Unit7LettertoaBStudent课文翻译综合教程二

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.精选文库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精选文库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.写给中等生的一封信你的期末成绩是一个B，一个过得去的等级。比许多年以前的及格C 等级要优秀多了。但是 A 等级在那个年代是十分少见的，我回想起来25 个人里只有两个人。但不管我们的标准如何， 它们还是在提升的，不过你可能会因为这个结果为自己没有考好而失望。我相信我说什么都无法消除你们心中的失望情绪，特别是在一个社会环境下等级的高低直接决定了你考的学校和拿到的特别项目好坏。你的失望感。负面的展望由这种情绪形成：失败、努力不够、好位置与好名声的丧失。成功的核心是在零和博弈的游戏中没有批发的成功可以供给，有了一个人的失败才能成为另一个人成功的垫脚石。你所

21、生所长的社会是唯成功论的，失败或者破产绝对是要命的罪恶。因为财富的多少明确的决定了未来能否被拯救。 也许在另一个不一样的社会中， 你对于失望的情绪能一笑而过，不过在我们的社会中不可能。我写这篇文章的目的是客观判断你们的失望情绪， 认真考虑你的等级意味着什么与不能说明什么， 我不想在这里争辩成绩无用论， 相反我希望告诉你们的是， 如果只是被它的外表所蒙蔽，那对于你们与他人来说，都是一种可怕的导向。作为大学成绩单的一种象征，你的成绩只能表明你已经成功的完成了特定课程的学习，达到了一定等级的熟练度。不过这种衡量你的表现的标准还是由传统的任务决定：参加考试、写论文报告等等。因为这种表现普遍认为应该与所

22、掌握、记住知识的多少相结合，但是我们也知道这种假设是值得推敲的，有可能你学到的比成绩单上反应出来的要多，也有可能要少。在缺少更精准的测量工具的情况下，我们只能认为你的 B 代表着你对于这门学科的掌握不够，充其量是一个不明确的标志。你的成绩也不能成为衡量基本能力与性格的标准。勇气、善良、智慧、好脾气，这些才是我们人类的重要性格特征。 虽然它们因为批发量少很重要， 但不幸的是它们无法成为我们课程学习中的一部分。当然如果你看重自己拥有的这些性格特征，那么就总会有出头之日而且远比那些只重视纸上那一点可怜分数的人好得多。你的 B 等级是衣服外的价格标签，穿上生活的衣裳后就与标签没有任何关系了。3精选文库作为表现者与作为人类这个身份的学生是不一样的，这种差别需要我们时刻牢记。第一次学习这种区别是在我参军期重新回到校园的时候。当时有一大群像我一样的人，比一般的学生要老， 着急着赶快获得学位继续生活，对学术生活里的习惯和考试极不耐烦。这是一群不怎么好对付的学生。我感觉其中一位用了一种明智的方法对付我们。每当星期天的晚上，他就会来到当地酒吧，那里总有许多GI-Bill的学生光顾。他会坐