職場雙語:成功關鍵 智商還是性格?

We are living through a particularly anxious moment in the history of American parenting. In the nation's big cities these days, the competition among affluent parents over slots in favored preschools verges on the gladiatorial. A pair of economists from the University of California recently dubbed this contest for early academic achievement the 'Rug Rat Race,' and each year, the race seems to be starting earlier and growing more intense.

在培養孩子的問題上，美國的家長們正在經歷一個分外焦慮的時期。現如今，在這個國家的各大城市，生活富足的家長之間爭搶心儀幼兒園學位的競爭幾乎到了角鬥般的地步。最近，加州大學(University of California)的兩名經濟學家把這種在早期學業成就方面的競爭稱作“幼兒競爭”(Rug Rat Race)。每一年，這種競爭似乎都比前一年開始得更早，程度也越來越激烈。

At the root of this parental anxiety is an idea you might call the cognitive hypothesis. It is the belief, rarely spoken aloud but commonly held nonetheless, that success in the U.S. today depends more than anything else on cognitive skill - the kind of intelligence that gets measured on IQ tests - and that the best way to develop those skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible.

家長的這種焦慮從根本上說源自所謂的認知假設這一觀念。它鮮少被人宣揚，卻是一個人們普遍持有的觀念，那就是：如今要在美國獲得成功，最重要的是取決於認知技能（即智商測試所測驗的那種智力），而培養這些技能的最佳方式就是儘可能地多練習、儘可能早地開始練習。

There is something undeniably compelling about the cognitive hypothesis. The world it describes is so reassuringly linear, such a clear case of inputs here leading to outputs there. Fewer books in the home means less reading ability; fewer words spoken by your parents means a smaller vocabulary; more math work sheets for your 3-year-old means better math scores in elementary school. But in the past decade, and especially in the past few years, a disparate group of economists, educators, psychologists and neuroscientists has begun to produce evidence that calls into question many of the assumptions behind the cognitive hypothesis.

這種認知假設顯然是有一些勉強之處的。它所描述的世界讓人信以爲是線型的，是有投入就有產出的這樣一種明確的情況：家中的書少則表示孩子的閱讀能力差；家長寡言少語，那麼孩子的詞彙量就少；你三歲孩子做過的數學作業越多，讀小學時的數學成績就越好。然而，過去十年來，尤其是近幾年來，經濟學家、教育家、心理學家和神經科學家等各個不同領域的專家開始提出了一些證據，對認知假設背後的前提提出了質疑。

What matters most in a child's development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years of life. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us often think of them as character.

Charles Gullung美國的兒童，特別是那些在比較舒適的生活環境中長大的兒童，在成長的過程中更是比以往任何時候都不用面對失敗。他們認爲，在孩子的成長中，最重要的事情並不是我們在孩子人生的早期階段往他們的腦袋中塞進了多少信息，而在於我們是否能夠幫助他們培養一系列截然不同的特質，它們包括毅力、自我控制、好奇心、責任心、勇氣以及自信心。經濟學家們把這些特質稱爲非認知技能，心理學家稱其爲人格特徵，而我們其他普通民衆通常都認爲這就是性格。

If there is one person at the hub of this new interdisciplinary network, it is James Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago who in 2000 won the Nobel Prize in economics. In recent years, Mr. Heckman has been convening regular invitation-only conferences of economists and psychologists, all engaged in one form or another with the same questions: Which skills and traits lead to success? How do they develop in childhood? And what kind of interventions might help children do better?

如果說有人處於這一跨學科新網絡的中心的話，那就是詹姆斯•赫克曼(James Heckman)了。他是芝加哥大學(University of Chicago)的一名經濟學家，曾在2000年摘得諾貝爾經濟學獎的桂冠。近些年，赫克曼一直定期召集僅限受邀者參加的經濟學家與心理學家會議，這些會議以這樣或那樣的形式涉及同樣的問題：哪些技能與特質能夠帶來成功？它們在兒童期是如何形成的？何種干預措施可能有助於兒童做得更好？

The transformation of Mr. Heckman's career has its roots in a study he undertook in the late 1990s on the General Educational Development program, better known as the GED, which was at the time becoming an increasingly popular way for high-school dropouts to earn the equivalent of high-school diplomas. The GED's growth was founded on a version of the cognitive hypothesis, on the belief that what schools develop, and what a high-school diploma certifies, is cognitive skill. If a teenager already has the knowledge and the smarts to graduate from high school, according to this logic, he doesn't need to waste his time actually finishing high school. He can just take a test that measures that knowledge and those skills, and the state will certify that he is, legally, a high-school graduate, as well-prepared as any other high-school graduate to go on to college or other postsecondary pursuits.

