学校教育的徒劳

原文：Futility of schooling - supermemo.guru

Introduction

引言

This is a short story of a single student and a single test. The story is intended to illustrate the damage done by schooling. In terms of distress and futility, it is pretty representative of school life for Polish teens in 2017.

这是一个关于一个学生和一个测试的短篇故事。这个故事意在说明学校教育所造成的危害。就痛苦和徒劳而言，这是 2017 年的波兰青少年学校生活的典型代表^[1]。

To fully understand the message of this chapter, you could try with me a little exercise in memory. Please try to remember the following fact:

要完全理解这一章的意思，你可以试着和我一起做一点记忆练习。请尽量记住以下事实：

At the request of cesario Pizzorato, Charlatid the Great conquered all of Egypt from the Charlemagne Delgado beginning in 637 BC.

公元前 637 年，在凯撒里奥·皮佐拉托的要求下，查拉特大帝开始从查理曼·德尔加多征服了整个埃及。

Try to remember this fact until you finish reading this chapter. I will explain later.

试着记住这个事实，直到你读完这一章。我稍后会解释的。

Smart kid in a cage

关在笼子里的聪明孩子

Throughout this book I tried to explain that self-learning is essential for education. Here I show how self-learning can easily fail if employed wrongly.

在这本书^[2]中，我试图解释自学^[3]对教育是必不可少的。这里我要说明，如果使用不当，自学很容易失败。

When I meet her, Tanya is a smiling brisk-eyed 17-year-old full of youthful energy and joy of life. The happy picture of her youth is marred by one monstrous spoiler: compulsory schooling that seems to take over her entire life. I would totally not mind imposing a bit of learning on a young mind. On the face of it, education seems like a good idea. If it wasn't, school systems would have been dismantled or reformed long ago. However, a detailed analysis of Tanya's life shows me that schooling is not only futile, it is harmful to her health, self-esteem, and even bad for learning itself.

当我见到她的时候，谭雅是一个微笑着、眼神活泼的 17 岁女孩，充满了青春的活力和生活的乐趣。她青春的美好画面被一个可怕的破坏者破坏了：强制教育似乎占据了她的整个人生。我完全不介意把一点学问强加给年轻人。从表面上看，教育似乎是个好主意。如果不是这样的话，学校系统早就被拆除或改革了。然而，仔细分析谭雅的生活，我发现上学不仅是徒劳的，而且对她的健康、自尊，甚至对学习本身都是有害的。

Tanya is an intelligent and a diligent student. However, this fact is not reflected in how she thinks of herself. When I watch her handling her computer, or her smartphone, I can see the same agile fluency typical of a modern teenager. She moves fast between icons and applications, thumb-types on her smartphone, whisks over the touchpad, or strings texts fast on a laptop. She grasped SuperMemo in a minute. Her mom jokingly brands Tanya as an ADHD case. When the three of us talk, we are three cases of "ADHD". The discussion is chaotic, multi-threaded, rambling, and knotted. This immediately reveals the creative nature of Tanya. She is a talented artistic soul with great hopes for entering a school of jazz. She sings in a town's top choir and has her own teen band where she is a solo vocalist. Her aspirations in music remind me my own teen years, except she seems to do better in terms of execution and fitting the industry. Perhaps a dose of conformism injected by compulsory schooling helps her do well in a choir setting. Naturally, the same conformist qualities may later slow down her own solo career.

谭雅是一个聪明勤奋的学生。然而，这一事实并没有反映在她对自己的看法上。当我看着她操作她的电脑或智能手机时，我可以看到现代青少年典型的敏捷流畅。她在图标和应用程序之间快速移动，在智能手机上用拇指打字，在触摸板上快速移动，或者在笔记本电脑上快速输入文本。她很快就掌握了 SuperMemo。她妈妈开玩笑地称谭雅为多动症。当我们三个人交谈时，我们就是三个“多动症”。讨论是混乱的，多线索的，杂乱无章的，打结的。这立刻揭示了谭雅的创意天性。她是一位才华横溢的艺术灵魂，对进入爵士乐学校抱有很大希望。她在镇上顶尖的合唱团唱歌，并拥有自己的青少年乐队，在那里她是一名独唱歌手。她在音乐方面的抱负让我想起了我自己的青少年时代，除了她似乎在执行力和适应这个行业方面做得更好。也许强制教育给她注入了一剂循规蹈矩的东西，帮助她在合唱团的环境中表现出色。当然，同样的墨守成规的品质可能会放慢她自己的独唱生涯。

