高层次的思考，简单而言，就是非背书的方式作答。给标准的答案。它是有经过个人思考后，有创意的，浓浓的个人主观看法和想法也符合客观/大家认同的。是有8-Wh和1H（What / Where
/When /Who /Whose /Whom/ Which / Why / How ）的追问和探讨，尤其是Why
和How后的看法和想法。这是有经过个人思考过程后的结论。
Worrying about the angst of high-achieving students has become a
minor industry. “America’s culture of hyper-achievement among the
affluent” has led to suicides, depression, and anxiety among college
students, suggested a July New York Times feature.
“These cultural dynamics of perfectionism and overindulgence have now
combined to create adolescents who are ultra-focused on success but
don’t know how to fail,” wrote Julie Scelfo. The rhetoric of concern barely conceals contemptuous disapproval.
In
this popular narrative, America’s best college students are making
themselves miserable trying to please pushy parents and grab lucrative
jobs. They’re soulless grinds -- the products of insensitive parenting
and a sick culture. This fable leaves no room for intellectual
enthusiasm or the pride of seeing oneself as smart and accomplished. It
assumes every activity these students pursue is instrumental, undertaken
merely to look good on an application for the next stage in their
upward climb. Their drive for success, it suggests, cloaks an ignoble
lust for fame or money.
The moralism of this tale may flatter the
tellers, but the story itself largely misses a deeper underlying
struggle on elite campuses.
Intrigued by reports that my alma mater had initiated something called the Princeton Perspective Project,
which aims to reduce student stress by puncturing a reportedly
pervasive ideal of “effortless perfection,” I went to campus last April
to investigate. Had Princeton students stopped griping about how much
work they had and how little sleep they were getting? Had sprezzatura,
the art of making difficult feats look easy, truly gone from a concept
you learned in Renaissance history class to a quality most students
possessed, or tried to?
I spent four days interviewing both
students involved with the Princeton Perspective Project and others I
contacted through social media outreach and personal connections.
(Because the interviews took place at the end of last school year, I
identify students by their class standing at the time.)
This sample
wasn’t random or necessarily representative of the range of student
experience. It was heavy on STEM majors and middle-class strivers, light
on athletes and wealthy prep school graduates. In these ways, it
resembled my own undergraduate circles, although with more children of
immigrants and more women, both groups whose numbers have grown
significantly in the three decades since I graduated. But
after repeatedly hearing the same themes, I came away with a better
sense of why students feel stressed at Princeton and most likely at
similar elite institutions.
Every January a great team loses the
Super Bowl. Every April three of the Final Four go down. And every
September, extraordinary students arrive at highly selective
universities only to discover that one out of every two really will wind
up in the bottom half of the freshman class --and one out of every five
in the bottom quintile.
“I think most people come in knowing
that they’re going to do probably worse than they did in high school,
but there’s a very big difference between knowing that and actually
getting back your grades at the end of the first semester,” freshman
Bharath Srivatsan told me. “You may have thought Princeton was going to
be hard, but it’s unlikely you thought you were going to end up in the bottom quintile.
So when you see that, that’s very, very jarring.” (A fate that did not
befall Srivatsan.) Since 2004, when Princeton embarked on a campaign
against grade inflation, the university has told students which fifth of
their class their cumulative grade point average puts them in.
Contrary
to generational stereotypes, these students are not precious snowflakes
who’ve spent their youth receiving participation trophies just for
showing up. They’re genuinely impressive -- high achievers who’ve
distinguished themselves, often in national or international
competitions. They are so gifted and so diligent that they’ve rarely
experienced obscurity or defeat before arriving as freshmen. They’re
used to doing well, and to being known for their achievements.
“If
you Google most of your friends, you’ll find them, and that’s really
not normal,” said a senior chemical and biological engineering major,
recalling the first-year practice of digging up news articles about
friends’ high-school accomplishments and posting links on Facebook. It’s
affectionate teasing, but also a reminder that “even before you do
anything, even before you’ve taken a class, there’s already an
expectation for you.” (Although she didn’t care if her friends
recognized her, she was one of several students who asked that I did not use
their names to protect them from search engines.)
Nor are these
high achievers necessarily victims of overbearing parents.
“Overwhelmingly they are putting that pressure on themselves,” said Alexis Andres,
a residential-college director of student life and one of the
administrators behind the Princeton Perspective Project, in which
students share their struggles so that others know they aren’t alone.
