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.
在培养孩子的问题上，美国的家长们正在经历一个分外焦虑的时期。现如今，在这个国家的各大城市，生活富足的家长之间争抢心仪幼儿园学位的竞争几乎到了角斗般的地步。最近，加州大学(University of California)的两名经济学家把这种在早期学业成就方面的竞争称作“幼儿竞争”(Rug Rat Race)。每一年，这种竞争似乎都比前一年开始得更早，程度也越来越激烈。
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.
家长的这种焦虑从根本上说源自所谓的认知假设这一观念。它鲜少被人宣扬，却是一个人们普遍持有的观念，那就是：如今要在美国获得成功，最重要的是取决于认知技能（即智商测试所测验的那种智力），而培养这些技能的最佳方式就是尽可能地多练习、尽可能早地开始练习。
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.
这种认知假设显然是有一些勉强之处的。它所描述的世界让人信以为是线型的，是有投入就有产出的这样一种明确的情况：家中的书少则表示孩子的阅读能力差；家长寡言少语，那么孩子的词汇量就少；你三岁孩子做过的数学作业越多，读小学时的数学成绩就越好。然而，过去十年来，尤其是近几年来，经济学家、教育家、心理学家和神经科学家等各个不同领域的专家开始提出了一些证据，对认知假设背后的前提提出了质疑。
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美国的儿童，特别是那些在比较舒适的生活环境中长大的儿童，在成长的过程中更是比以往任何时候都不用面对失败。他们认为，在孩子的成长中，最重要的事情并不是我们在孩子人生的早期阶段往他们的脑袋中塞进了多少信息，而在于我们是否能够帮助他们培养一系列截然不同的特质，它们包括毅力、自我控制、好奇心、责任心、勇气以及自信心。经济学家们把这些特质称为非认知技能，心理学家称其为人格特征，而我们其他普通民众通常都认为这就是性格。
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?
如果说有人处于这一跨学科新网络的中心的话，那就是詹姆斯•赫克曼(James Heckman)了。他是芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)的一名经济学家，曾在2000年摘得诺贝尔经济学奖的桂冠。近些年，赫克曼一直定期召集仅限受邀者参加的经济学家与心理学家会议，这些会议以这样或那样的形式涉及同样的问题：哪些技能与特质能够带来成功？它们在儿童期是如何形成的？何种干预措施可能有助于儿童做得更好？
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.
赫克曼职业领域的这一转变源于他在上世纪90年代末承担的一项有关普通教育发展项目(General Educational Development，其“GED”的名称更为人熟知)的研究。当时，该项目逐渐成为一个越来越受到高中退学学生欢迎的用以获得一份等同高中毕业文凭的证书的方式。GED的发展以认知假设的某个版本为基础，以认为学校培养的以及高中文凭认证的就是认知技能的观念为基础。如果一个十几岁的青少年已经具备从高中毕业的知识与头脑，那么依据这种逻辑，他就不必把时间浪费在实实在在读完高中上。他可以参加一项检验那些知识和技能的考试，通过考试的话，国家会认证他是一个合法的高中毕业生，与其他高中毕业生一样做好了准备继续读大学或者在中学毕业后从事其他职业。
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.
赫克曼希望更细致地研究这一观念，因此他对几个有关学生表现的国家级大型数据库进行了分析。他发现，GED背后的前提在许多重要方面都是有依据的。从成绩测验的得分来看，获GED证书的学生完全与高中毕业生一样聪明。然而，赫克曼在进一步研究他们的高等教育历程时发现，获GED证书的学生与高中毕业生的情况差异很大。他发现，在22岁时，获GED证书的学生只有3%的人被四年制大学录取或是修完了中学毕业后的某种学位，而高中毕业生的这一比例为46%。实际上，赫克曼还发现，在考虑到各种各样的重要的未来成就时，例如年收入、失业率、离婚率以及使用非法毒品等方面，获GED证书的学生的表现与高中退学学生是一致的，尽管他们额外获得了这个据信是比较宝贵的证书，而且他们的才智平均要比高中退学学生高出很多。
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.
这些研究结果向赫克曼提出了一个令人困惑的关于智力的问题。与大多数经济学家一样，过去他一直认为认知技能是个决定一个人未来生活状况的最可靠的因素。然而，现在他发现了这样一群人──GED文凭持有者，尽管他们的考试成绩不错，但这似乎对他们的最终成就没有起到任何积极作用。根据赫克曼的结论，这其中缺失的正是让高中毕业生完成学业的那种心理特质，或者说是非认知技能。
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.
那么，家长能够做些什么来帮助他们的孩子培养诸如积极性和毅力这样的技能呢？实际情况是，在事关非认知技能时，有关认知假设的传统做法──更早开始练习更多地练习──就行不通了。孩子们不会因为多花了一些时间就变得擅长于克服失望情绪，他们也不会因为没有在足够早的时候开始进行好奇心练习就会在这方面落后于其他孩子。
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，若要帮助孩子培养非认知技能（也就是说塑造他们的性格），家长所能做的最有价值的事情或许就是什么都不做。家长要少干预一些，要让孩子们独自面对一些困境，任由他们摔倒、无人扶持。现如今，你要是和一些教学质量优异的高中的老师和行政管理人员谈话，就会发现这是他们最大的担忧：学生们在家中和学校受到过度保护，不会遭遇困境，因此他们从未培养出克服实际挫折的关键能力，相应地也没有在这个过程中形成坚毅的性格。
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.
美国的儿童，特别是那些在比较舒适的生活环境中长大的儿童，在成长的过程中更是比以往任何时候都不用面对失败。当然，他们同样也学习刻苦，常常也会承受很多压力。但是，实际上他们接受教育的过程比以往任何一代人都更容易更顺利，他们中的许多人都能够不用面临任何重大挑战就顺利从大学毕业。话说回来，如果赫克曼的这项新研究正确的话，那就意味着这些孩子的学校、他们的家庭以及他们所处的文化可能都会因为没有为他们提供更多奋斗的机会而给他们帮倒忙。克服困境是塑造性格之要素，而性格是比智商还重要的造就真正的和长远的成功的要素。