Corrupt circadian cycle

被破坏的昼夜节律周期

The whole damage done by schooling in Tanya's case begins with her lifestyle. For two decades now, I have been promoting free running sleep for good creative life and for good learning. Free running sleep is natural sleep without alarm clocks or medication. Tanya invented her own way of free running sleep with a twist needed to accommodate schooling. She wakes up with an alarm clock at 6:30 for school. When she returns, usually around 15:00, she is perfectly framed in time for an optimum post-school nap. That's the part in her sleep pattern, in which she compensates for sleep deprivation caused by early waking. The thing is that her nap usually lasts till 20:00. In essence, Tanya gets more quality sleep after school than she gets in the night. I have seen many cases of people running this kind of sleep schedule for years without much adverse effect. It seems to indicate that a good nap provides a good compensation for messed up night sleep. Needless to say, any form of organized life seems impossible on such a schedule. No wonder then that Tanya's sleep schedule quarrels with her musical endeavors that she needs to compress into weekends. As a result, on weekends, she sleeps much longer, usually till around 10:00-11:00. This reveals the degree of sleep deprivation she suffers when going to school. Good sleep on weekends makes it possible to skip napping and "get a life". However, constant switching between weekday and weekend sleep modes is not good for the sleep control system or health. No surprise then that Tanya says she is always sleepy and could "sleep for ever". This is a young creative mind craving for sleep necessary to optimize memories and rewire the maturing brain. In a monumental societal conspiracy, Tanya is denied one of the basic teen human rights: unrestricted sleep, which is the basis of brain development. The denial is orchestrated by compulsory schooling and lack of instructions on how to handle teen sleep in the adult world. In theory, Tanya might have synchronized her sleep with school, go to sleep at 21:30-22:30, wake up fresh at 6:30, and lead a happy life. This, however, would require rigorous discipline and a constant unworkable battle with temptations of teen life, and school requirements that impose the need to study for tests late in the night. Tanya's approach is simpler. In the first part of the day, after short nighttime sleep, she conforms with a stressful school schedule, and then she decompresses after returning home. After a long nap, she can approach learning with a bit of fresh mind. If Tanya was homeschooled, the whole problem of sleep would dissipate instantly.

在谭雅的案例中，学校教育所造成的全部损害始于她的生活方式。二十年来，我一直在提倡自由运行睡眠，这有助于创造良好的生活和学习。自由运行睡眠是不需要闹钟或药物的自然睡眠。谭雅发明了一种自己的自由运行睡眠方式，并为了适应学校的教育而做了一些调整。她在闹钟六点半起床去上学。当她回来的时候，通常是下午 3 点左右，她正好可以在放学后小睡一会儿。这是她睡眠模式中的一部分，她通过这种方式来弥补早醒造成的睡眠不足。问题是她的午睡通常会持续到晚上 8 点。基本上，谭雅放学后的睡眠质量比晚上高。我已经见过很多这样的例子，人们多年来都坚持这样的睡眠计划，但没有多少不良影响。这似乎表明，良好的午睡可以很好地弥补夜间睡眠的不足。不用说，在这样一个时间表上，任何形式的有组织的生活似乎都是不可能的。难怪谭雅的睡眠时间和她的音乐努力相冲突，她需要把音乐压缩到周末。因此，在周末，她睡得更久，通常要睡到 10 点到 11 点左右。这揭示了她上学时睡眠不足的程度。周末睡个好觉，你就可以少打个盹，好好生活了。然而，在工作日和周末之间频繁切换睡眠模式对睡眠控制系统或健康都没有好处。难怪谭雅说她总是很困，可以“睡到永远”。这是一种年轻的创造性思维，渴望睡眠，这是优化记忆和重塑成熟大脑的必要条件。在一个巨大的社会阴谋中，谭雅被剥夺了青少年最基本的人权之一：不受限制的睡眠，这是大脑发育的基础。这种否认是由强制教育和在成人世界中缺乏如何处理青少年睡眠的指导而精心策划的。从理论上讲，谭雅的睡眠时间可能与上学时间同步，晚上 21:30-22:30 睡觉，六点半精神饱满地起床，过着幸福的生活。然而，这需要严格的纪律，需要与青少年生活的诱惑进行长期而行不通的斗争，需要学校要求学生为考试复习到深夜。谭雅的方法更简单。在一天的前半部分，经过短暂的夜间睡眠，她遵循了压力很大的学校时间表，然后回家后她就会减压。睡了很长时间之后，她就能以精神的心态对待学习。如果谭雅在家接受教育，那么整个睡眠问题就会立刻消失。

Futile evening cramming

徒劳的晚上死记硬背

If all that torturous lifestyle served better learning, someone might say it is a necessity of modern adulthood where knowledge is key to survival and success. After all, Tanya is fresh and creative in the evening. That time could be used for good learning. It isn't. Schooling for Tanya is an exercise in utter futility. I met Tanya on the day she had a major test in history. That one test, ruined no less than two days of her life, and delivered no tangible knowledge of history that would last beyond a few days. That one test is a good summary of the evils of schooling that I describe throughout this article.

