開始能幫你找到要走的路，但接下來就都要靠自己，在阻止我們前行的漫天大霧中定位目標(biāo)、找準(zhǔn)機(jī)遇了。