编译_黄立旖（实习记者）

优秀的绵羊

编译_黄立旖（实习记者）

八月初，一篇标题为《精致的利己主义者和常青藤的绵羊》的文章被疯狂转载，原始文章阅读量迅速突破两百万。作者在文中将《优秀的绵羊》中的美式教育批判和中式教育批判做了一个平行对比，到底是换汤不换药还是旧杯装新茶，读者不妨自行做评判。

This book, in many ways, is a letter to my twenty-year-old self. It talks about the kinds of things I wish that someone had encouraged me to think about when I was going to college—such as what the point of college might be in the first place.

这本书，写给二十岁的我自己。它包含了许多值得思考的话题，早在我快要上大学的时候，我就希望有人能这样鼓励我思考。

I was like so many kids today (and so many kids back then). I went off to college like a sleepwalker, like a zombie. College was a blank. College was the“next thing.” You went to college, you studied something, and afterward you went on to the next next thing, most probably some kind of graduate school.

我和现在的大多数孩子一样，行尸走肉般地选择了上大学这条路。大学对我来说是个未知数，它只是理所当然的“下一站”。考大学，学点东西，然后再按部就班去读研。

Up ahead were vaguely understood objectives: status, wealth, getting to the top—in a word, “success.” As for where you went to school, that was all about bragging rights, so of course you chose the most prestigious place that let you in. What it meant to actually get an education, and why you might want one—how it could help you acquire a self, or develop an independent mind, or find your way in the world—all this was off the table. Like kids today, I was processed through a system everyone around me simply took for granted.

有一些目标在牵引着迷糊的我：地位、财富、削尖脑袋挤进上流社会。总的来说，就是要取得成功。选择大学就是选择可以吹嘘的资本，所以你理所当然，会在录取你的学校中选择一所最有名的大学。至于接受高等教育的意义，为什么你要接受这种教育，它会如何开发自我，培养独立的思维，或者教你在这个世界上立足，这统统不是你会考虑的重点。就像现在的孩子一样，我和周围的人都把读大学当成想当然的事情。

I started college in 1981. The system, then, was in its early days, but it was already, unmistakably, a system, a set of tightly interlocking parts. When I speak in this book of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them: the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants, test-prep courses and enrichment programs; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brandname graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the BA; and the parents and communities, largely upper middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

我1981年读的大学。高等教育体系在那时候还处于起步阶段，但毫无疑问，它已经开始成形。我在这本书谈的精英教育指的是一些名校，比如哈佛、斯坦福，或是威廉姆斯学院，还有更多二线的重点学校，但同时它也指通往大学的必由之路：私立的和优质的公立高中；……