如果所有这些痛苦的生活方式有助于更好的学习，有人可能会说这是现代成年的必要条件，知识是生存和成功的关键。毕竟，谭雅在晚上很精神，很有创造力。这段时间可以用来好好学习。然而并非如此。谭雅上学是完全徒劳的练习。我认识谭雅是在她历史主修考试的那天。那一次测试，毁了她至少两天的生活，而且传授的历史知识也不能保持几天。这一个测试很好地总结了我在整篇文章中描述的学校教育的弊端。

Tanya passed the test with the lowest possible grade and ratched one more click towards her high school degree. I asked her to show me the book on which the test was based. I was instantly hit by the fact that the book was colorful and attractive. That stood in stark contrast to black&white books I learned from in the 1970s. My books were always yellowish of age and abused from being passed from student to student at the end of each school year. These days new textbooks are being written serially, and one of the main reasons for re-writes are political changes in the country.

塔尼娅以最低的成绩通过了考试，再来一次，她就能拿到高中学位了。我让她给我看一下考试所参考的那本书。这本书丰富多彩，引人入胜，这一事实立即打动了我。这与我在 20 世纪 70 年代学习的黑白书籍形成了鲜明的对比。我的书老得发黄，并因为每个学年末从一个学生传到另一个学生而损害。这些天来，新的教科书都是连续编写的，重写的主要原因之一是国家的政治变化。

Tanya's test was about the end of the Roman Empire. On the face of it, it sounded like an important subject, with knowledge delivered from a nice book, and the whole test preparations was based on self-learning, which I recommend throughout.

谭雅的考试是关于罗马帝国的终结。从表面上看，它听起来像是一门重要的学科，知识来自一本好书，而且所有的考试准备都是基于自学，这是我从头到尾推荐的。

When I peeked into the book, I could see that Tanya really made an effort. She used a highlighter pen to mark all important passages. Like a good incremental reader, she has done all her extracts to seed her long-term memory. There was only one caveat: too much material, too little time, and a total lack of prior knowledge scaffolding to build new knowledge upon. Tanya had 3 hours to rush through 60 pages of history.

当我偷看这本书的时候，我可以看出谭雅真的很努力。她用荧光笔标出了所有重要的段落。像一个优秀的渐进读者一样，她做了所有的摘抄，为自己的长期记忆埋下种子。只有一个警告：太多的材料，太少的时间，完全缺乏建立新知识的先验知识脚手架。谭雅只有三个小时匆匆读完 60 页的历史。

Tanya had only one evening for learning. It is not that she was a procrastinator who left all the test work for the last day. Other tests, homework and obligations left her with no choice. One evening. Take it or leave it. The volume of the material was so huge that it would be hard for a well-prepared brain to just read the texts with comprehension.

谭雅只有一个晚上可以学习。这并不是说她是一个拖拉的人，把所有的测试工作都留到了最后一天。其他的考试、作业和强制让她别无选择。一个晚上。要不要随你便。材料的数量如此之大，以至于一个准备充分的大脑也很难理解阅读的文本。

The lack of knowledge scaffolding instantly results in brain's natural rejection of the input. In Tanya's case, the learn drive has not been satisfied. Tanya hated every minute of that work for the test. She admitted interleaving learning with some visits to Facebook. It was not just the need to feed her learn drive with some token rewards. She actually needed some explanations from the web. Obviously, books do not hyperlink to references. This is why Tanya's mobile phone was useful in getting some clarifications. I believe those were the moments when she benefited most from the whole learning exercise. This was the time she was asking questions, and was getting answers on her own. If reading comprehension and general knowledge is all that she was actually working on, why not let the kid explore the world the way they want? Let them learn things they are interested in. In the end, the benefits would be comparable. In addition, kids might actually learn something useful in the area of their interest.

