通才教育永远让人受益 The timeless benefits

It is hard to imagine life without digital search and the internet. This is as true for me as for anyone else: the greater ease of obtaining and checking relevant facts and data has transformed the life of the columnist. Pulling books from library shelves and turning their pages was never an efficient search technique, even if sometimes an entertaining and instructive one. But exercises that once required hours in a library, and were often unproductive, can now usually be accomplished with a few mouse clicks.

很难想象没有数字搜索和互联网的生活会怎样。对于我以及任何其他人来说都是如此：更轻松地获取并核实相关事实与数据，已使专栏作家的生活彻底改观。取下图书馆书架上的书然后逐页翻查从来不是一种高效率的检索方法，即使有时这是一项有趣且增进知识的努力。但这种曾经需要泡在图书馆数小时（而且往往徒劳）的工作，现在通常只需点击几下鼠标就可以完成。

This change, which has taken place in the 20 years since I first wrote a column for the Financial Times, highlights wider shifts in the nature of knowledge and corresponding methods of education. Today it is less important to know, and more important to know what is known. The options trader need not be familiar with Black-Scholes equations, though he must know that they exist, and that others give them weight: the lawyer need not recall the judge’s reasoning in Bloggs v Bloggs, but must still have the higher-level knowledge that guides her search for relevant cases.

发生在从我第一次为英国《金融时报》撰写专栏以来20年期间的这种变化，突显了知识的性质和相应教育方法的整体转变。如今，了解什么变得不那么重要，更重要的是知道什么是已知的。期权交易员不需要熟悉布莱克-斯科尔斯(Black-Scholes)公式，但他必须知道它们存在，而且其他人重视它们；律师不需要记住法官对Bloggs诉Bloggs案的推理，但仍必须掌握引导她搜索相关案例的更高层次的知识。

At the frontiers of knowledge, the finance academic who seeks to find a more advanced option pricing model, or the judge who must determine the case to which Bloggs v Bloggs applies, must still acquire personal mastery of all relevant information. But writing newspaper columns, running businesses, managing assets and advising clients in legal disputes are activities whose primary demand is synthesis. The ability to make connections between disparate sources of information is more critical than detailed familiarity with any specific source. This is the task that modern technology has made so much easier.

在知识前沿，试图找到更先进期权定价模型的金融学者、或者必须裁决Bloggs诉Bloggs判例是否适用的法官，仍必须掌握所有相关信息。但是撰写报纸专栏、经营企业、管理资产以及为陷入法律纠纷的客户提供咨询，这些活动需要的主要是信息综合。在迥然不同的信息源之间建立联系的能力，比熟知任何具体信息源更加重要。正是现代科技使得这项任务变得容易得多。

That is why the widespread belief that education should be focused more on the acquisition of job-specific knowledge is especially misconceived in the 21st century. Those who argue that more resources should be devoted to teaching Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) have a point, but not the point they generally make. It is beyond scandalous that so many people in positions of influence, especially in Britain and the US, are not only functionally innumerate, but do not feel embarrassed by that innumeracy. But this is because education is excessively specialist, not because it is insufficiently vocational. In England it is possible, and common, to abandon the study of any scientific subject at the age of 15, and the knowledge that they can opt out of any quantitative discipline allows young people to avoid applying themselves to these subjects at an earlier age.

这就是为什么“教育应更加专注于工作相关知识的获取”这种普遍看法在21世纪尤其不合时宜。那些认为应该将更多资源投入Stem学科（科学、技术、工程和数学）的人士说得有道理，但并非他们通常所说的那个理由。特别是在英国和美国，这么多位高权重的人不仅没有数字概念，还不以为意，这简直是丢脸的。但这是因为教育过度专业化，而不是因为不够职业化。在英格兰，15岁的孩子们可以——而且经常——放弃任何理科课程的学习，知道自己可以不选择任何涉及数字的学科使得孩子们年纪轻轻就回避这些课程。

Fareed Zakaria’s book this year defending liberal education — a tradition that introduces undergraduates to a wide range of subjects and approaches to knowledge — is very much to the point. And so is his refutation of philistine Republican governors (just Google Rick Scott, Rick Perry, or Patrick McCrory), who draw cheap laughs at the expense of philosophy and anthropology. A little capacity for reflection might reveal that morality is not simply a matter of common sense or reading a sacred text, and that an understanding of other cultures — or simply an acknowledgment that there are other cultures — might have led to better outcomes in, for example, Iraq.

美国知名知识分子法里德丠慢里亚(Fareed Zakaria)今年出版的捍卫通才教育（一项向本科大学生介绍多种不同学科和学习方法的传统）的新书相当切中要害。他对几个没水平的共和党州长——可以用谷歌(Google)搜索一下里克斯科特(Rick Scott)、里克椠里(Rick Perry)或者帕特里克麦克罗里(Patrick McCrory)——的驳斥也是如此，后者为了哗众取宠经常嘲笑哲学和人类学。一点点反思能力或许可以揭示，道德并非简单的常识或者阅读宗教经典，而理解其他文化（或者只是承认还有其他文化存在）或许本来可以在现实中带来更好的结果（如在伊拉克）。

It is a mistake to focus basic education on job-specific skills that a changing world will render redundant in a few years. The objective should be to equip students to enjoy rewarding employment and fulfilling lives in a future environment whose demands we can neither anticipate nor predict. In 20 years, we will probably not be using the Black Scholes model, or referring to the case of Bloggs v Bloggs. But the capacities to think critically, judge numbers, compose prose and observe carefully — the capacities that education can and should develop — will be as useful then as they are today.

将基础教育聚焦于与工作相关的具体技能是不对的，因为不断变化的世界可能在几年内让这些技能变得多余。目标应该是让学生们在一个我们无法预测或预作准备的未来环境从事富于回报的职业，有一个充实的人生。20年后，我们或许不会再使用布莱克-斯科尔斯模型，或者参照Bloggs诉 Bloggs判例。但批判性思考、数字演算、撰写文章和细心观察的能力——也就是教育能够（而且应该）开发的能力——在未来将同今天一样有用。