耶鲁校长开学演讲：我们应该成为什么样的学习者？

导读

近日，耶鲁大学发布校长彼得·沙洛维（Peter Salovey）致新生的演讲，在这个技术创新呼啸着奔向未来的时代，我们应该成为什么样的学习者？公元前七世纪，希腊诗人讲述了一个关于狐狸和刺猬的故事，自此之后，狐狸和刺猬成为两种对称出现的学习者代表，“狐狸观天下之事，刺猬以一事观天下”，狐狸寻求广泛的知识，刺猬向内追寻世界的根本原则。我们要如何寻求自己的求知之路？耶鲁校长讲给新生的这番话，可能启迪所有人的思考。

 

Your education in Yale College will expose you to some grand ideas that may seem compelling as unifying life philosophies. You will learn about and from some brilliant hedgehogs and brilliant foxes. But at this stage of your education, I want to urge you to emulate the fox. As inspired as you might be by a single idea or way of looking at the world, I suggest that you entertain many different ways of thinking and consider various points of view. Try them all on; see what fits you best.

在耶鲁的本科学习过程中，你们会接触到一些伟大的思想，堪称很好的人生哲学。也会了解并且师从一些“伟大的刺猬”与“伟大的狐狸”。但是在这个阶段，我想鼓励大家多效仿狐狸。你可能会对某一种思想或世界观产生强烈的共鸣，但是我建议你们，多学习不同的思想、多考虑不同的观点。尽量都去尝试一下，最后再决定什么是最适合自己的。

 

The beauty of a liberal education – the education that Yale College offers – is that it liberates you from having to pursue a narrow, vocationally-oriented program of study. I hope you will take advantage of – and enjoy – this intellectual freedom. You will be able to choose from a wide variety of courses, learning about how people in many different fields think and understand the world. Your professors will introduce you to a panoply of ideas and ask you to think critically about all of them. You will be expected to question conventional orthodoxies rather than subscribe to a single view of the world. This work will be challenging – have no doubt – but it will also be exhilarating and, yes, liberating.

人文教育之美在于将你从狭隘的、以职业为导向的学习计划中解放出来——这也正是耶鲁本科学院所提供的教育。我希望你们能够好好利用并享受这种思想自由。你们可以选择各种课程，了解不同领域的人是如何思考并理解这个世界的。你们的教授会给你们介绍很多丰富有趣的观点，并且要求你们进行思辨。教授会要求你们对那些正统观念提出质疑，而不是对某一观点深信不疑地接受。这样的学习，毫无疑问，将充满挑战，但也是思想解放、振奋人心的一次经历。

 

There will be plenty of time later to hone your focus, to specialize and develop your expertise. Perhaps you’ll decide to pursue a doctorate or attend professional school. And there may even be times here at Yale College when you will delve deeply into a certain topic for a paper or a project. When I received my graduate education here at Yale, for example, there were times when I had to be a hedgehog. Hedgehogs, too, have many fine qualities.

之后，你们会有很多时间寻找自己要专攻的方向，培养自己的专长。也许你将继续深造，攻读博士学位，也许会进入某个专业学院学习。甚至在这里学习期间，有时会为了一篇论文或是一个课题深入研究某个问题。比如，当我在耶鲁读研究生时，有时候不得不像一个刺猬。刺猬也有许多优良的品质。

 

But over the years, I have loved seeing generations of Yale College students embrace the opportunity to think broadly and study widely. You’ll also develop as flexible thinkers and clear communicators. These foxlike attributes will serve you well no matter what you do after graduation.

多年来，我很高兴看到一代又一代的耶鲁本科学生抓住机会，广泛地思考与学习。你们也将锻炼你们灵活思考和清楚交流的能力。无论你们毕业后从事什么样的工作，这些长项都能够对你们有所帮助。

 

In fact, there are good reasons to believe that learning to think like a fox may pay important dividends. As many of you know, I am a psychologist. And my research and teaching have focused in the field of social psychology. And there is a social psychologist named Philip Tetlock at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the ability of foxes versus hedgehogs – the human kind – to predict and prepare for the future. (Tetlock completed his doctoral work here at Yale in our Department of Psychology, by the way.)

实际上，我们有理由相信像狐狸一样思考有很多好处。你们可能知道，我是一个心理学家。我的研究范围和教学领域都集中在社会心理学方面。在宾夕法尼亚大学，有一位名叫菲利普·泰特洛克(Philip Tetlock)的社会心理学家，他研究了人类中的“狐狸”与“刺猬”的能力，来推测和筹备未来。（对了，泰特洛克的博士研究也是在耶鲁心理学系完成的。）