缺乏知识框架会立即导致大脑对输入的自然排斥。在谭雅的案例中，“学习内驱力^[4]”并没有得到满足。谭雅讨厌为考试而做的每一分钟的工作。她承认，在学习的同时，她还看了一些 Facebook。这不仅仅是需要用一些象征性的奖励来满足她的学习内驱力。她需要网上的一些解释。显然，书籍不会超链接到参考文献。这就是为什么谭雅的手机在用于获取澄清时是有用的。我相信这些是她从整个学习过程中受益最大的时刻。这是她问问题的时候，而且是她自己得到答案的时候。如果阅读理解和常识是她真正致力于的，为什么不让孩子们以他们想要的方式去探索这个世界呢？让他们学习他们感兴趣的东西。最终，好处是可以比较的。此外，孩子们可能会在他们感兴趣的领域学到一些有用的东西。

Hating history

讨厌历史

A creative brain cannot function for long without satisfying the learn drive. For Tanya, that reward came from Facebook, not from history. This is natural and this is justifiable. This is how the brain works and she had no means or tools to change that on that particular evening, or in her school life in general. Tanya went to sleep at 1:30 am, could not fall asleep for a longer while (perhaps even an hour), and woke at 6:30 brain dead. She called her morning schedule on that day "sleep walking". In a cruel twist of school scheduling, her history test was the only reason she had to get to school on that day. She was back shortly after 9 am, and naturally, was unable to stay conscious or sane for long. She nodded off till 14:00. This odd sleep block violated her circadian rhythm demands and contributed to further ripples in her sleep cycle synchrony. Such ripples can last for days and totally steal energy from a brain that is supposed to pile up more learning. This asynchrony and sleep deprivation time is also when chances of winter infections increase. Infections entail a prospect of more days of sub-par productivity. This is a monumental waste of young life, health and energy.

如果不满足学习内驱力^[4]，一个有创造力的大脑就不能长期工作。对谭雅来说，奖励来自 Facebook，而不是历史。这是自然的，也是正当的。这就是大脑的运作方式，在那个特定的晚上，或者在她的学校生活中，她没有办法或工具去改变这一点。谭雅凌晨 1 点 30 分睡觉，很长一段时间都睡不着(可能甚至一个小时)，6 点半醒来时大脑宕机。她把那天早上的安排称为“梦游”。在学校安排的残酷折磨中，她的历史考试是她那天必须去学校的唯一原因。她早上 9 点刚过就回来了，很自然地，她无法长时间保持清醒或理智。她一直睡到下午两点。这种奇怪的睡眠障碍违反了她的昼夜节律需求，并导致了她睡眠周期同步的进一步波动。这种涟漪可以持续数天，完全窃取了大脑的能量，而大脑本应积累更多的知识。这种不同步和睡眠剥夺的时间也是冬季感染几率增加的时候。感染会导致未来更长的时间生产力低于平均水平。这是对年轻生命、健康和精力的极大浪费。

The reasons for Tanya's hating her history learning experience are obvious and natural. Her knowledge of history is almost a perfect mirror of that of Rafael tested here and of myself in 1980. She even beat Rafael soundly on Polish monarchs test. Among high school teens, except for those with particular interest in history, knowledge of history is vestigial despite hundreds of hours of lectures, homework, assignments and tests. Unlike most students (incl. myself back in 1980), Tanya is no slacker. She is actually diligent in those small time allocations for homework. Moreover, as I show later, even a well-prepared brain does not take those books of history well in conditions similar to Tanya's.

谭雅痛恨她的历史学习经历的原因是显而易见的，也是自然的。她的历史知识几乎完美地反映了拉斐尔和我 1980 年在这里接受测试的情况。她甚至在波兰君主测试中彻底击败了拉斐尔。在高中青少年中，除了那些对历史特别感兴趣的人之外，尽管有数百个小时的讲座、家庭作业、作业和考试，但历史知识仍然是残存的。与大多数学生不同(包括 1980 年的我)，谭雅并不懒惰。事实上，她在那些分配给家庭作业的小时间里很勤奋。此外，正如我稍后所展示的那样，即使是一个准备充分的大脑，在与谭雅类似的条件下^[5]也不能很好地阅读这些历史书籍。

I picked one of the highlighted sentences in her book. The highlight is an indicator of two things: (1) she read the sentence while learning, and (2) she considered it important. The sentence was: "Zeno asked Theodoric the Great to capture Italy from Scirian Odoacer in 488". This seems like an important event in the history of the Roman Empire. The sentence is probably understandable to you. You would not suffer that deep into my article if you did not carry a great deal of general knowledge. Knowledge is essential in reading and text comprehension. It helps reading my article and it helps reading a book of history.

