成功关键 智商还是性格?

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。