赫克曼職業領域的這一轉變源於他在上世紀90年代末承擔的一項有關普通教育發展項目(General Educational Development，其“GED”的名稱更爲人熟知)的研究。當時，該項目逐漸成爲一個越來越受到高中退學學生歡迎的用以獲得一份等同高中畢業文憑的證書的方式。GED的發展以認知假設的某個版本爲基礎，以認爲學校培養的以及高中文憑認證的就是認知技能的觀念爲基礎。如果一個十幾歲的青少年已經具備從高中畢業的知識與頭腦，那麼依據這種邏輯，他就不必把時間浪費在實實在在讀完高中上。他可以參加一項檢驗那些知識和技能的考試，通過考試的話，國家會認證他是一個合法的高中畢業生，與其他高中畢業生一樣做好了準備繼續讀大學或者在中學畢業後從事其他職業。

Mr. Heckman wanted to examine this idea more closely, so he analyzed a few large national databases of student performance. He found that in many important ways, the premise behind the GED was entirely valid. According to their scores on achievement tests, GED recipients were every bit as smart as high-school graduates. But when Mr. Heckman looked at their path through higher education, he found that GED recipients weren't anything like high-school graduates. At age 22, Mr. Heckman found, just 3% of GED recipients were either enrolled in a four-year university or had completed some kind of postsecondary degree, compared with 46% of high-school graduates. In fact, Heckman discovered that when you consider all kinds of important future outcomes - annual income, unemployment rate, divorce rate, use of illegal drugs - GED recipients look exactly like high-school dropouts, despite the fact that they have earned this supposedly valuable extra credential, and despite the fact that they are, on average, considerably more intelligent than high-school dropouts.

赫克曼希望更細緻地研究這一觀念，因此他對幾個有關學生表現的國家級大型數據庫進行了分析。他發現，GED背後的前提在許多重要方面都是有依據的。從成績測驗的得分來看，獲GED證書的學生完全與高中畢業生一樣聰明。然而，赫克曼在進一步研究他們的高等教育歷程時發現，獲GED證書的學生與高中畢業生的情況差異很大。他發現，在22歲時，獲GED證書的學生只有3%的人被四年制大學錄取或是修完了中學畢業後的某種學位，而高中畢業生的這一比例爲46%。實際上，赫克曼還發現，在考慮到各種各樣的重要的未來成就時，例如年收入、失業率、離婚率以及使用非法毒品等方面，獲GED證書的學生的表現與高中退學學生是一致的，儘管他們額外獲得了這個據信是比較寶貴的證書，而且他們的才智平均要比高中退學學生高出很多。

These results posed, for Mr. Heckman, a confounding intellectual puzzle. Like most economists, he had always believed that cognitive ability was the single most reliable determinant of how a person's life would turn out. Now he had discovered a group - GED holders - whose good test scores didn't seem to have any positive effect on their eventual outcomes. What was missing from the equation, Mr. Heckman concluded, were the psychological traits, or noncognitive skills, that had allowed the high-school graduates to make it through school.

這些研究結果向赫克曼提出了一個令人困惑的關於智力的問題。與大多數經濟學家一樣，過去他一直認爲認知技能是個決定一個人未來生活狀況的最可靠的因素。然而，現在他發現了這樣一羣人──GED文憑持有者，儘管他們的考試成績不錯，但這似乎對他們的最終成就沒有起到任何積極作用。根據赫克曼的結論，這其中缺失的正是讓高中畢業生完成學業的那種心理特質，或者說是非認知技能。

So what can parents do to help their children develop skills like motivation and perseverance? The reality is that when it comes to noncognitive skills, the traditional calculus of the cognitive hypothesis - start earlier and work harder - falls apart. Children can't get better at overcoming disappointment just by working at it for more hours. And they don't lag behind in curiosity simply because they didn't start doing curiosity work sheets at an early enough age.

那麼，家長能夠做些什麼來幫助他們的孩子培養諸如積極性和毅力這樣的技能呢？實際情況是，在事關非認知技能時，有關認知假設的傳統做法──更早開始練習更多地練習──就行不通了。孩子們不會因爲多花了一些時間就變得擅長於克服失望情緒，他們也不會因爲沒有在足夠早的時候開始進行好奇心練習就會在這方面落後於其他孩子。

Instead, it seems, the most valuable thing that parents can do to help their children develop noncognitive skills - which is to say, to develop their character - may be to do nothing. To back off a bit. To let our children face some adversity on their own, to fall down and not be helped back up. When you talk today to teachers and administrators at high-achieving high schools, this is their greatest concern: that their students are so overly protected from adversity, in their homes and at school, that they never develop the crucial ability to overcome real setbacks and in the process to develop strength of character.

反之，若要幫助孩子培養非認知技能（也就是說塑造他們的性格），家長所能做的最有價值的事情或許就是什麼都不做。家長要少干預一些，要讓孩子們獨自面對一些困境，任由他們摔倒、無人扶持。現如今，你要是和一些教學質量優異的高中的老師和行政管理人員談話，就會發現這是他們最大的擔憂：學生們在家中和學校受到過度保護，不會遭遇困境，因此他們從未培養出克服實際挫折的關鍵能力，相應地也沒有在這個過程中形成堅毅的性格。

American children, especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than ever, shielded from failure as they grow up. They certainly work hard; they often experience a great deal of pressure and stress; but in reality, their path through the education system is easier and smoother than it was for any previous generation. Many of them are able to graduate from college without facing any significant challenges. But if this new research is right, their schools, their families, and their culture may all be doing them a disservice by not giving them more opportunities to struggle. Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.

美國的兒童，特別是那些在比較舒適的生活環境中長大的兒童，在成長的過程中更是比以往任何時候都不用面對失敗。當然，他們同樣也學習刻苦，常常也會承受很多壓力。但是，實際上他們接受教育的過程比以往任何一代人都更容易更順利，他們中的許多人都能夠不用面臨任何重大挑戰就順利從大學畢業。話說回來，如果赫克曼的這項新研究正確的話，那就意味着這些孩子的學校、他們的家庭以及他們所處的文化可能都會因爲沒有爲他們提供更多奮鬥的機會而給他們幫倒忙。克服困境是塑造性格之要素，而性格是比智商還重要的造就真正的和長遠的成功的要素。