我从她书中高亮的句子中挑了一句。高亮说明了两件事：(1)她边学习边读句子，(2)她认为这句话很重要。这句话是：“488 年，芝诺要求西奥多里克大帝从西里安·奥多塞克手中夺取意大利”。这似乎是罗马帝国历史上的一件大事。这句话你大概可以理解。如果你不具备大量的常识，你就不会在我的文章中受如此深的折磨。知识在阅读和文本理解中是必不可少的。这有助于阅读我的文章，也有助于阅读一本历史书籍。

Having just passed her history test, Tanya had some recall of the sentence. It was sort of "right church, wrong pew", but she definitely remembered Odoacer and Theodoric. I asked her who Odoacer was, she did not remember. I looked for explanations in the text and there was a mention of Odoacer as a leader of "some" Germanic tribe. However, that mention came 2 pages earlier. Tanya excused herself with a typical schoolgirl excuse: "I do not recall. That was from the last test". She had no idea who Zeno was or what Scirian meant. In her mind, the sentence could equally be "some guy, asked some guy Theodoric to capture Italy from some guy Odoacer in 488". Now I came to test Tanya's knowledge of the context. And here comes the bombshell: she could not provide any! She knew this was a test on the Fall of the Roman Empire and Dark Ages. However, she could not place the fall on the timeline. She was a bit embarrassed when I asked: Did Rome fall in more like 1000 AD or 0 AD? To help Tanya, I made it more preposterous: Did Rome fall in more like 1000 AD or 0 AD or perhaps 2000 AD? This made her take a shot for 0 AD. She did not even know the differences between the Monarchy, Republic or Empire stages, so the word "emperor" was hazy as well. This is the exactly same thing that happened to Kevin Kruse's kids.

谭雅刚刚通过了她的历史考试，她对这句话有一些回忆。这有点像是“进对房，上错床”，但她绝对记得奥多阿瑟和西奥多里克。我问她奥多亚瑟是谁，她不记得了。我在课文中寻找解释，里面提到奥多阿瑟是“某个”日耳曼部落的首领。然而，这一提法出现在两页之前。谭雅用一个典型的女学生借口为自己辩解道：“我不记得了，那是上次考试的结果。”她不知道齐诺是谁，也不知道西里安是什么意思。在她看来，这句话同样可以是“某个家伙，让某个家伙西奥多里克在 488 年从某个家伙 Odoacer 手中夺取意大利”。现在我来测试谭雅对上下文的了解。令人震惊的是：她什么都答不出！她知道这是对罗马帝国灭亡和黑暗时代的测验。然而，她无法将灭亡放在时间线上。当我问她罗马是在公元 1000 年还是公元 0 年时灭亡，她有点尴尬。为了帮助谭雅，我让这个问题变得更加荒谬：罗马是在公元 1000 年、公元 0 年还是公元 2000 年灭亡？这让她尝试了公元 0 年。她甚至不知道君主制、共和制和帝国阶段之间的区别，所以“皇帝”这个词也是模糊不清的。这就是发生在凯文·克鲁斯的孩子们身上的一模一样的事情。

Now it all became clear that the sentence in the book would mean and carry exactly the same message if it read:

现在一切都变得很清楚了，如果书中的句子是这样写的，那么它的意思和传达的信息是完全相同的：

At the request of cesario Pizzorato, Charlatid the Great conquered all of Egypt from the Charlemagne Delgado beginning in 637 BC.

公元前 637 年，在凯撒里奥·皮佐拉托的要求下，查拉特大帝开始从查理曼·德尔加多征服了整个埃及。

The substitution would not make much of a semantic difference in terms of neural storage in her memory!

就她记忆中的神经存储而言，这种替代不会产生太大的语义差异！

More volume, less learning

更多的数量，更少的学习

I borrowed the history book from Tanya to see if the text could be blamed for the problem. I analyzed the table of contents, structure of chapters, mnemonic power of illustrations, clarity, language, etc. The book passed all tests. I would even say it was interesting. It had only one flaw, it carried too much information considering the capacity of a teen schedule and the capacity of teen memory. When I tried to replicate the effort of 60 pages in 3 hours with much older Tamara, I observed similar repulsive forces that can turn an interesting book into an object of hate.

我从谭雅那里借了这本历史书，看看这个问题是否可以归咎于课文。我分析了目录，章节结构，插图的助记力，清晰度，语言等，这本书通过了所有的测试。我甚至会说这很有趣。它只有一个缺陷，考虑到青少年日程的容量和青少年记忆的容量，它承载了太多的信息。当我试着用 3 个小时的时间把 60 页的书再现给比我年长得多的塔玛拉时^[5]，我观察到了类似的排斥力，可以把一本有趣的书变成仇恨的对象。

Kids hardly have time to read their books and most of that reading is an exercise in futility. The speed of learning enforced by schooling exceeds their natural channel capacity. From electrical engineering we know that this leads to an exponential increase in error rate up to the point when learning is replaced with chaos.

孩子们几乎没有时间读书，而且大部分阅读都是徒劳的。学校强迫的学习速度超过了他们自然的信道容量。从电气工程中我们知道，这会导致错误率呈指数增长，直到学习被混沌所取代。

The faster the train, the lesser the chance to enjoy the landscape views. At some speed, beautiful rainforest and a post-industrial wasteland look all the same.

