教育是否在扼杀孩子的天性?

在你们的文化里，教育是一个大杂烩——教育不仅来自学校，还来自报纸、电视、杂志与书籍，来自艺术，来自文化本身的反馈。出于本次讨论的目的，一般而言有两种教育——一种侧重于教孩子如何与自然世界打交道，另一种侧重于教孩子如何与文化世界打交道。显然，这些通常是结合在一起的。不可能将它们分开。

Education in your culture is a mixed bag — and education comes not from schools alone, but from newspapers and television, magazines and books, from art and from culture's own feedback. Generally speaking, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two kinds of education — one focused toward teaching the child to deal with the natural world, and one focused toward teaching the child how to deal with the cultural world. Obviously, these are usually combined. It is impossible to separate them. 

然而，尽管你们的教育体系充满了理想主义，却在很大程度上扼杀了儿童自然的天赋和倾向，反而过分强调了文化组织。于是，对孩子来说，更重要的是顺应文化，而不是跟随自己的自然倾向。他自己与自然打交道的独特方式不被赞成，因此教育不是努力发挥孩子的能力，而是与之背道而驰。于是，教育常常违反了自然人的天性。

Your educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. It became more important, then, for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. Its own characteristic ways of dealing with nature were frowned upon, so that education does not work with the child's abilities, but against them. Education then often goes against the grain of the natural person. 

这并不意味着有些孩子在你们的体系下，没有表现得很好。我也并没在暗示说孩子们不需要教育，或某些纪律和方向是无益的。然而，孩子们会在令他们感兴趣的课题和问题上，一钻进去就是好几个小时。可是他们常常会被叫走，结果他们集中注意力的自然习惯就受到了损害。

This does not mean that some children do not do very well under your system. I do not mean to imply, either, that children do not need an education, or that some discipline and direction are not beneficial. Children, however, will concentrate for hours at a time on subject matters and questions that interest them. They are often taken from such pursuits, and their natural habits of concentration suffer as a result. 

——摘译自赛斯《神奇之道》