托福口语素材积累——性格教育

　　托福口语试题：

　　Some people believe that one’s personality changes as they grow older while others believe that one’s personality remains the same over the time. What is your opinion and why?

　　今天跟大家分享英国哲学家，数学家罗素的这篇On Education of Character，供大家思考和积累话题素材：

　　On education of Character论性格的教育

　　When it is sought to produce a certain kind of behavior in a child or animal, there are two different techniques which may be followed. We may, on the one hand, by means of rewards and punishmentscause the child or animal to perform or abstain from certain precise acts; or we may, on the other hand,seek to produce in the child or animal such emotions as will lead, on the whole, to acts of the kind desired.

　　如果想在儿童或动物身上产生某种行为，可以有两种不同的方法。一方面，我们可以用奖罚的方法来使儿童或动物执行或回避某种明确的行为;另外一方面，我们也可以努力在儿童或动物身上产生能够在整体上导向被期望行为的感情。

　　By a suitable distribution of rewards and punishments, it is possible to control a very large part of overt behavior. By this method boys who are naturally timid can acquire physical courage, and children who are sensitive to pain can be taught a stoical endurance. Good manners, if not imposed earlier, can be learnt in adolescence by means of no worse punishment than the contemptuous lifting of an eyebrow. What is called ‘good form’ is acquired by almost all who are exposed to it, merely from fear of the bad opinion incurred by infringing it. Those who have been taught from an early age to fear the displeasure of their group as the worst of misfortunes will die on the battlefield, in a war of which they understand nothing, rather than suffer the contempt of fools.

　　通过对奖励和惩罚的适当分配，大量外在的行为是可以被控制的。通过这种方法，生来胆小的男孩能够养成生理上的勇气，对疼痛敏感的孩子可以变得能仍受疼痛。好的举止如果在孩童时期没有灌输进去，青春期仍可以学到，而且只需轻蔑的一抬眉毛这样并不严重的惩罚手段。所谓‘好样的’行为，几乎每个耳濡目染的人都可以养成，因为他害怕违反它招来非议。 那些从小就被教导要把圈内的不悦视为最大不幸的人们，即使面对的是他们一点都不理解的战争，也宁愿战死沙场，而不愿受愚人的白眼。

　　As a social force, the behaviorist method of ‘conditioning’ is therefore very powerful and very successful. It can and does cause men to act in ways quite different from those in which they would otherwise have acted, and it is capable of producing an impressive uniformity of overt behavior. Nevertheless, it has its limitations. (之前全部是让步，这里Nevertheless 后面才开始进入文章要探讨的核心)

　　因此，作为一种社会力量，行为主义的‘条件作用’的方法是非常有力，非常成功的。它能够而且确实使人们的行为方式大不同于那些未经此法教育的人们的行为方式，它所能带来的外在行为的一致性也确实令人惊叹。不过，它也有它的局限。

　　It was through Freud that these limitations first became known in a scientific manner, though men of psychological insight had long ago perceived them in an intuitive way. For our purposes, the essential discovery of psycho-analysis is this: that an impulse which is prevented, by behaviorist methods, form finding overt expression in action, does not necessarily die, but is driven underground, and finds some new outlet which has not been inhibited by training. Often the new outlet will be more harmful than the one that has been prevented, and in any case the deflection involves emotional disturbance and unprofitable expenditure of energy. It is therefore necessary to pay more attention to emotion, as opposed to overt behavior, than is done by those who advocate conditioning as alone sufficient in the training of character. (文章主旨在这里：需要对情感给予更多的关注)

　　通过弗洛伊德，人们破天荒地可以用科学的态度来认识这些局限了，虽然它们在很久以前就被心理学家的直觉所洞察到了。就我们的目的而论，心理分析的发现的要点是：被行为主义的方法阻止而无法获得公开表现的冲动，并不一定会死去，而是转入了下意识，并会找到未在奖罚中受到禁止的新的发泄渠道。通常新的渠道比被堵住的渠道更加有害，而且总会带来情绪上的紊乱和精力上的浪费。因此，有必要对与外在行为相对的情感因素予以更多的关注，那些主张条件作用对培养性格就足够的人们在这方面是做的不够的。

　　There are, moreover, some undesirable habits in regard to which the method of rewards and punishments fails completely, even form its own point of view. (进一步论述，仅仅使用赏罚的手段去培养习惯是失败的)One of these is bed-wetting. When this persists beyond the age at which it usually stops, punishment only makes it more obstinate. Although this fact has long been known to psychologists, it is still unknown to most schoolmasters, who for years on end punish boys having this habit, without ever noticing that the punishment does not produce reform. The cause of the habit, in older boys, is usually some deep-seated unconscious psychological disturbance, which must be brought to the surface before a cure can be effected.

　　另外，奖罚法用来对付有些不好的习惯时是完全失败的，甚至从奖罚法自身的观点看也是如此。尿床就是这样一个习惯。如果孩子过了通常应该不再尿床的年龄仍在尿床，惩罚只会使尿床更难治愈。虽然心理学家早就知道了这个事实，它仍不为多数教师所知，他们年复一年地惩罚那些尿床的孩子，却从未注意到这并不起作用。在较为年长的孩子中，这一习惯常常是由深层的无意识的心理紊乱所引起的，只有认清这一点，治疗才会有效。

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