火车越快，欣赏风景的机会就越少。在某种程度上，美丽的热带雨林和后工业时代的荒地看起来都是一样的。

Tanya's self-learning exercise failed because it was not self-directed and it was not self-paced.

谭雅的自学^[3]练习失败了，因为它不是自我指导的，也不是自我节奏的。

Autopilot of learned helplessness

习得性无助的自动驾驶仪

You may instantly come to question Tanya's smarts and her capacity to learn. If so, you would be wide off the mark. I heard Tanya sing. I was a singer one day too. I know a talent when I see it. I saw her sing at the age of 8. She was truly precocious. She was a vivacious star! You cannot be a great singer without a great brain. I know Tanya is super-smart. If you read this chapter carefully, you may notice, she is on her way to re-inventing my own claims to fame: free running lifestyle and incremental reading! It is the educational system that drives her into a corner of low self-esteem and stagnation.

你可能会立刻开始质疑谭雅的聪明才智和她的学习能力。如果是这样的话，你就大错特错了。我听到谭雅·唱歌了。我以前也当过歌手。我一眼就能看出谁是天才。我看过她在 8 岁时的唱歌，她真的很早熟。她是一位活泼的明星！没有伟大的头脑，你就不可能成为伟大的歌手。我知道谭雅超级聪明。如果你仔细阅读这一章，你可能会注意到，她正在重塑我自己的成名宣言：自由运行生活方式和渐进阅读！是教育体系把她逼到了一个缺乏自尊和停滞不前的角落。

She questions her own intelligence. She faces pressures from all directions to perform better. She in a vice of teen life that will constantly bombard her with messages undermining her self-esteem. Even her smart and loving mom has an unwitting contribution. She wants Tanya to do well. When she confronts teachers at school, she battles for her kid ferociously. At home, when school reports comes in mediocre, mom is doing her best to spur Tanya to action. It does not take long for the smartest man out there to spill unintentional phrase of abuse like: "When I was your age...", or "I expected you to...". This is another click down the self-esteem ratched. In that sense, her mom is in a vice as well. School affects mom-child relationship.

她质疑自己的智力。她面临着来自四面八方的压力，要求她表现得更好。她处于青春期的恶习中，会不断地用破坏她自尊的信息轰炸她。即使是她聪明而慈爱的母亲也在不知不觉中出了力。她希望谭雅做得好。当她在学校与老师对峙时，她会为自己的孩子激烈地争斗。在家里，当学校成绩平平时，妈妈会尽最大努力促使谭雅采取行动。用不了多久，最聪明的人就会无意中说出一些辱骂的话，比如：“当我像你这么大的时候……”，或者“我希望你会……”。这是自尊心的又一次下降。从这个意义上说，她妈妈也有恶习。学校影响母子关系。

Why does not Tanya pause and ask "What's the point of such learning?". The reason is learned helplessness. Her reasoning is this: "If millions of people go through the same routine, I have to go through it too. Learning is like work. Nobody likes it. If it goes wrong, I should blame myself! After all, millions succeeded before me!". This sets her up for inevitable failure, self-blame and a kick to self-esteem. This is a phenomenon that may lead to serious mental issues later in life. This is a phenomenon that has the potential for turning cheerful Tanya into a depressed mom or a depressed employee just a decade later. Looking back then at those videos of a cheerful precocious 8-year-old dancer will be unbearable.

谭雅为什么不停下来问问自己：“这种学习的意义何在？”原因是习得性无助^[6]。她的理由是：“如果数以百万计的人都经历同样的例行公事，我也必须这样做。学习如同工作。没人喜欢它。如果出了差错，我应该责备自己！毕竟，在我之前有数百万人成功过！”这给她带来了不可避免的失败、自责和自尊心的打击。这种现象可能会在以后的生活中导致严重的精神问题。这种现象有可能在短短十年后就把原本快乐的谭雅变成一个抑郁的母亲或一个抑郁的员工。现在回想起一个 8 岁的早熟的快乐舞蹈演员的视频，真是让人难以忍受。

Tanya runs her life in an autopilot mode: get up early, battle tiredness and school obligations, catch some sleep after school, get 3 hours to cram 60 pages from a textbook, learn till 1 am, toss and turn till 3 am, and "crown" the day with 3 hours of sleep, while her brains needs 8-9 hours for good performance. There is no room for contemplation, reflection, or opposition. There is no inner power to combat the status quo. She is being compressed into a conformist member of society. Only her music gives her an outlet and a chance to retain her individuality. Nobody around seems to able to help. My own helplessness is pretty frustrating too. I only hope that everyone reading those words will make an oath of never impose a similar torture on his own kids or people around.

