After Credentials

December 2008 A few months ago I read a New York Times article on South Korean cram schools that said Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean.

2008 年 12 月 几个月前，我读到《纽约时报》一篇关于韩国补习班的文章，文章中说，进入合适的大学可以成就或毁掉一个雄心勃勃的韩国年轻人。

A parent added: "In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person's future." It was striking how old fashioned this sounded.

一位家长补充道：“在我们国家，高考决定了一个人70%到80%的未来。”这听起来多么过时，真是令人震惊。

And yet when I was in high school it wouldn't have seemed too far off

然而当我上高中时，这似乎并不太遥远

as a description of the US.

作为对美国的描述。

Which means things must have been changing here.

这意味着这里的情况一定已经发生了变化。

The course of people's lives in the US now seems to be determined less by credentials and more by performance than it was 25 years ago.

与 25 年前相比，现在美国人的生活轨迹似乎不再由资历决定，而更多地由绩效决定。

Where you go to college still matters, but not like it used to.

你在哪里上大学仍然很重要，但不像以前那样了。

What happened?

发生了什么？

_____ Judging people by their academic credentials was in its time an advance.

_____ 以学历来评判一个人在当时是一种进步。

The practice seems to have begun in China, where starting

这种做法似乎是从中国开始的，

in 587 candidates for the imperial civil service had to take an exam on classical literature.

587名皇家公务员候选人必须参加古典文学考试。

[ <font color=#999999>1 ] It was also a test of wealth, because the knowledge it tested was so specialized that passing required years of expensive training.

[ <font color=#999999>1 ] 这也是对财富的考验，因为它测试的知识非常专业，需要多年的昂贵培训才能通过。

But though wealth was a necessary condition for passing, it was not a sufficient one.

尽管财富是通过的必要条件，但它并不是充分条件。

By the standards of the rest of the world in 587, the Chinese system

按照587世界其他国家的标准，中国的制度

was very enlightened.

很受启发。

Europeans didn't introduce formal civil service exams till the nineteenth century, and even then they seem to have been influenced by the Chinese example.

欧洲人直到十九世纪才引入正式的公务员考试，即便如此，他们似乎也受到了中国例子的影响。

Before credentials, government positions were obtained mainly by family influence, if not outright bribery.

在获得证书之前，政府职位即使不是直接贿赂，也主要是通过家族影响力获得的。

It was a great step forward to judge people by their performance on a test.

通过测试表现来评判人们是向前迈出的一大步。

But by no means a perfect solution.

但绝不是一个完美的解决方案。

When you judge people that way, you tend

当你以这种方式评判别人时，你倾向于

to get cram schools — which they did in Ming China and nineteenth century England just as much as in present day South Korea.

上补习班——他们在明代中国和十九世纪的英国就这样做，就像在今天的韩国一样。

What cram schools are, in effect, is leaks in a seal.

补习班实际上就是密封件的泄漏。

The use of credentials was an attempt to seal off the direct transmission of power between generations, and cram schools represent that power finding holes in the seal.

使用证书是为了封锁代际间权力的直接传递，而补习班则代表着这种权力在封印上发现了漏洞。

Cram schools turn wealth in one generation into credentials in the next.

补习班将一代人的财富转化为下一代的证书。

It's hard to beat this phenomenon, because the schools adjust to suit whatever the tests measure.

这种现象很难被克服，因为学校会根据测试的结果进行调整。

When the tests are narrow and predictable, you get cram schools on the classic model, like those that prepared candidates for Sandhurst (the British West Point) or the classes American students take now to improve their SAT scores.

当考试范围狭窄且可预测时，你会得到经典模式的补习班，比如那些为桑赫斯特（英国西点军校）考生做准备的补习班，或者美国学生现在为提高 SAT 成绩而上的课程。

But as the tests get broader, the schools do too.

但随着考试的范围越来越广泛，学校也开始这样做。

Preparing a candidate for the Chinese imperial civil service exams took years,

准备一名中国科举考试的候选人花了数年时间，

as prep school does today.

就像今天预科学校所做的那样。

But the raison d'etre of all these institutions has been the same: to beat the system.

但所有这些机构存在的理由都是一样的：击败体制。

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