Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more curious, less afraid of what he doesn't know,
几乎所有小孩,第一天迈进学校大门的时候,对一切未知的事物都感到新鲜、好奇,毫不畏惧,
better at finding and figuring things out, more confident, resourceful, persistent and independent than he will ever be again in his schooling
他们善于发掘和塑造新的东西,更加自信、聪慧、耐心和独立,但是可能在上学之后,甚至一辈子都回不到以前的那种状态了,
or, unless he is very unusual and very lucky, for the rest of his life.
除非他非常特立独行或者十分幸运。
Already, by paying close attention to and interacting with the world and people around him,
其实,孩子们早已经被身边关注的人和世界所影响,
and without any school-type formal instruction,
这种影响并不是建立在学校标准教育模式下,
he has done a task far more difficult, complicated and abstract than anything he will be asked to do in school,
他就已经开始在无人教导的情况下克服了重重困难
or than any of his teachers has done for years.
甚至解决了老师困顿多年的问题。
He has solved the mystery of language.
通过观察,
He has discovered it-babies don't even know that language exists-and he has found out how it works and learnt to use it appropriate.
他发现婴儿们根本不知道语言的存在,并且发现了它是如何工作以及如何正确地使用它,因此他破解了语言之谜。
He has done it by exploring, by experimenting, by developing his own model of the grammar of language,
通过探索,实验,发掘自己语言里的语法模型,
by trying it out and seeing whether it works by gradually changing it and refining it until it does work.
并试着观察是否在工作中将它逐步改变和提炼,最终获得成功。
And while he has been doing this, he has been learning other things as well,
当然,在做这些事情的时候,他也学习着其他的知识,
including many of the concepts that the schools think only they can teach him,
包括许多学校认为只有在校园里才能学到的概念
and many that are more complicated than the ones they do try to teach him.
以及比他们所研究的更加复杂的东西教给他。