谭雅的生活处于自动驾驶模式：早起，与疲惫和学业强制作斗争，放学后打个盹，有 3 个小时的时间死记硬背 60 页课本，学习到凌晨 1 点，辗转反侧到凌晨 3 点，用 3 个小时的睡眠来“圆满”一天，而她的大脑需要 8-9 个小时才能表现良好。没有沉思、反思或反对的余地。没有对抗现状的内在力量。她正被压缩成社会中一名墨守成规的人。只有她的音乐给了她发泄的机会和保持个性的机会。周围似乎没有人能帮忙。我自己的无助也相当令人沮丧。我只希望每个读到这些话的人都能宣誓，永远不会对自己的孩子或周围的人施加类似的酷刑。

Million percent miscalculation

百分之一百万的误算

Let's make a quick calculation on the speed of flow of knowledge through a teen brain. You may recall the rough estimation which says that many or most kids end up high school with an equivalent of 200-400 SuperMemo items in history stored permanently in long-term memory. They may carry some 400-800 more items from recent exams, but that knowledge evaporates fast during the first year of college.

让我们快速计算一下知识在青少年大脑中的流动速度。你可能还记得一个粗略的估计，那就是许多或大多数孩子在高中结束时会在长期记忆中永久存储着相当于 200-400 个历史上的 SuperMemo 问答卡片。他们可能会从最近的考试中多带 400-800 道题，但在大学第一年，这些知识很快就会蒸发。

Recall that Tanya needed to read 60 pages for the test. I estimated that an average page in her book carried 15 highligthed sentences (i.e. sentences Tanya thought she should remember). Each sentence is worth some 3-5 SuperMemo items (assuming meticulous processing). This is roughly 10-20 times more knowledge that she will carry in history after the whole 4 years of high school. Her total memory of history might increase dramatically if she employed SuperMemo, but that won't happen. The pressures of the rush through books leave no room for rational learning. She limits her SuperMemo to English vocabulary because she believes English is vital for her music career.

还记得吗，谭雅考试要读 60 页。我估计在她的书里，平均每一页有 15 个加了标记的句子(也就是谭雅认为她应该记住的句子)。每句话相当于 3-5 个 SuperMemo 卡片(假设处理得很仔细)。这大概是她在高中四年后所掌握的历史知识的 10-20 倍。如果她使用 SuperMemo，她对历史的总记忆可能会显著增加，但这不会发生。匆忙读书的压力没有给理性学习留下任何空间。她把自己的 SuperMemo 限制在英语词汇上，因为她相信英语对她的音乐生涯至关重要。

Given the 3 hour window for reading, if Tanya was to sustain this speed of learning every evening throughout the school year, we would arrive at the speed of processing that is 10,000-20,000 times higher than her ability to retain information in the long term. Let me spell it out in case you thought it was a typo: Tanya is asked to read at the speed that is over one million percent faster than the speed with which her brain can actually retain information.

考虑到 3 小时的阅读时间，如果谭雅在整个学年每晚都保持这种学习速度，我们的处理速度将达到她长期记忆信息能力的 1 万到 2 万倍。我来解释一下，以防你认为这是一个拼写错误：谭雅被要求以比她大脑记忆信息的实际速度快 100 万倍的速度阅读。

This begs the question: hasn't there been anyone in any ministry of education anywhere who would make this calculation and pause? If she is to retain just one item per week, she would do better by simply reading a single page of text about that particular item. She could then do it slowly and with comprehension. Adding volume does not add speed. Instead it reduces comprehension and adds to the hate of schooling.

这就回避了一个问题：在任何地方的教育部里，难道没有人会做出这样的计算，然后停顿下来吗？如果她每周只记住一篇文章，她会做得更好，只需阅读关于该特定文章的一页文字。然后，她可以慢慢地、带着理解地做这件事。增加数量不会增加速度。相反，它降低了理解力，增加了对学校教育的憎恨。

Advice: Don't take school too seriously

建议：不要太把学校当回事

I mentioned that Daniel T. Willingham's diagnosis on why kids don't like school is a bit narrow. Peter Gray has a wider and more comprehensive diagnosis: it is the loss of freedom. It seems that Willingham's thinking is boxed by the inevitability of school. He seem to never consider that most kids would do better without a teacher on their own! However, Willingham's thinking on the limits of cognition are absolutely on the dot. In Tanya's case, Willingham diagnosis is very useful. For Tanya, the bar was raised too high. It was not raised just a bit too high, as often commented by Willingham. It was raised preposterously high. If school could just slow down by 1-2 orders of magnitude, kids would hate serfdom less viscerally.

