从中国学校到常青藤大学的长征FromChinatotheIvies分析.docx

经济学家杂志 从中国学校到常青藤大学的长征 THE LONG MARCH FROM CHINA TO THE IVIES如果你读书一直靠死记硬背，又怎能通过美国顶尖大学让人头昏 眼花的招生程序，成为她所要寻找的“独一无二”学生呢？When you’ve learned by rote all your life, how do you craft the rounded personality that America’s top colleges’ baffling admissions processes demand?Brook larmer报道，2016年4/5月刊Brook Larmer|?APRIL/MAY 2016 作为中国解放军一位高级军官的女儿，任芙桐（音译）17年以来一直住在北京北面的一个军区大院儿里面。外国人不能进入军区大院，在这个四周围墙的建筑里有自己的银行，超市和洗衣店，常年由配枪的保安和走着正步的军人巡逻。As the daughter?of a senior colonel in China’s People’s Liberation Army, Ren Futong has lived all 17 years of her life in a high-walled military compound in northern Beijing. No foreigners are allowed inside the gates; the vast encampment, with its own bank, grocery store and laundromat, is patrolled by armed guards and goose-stepping soldiers.在军区大院儿长大的任芙桐有个英文名字莫妮卡，她从小就知道服从和守规的重要，接受的是最纯粹的忠诚和爱国主义教育。在学校里，学生们往往需要记住考试的标准答案，那些偏离答案的独立思想是不被鼓励的。莫妮卡告诉我，这样的目的是为了“让每一个人都一样”。Growing up in this enclave, Ren – also known as Monica, the English name she has adopted – imbibed the lessons of conformity and obedience, loyalty and patriotism, in their purest form. At her school, independent thought that deviated from the reams of right answers the students needed to memorise for the next exam was suppressed. The purpose of it all, Monica told me, was “to make everybody the same”.莫妮卡的童年大部分时间都是循规蹈矩的。她最终放弃了画画和书法，努力学习成了班上的尖子生。作为“学霸”，她以高分考进了北京一所重点高中，但此时，内心却开始有了叛逆的想法。心里的焦虑和只为考试而学的单调让她对高中三年的学习产生了恐惧。压力巨大的高考仅仅是为了得到一个分数，而这也是中国大学录取学生的唯一标准 。For most of her childhood, Monica did as she was expected to. She gave up painting and calligraphy, and rose to the top of her class. Praised as a “study god”, she aced the national high-school entrance exam, but inside she was beginning to rebel. The agony and monotony of studying for that test made her dread the prospect of three more years cramming for the gaokao, the pressure-packed national exam whose result – a single number – is the sole criterion for admissions into Chinese universities.两年前的一个春天的晚上，15岁的莫妮卡放学回家后，做了一个对于习惯服从的军人子弟而言大胆的决定，“我告诉