我提到过丹尼尔·T·威林厄姆(Daniel T.Willingham)对孩子们为什么不喜欢学校的诊断有点狭隘。彼得·格雷(Peter Gray)有一个更广泛、更全面的诊断：那就是自由的丧失。看来威灵汉的思想受到学校必然性的束缚。他似乎从来没有想过，大多数孩子没有老师会过得更好！然而，威林厄姆关于认识极限的思想绝对是正确的。在谭雅的案例中，Willingham诊断非常有用。对谭雅来说，门槛提高得太高了。它并没有像威林厄姆经常评论的那样，被抬高了一点。它被高得离谱地高高举起。如果学校可以放慢 1-2 个数量级，孩子们就不会那么发自内心地憎恨农奴制了。

Teacher's idea to let kids learn on their own is great on the face of it. However it fails because of (1) volume, (2) time allocations, and (3) sleep disruption. One factor could change it all instantly: homeschooling. If Tanya could sleep naturally, read the book in the morning, and give it more time, she would do great. She could easily improve by an order of magnitude in a test administered with two months delay (to discount for the cramming effect on short-term memory).

老师让孩子们自学的想法从表面上看是很棒的。然而，由于(1)数量、(2)时间分配和(3)睡眠中断，它失败了。有一个因素可以立即改变这一切：在家上学。如果谭雅能自然入睡，早上读这本书，并给它更多的时间，她会做得很好。在延迟两个月的测试中，她可以很容易地提高一个数量级(以抵消对短期记忆的灌输效应)。

My original advice to Tanya was totally conservative, defensive, and near-defeatist: "Tanya! You got just 1.5 year of torture to go through. Do your minimum and make sure you get to your dream jazz school. As of then, hopefully, you will be able to take control of your life and LIVE!"

我最初给谭雅的建议是完全保守的、防御性的、几近失败主义的：“谭雅！你只有一年半的折磨要经历。尽你最小的努力，确保你能进入梦想中的爵士乐学校。从那时起，希望你能控制自己的生活，活下去！”

In theory, Tanya might try for homeschooling in her last year of high school. However, she is not ready. She never developed good learning habits, and that year of freedom might involve the stress of uncertainty. Her mom is open but skeptical. They got time till May 2017 to decide. This decision would be a major mental and schedule readjustment for the two.

理论上，谭雅可能会在高中最后一年尝试在家上学。然而，她还没有准备好。她从来没有养成良好的学习习惯，那一年的自由可能会带来不确定的压力。她妈妈很坦率，但持怀疑态度。他们有时间到 2017 年 5 月做出决定。这一决定将是两人在精神上和日程上的重大调整。

Test your knowledge of history

测试一下你的历史知识

Please answer the following questions from the history of Egypt:

请回答以下关于埃及历史的问题：

In which year did Charlatid the Great conquer Egypt? At whose request? Who did he beat in the process? To which ethnic group did Delgado belong to?

查拉提大帝是在哪一年征服埃及的？是谁要求的？他在这个过程中打败了谁？德尔加多属于哪个民族？

Did you answer correctly? Do you know what I am talking about? If not, skip back to the beginning of his chapter and the explanation.

你回答对了吗？你知道我在说什么吗？如果没有，请跳回对应章节和解释的开头。

You have just experienced Tanya's pain. You struggled with retaining knowledge for minutes. She got far more to remember and she had to remember it for far longer. She lost two days of her youthful life, messed up her sleep, and lost a bit of her health due to stress and sleep disruption. She was supposed to master answers to some 2000-3000 similar questions in just 3 hours late in the night after a day of heavy schooling.

你刚刚经历了谭雅的痛苦。你苦苦挣扎了几分钟才能记住知识。她有更多的东西要记住，而且她必须记住更长的时间。由于压力和睡眠中断，她失去了两天的青春生活，睡眠混乱，还失去了一点健康。经过一天的繁重学习，她需要在深夜仅 3 个小时就掌握 2000-3000 个类似问题的答案。

Does it not scream to your sense of justice? What are we doing to our kids?

听到这些你的良心不会痛吗？我们对我们的孩子做了什么？

I need to add that I am far more upset than Tanya. She must already be experiencing signs of learned helplessness. She accepts the reality. School is a must. School can be unpleasant. She is surviving. Her mom reports depression. Tanya's protest is internalized and waning.

我得说我比谭雅更难过。她一定已经有习得性无助^[6]的迹象了。她接受了现实。上学是必须的。学校生活有时很不愉快。她要生存。她的妈妈说她有抑郁症。谭雅的抗议被内化了，而且越来越弱。

← 返回目录