She recalled meeting with a student who needed to drop a course after
health problems caused her to fall behind. The young woman was beside
herself, crying “What am I going to tell my parents?” As Andres and the
student’s academic adviser sat there imagining scary Tiger Parents, the
student sobbed, “My parents are going to say it’s fine and not to worry
and it’s no big deal -- and they’re not going to be mean about it when
it is a big deal!” The drive of these students is intrinsic and tied to their sense of identity.
“Effortless
perfection,” however, is hardly the norm. To the contrary, students
described something akin to Parris Island. As freshman Ian Iverson put
it, “the culture tends more towards, ‘I’m doing everything I possibly
can and I’m almost at the breaking point and about to fall down, but I’m
not.’” On an otherwise diverse campus, said a sophomore woman, “the
common thread is that classes are difficult and people struggle with
their school work.” Everywhere I looked, students were quite obviously
working hard. And history professor Anthony Grafton told me that his classes showed little interest in sprezzatura when he taught Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier
in the popular humanities sequence. It apparently wasn’t a concept they
found resonant. (What engaged them was the role of women.)
The
real problem, it turns out, is that students expect “effortful”
perfection. Those who work hard and nevertheless get low grades or who
don’t win a spot in their preferred extracurricular group assume
everyone else is succeeding. (Just look at the happy pictures on their
Facebook pages!) Confronting failure or rejection in one area, said
Andres, they extrapolate “that their life has no meaning, that they
aren’t going to be successful here, they aren’t going to be happy
here.”
Surrounded by distinguished peers, freshmen in particular
may experience a disorienting loss of identity. “It’s not just that
you’re not the biggest fish in the pond anymore. It’s that there are so many
other big fish,” said the chemical and biological engineering major, a
top science student in high school who found herself near the bottom of
the class at Princeton. Once
known as “the smart kid” or “the great musician,” students no longer
find themselves so distinctive. “When everyone’s a nerd, you’re like,
What am I?” she said.
Despite what you read in the newspapers,
the primary source of this angst isn’t bad parenting or crass careerism.
Instead, it’s simply that too many superb students with impressive
extracurricular accomplishments now have a fair shot at the very best
colleges. Widened horizons and increased financial aid mean that
students whose equivalents a generation ago might have triumphed at the
nearest state university or regional liberal-arts school now find
themselves in the middling, or even bottom, ranks of the most demanding
institutions. Meanwhile many of the legacy admissions who might once
have provided an ample supply of students satisfied with aristocratic
C’s are now the super-high-achieving kids of high-achieving baby
boomers.
One of the seniors I talked to was a third-generation
Princetonian. Tall, blond, and blue-eyed, he’d fit the casting
director’s idea of the kid who cruised through admissions thanks to
lower standards for WASPs with family connections. But real life isn’t
the movies. He had in fact done graduate-level math research while still
in high school. His dad, one of my college friends, had been a stellar
Princeton student, Phi Beta Kappa with a passion for puzzles that made
him an outstanding statistics major. The son was even better -- and so
was his high-school preparation.
The result of all this
excellence is that today’s most talented and driven students are
learning some tragic truths earlier than their predecessors: To be
genuinely ambitious is to fail, repeatedly and throughout your life, by
reaching for goals you can’t quite attain. And in a big world, you are
almost certainly not the best at whatever you care most about.
As
a result, they face the existential challenge of discovering who they
want to be and what makes them special while they’re still in college.
One of the recurring themes in my conversations with students was their
need to find something to be “known for,” a way to “make a mark” or
“stand out.” They quickly corrected any assumption that this was a quest
for fame. “I think we know that with 5,000 kids here you can’t really
have a reputation with the whole student body,” said freshman Ming
Wilson. It’s a search for meaning and significance: a contribution
uniquely one’s own.
When I asked what college is for, their
answers were remarkably philosophical. “Starting to figure out and try
to live the type of life that you want to live,” answered Wilson.
“College is a time for people to choose who they want to become,” said
senior Shawon Jackson, a two-term student government president and a
driving force behind the Princeton Perspective Project. Choose, he emphasized, not “find yourself.”
“It’s
almost like a holding pen for us, to wait those extra few years -- it’s
a midway point in the process of growing up,” mused sophomore Mary
Heath Manning, the Princeton Perspective Project’s chair. But at least
at Princeton, she continued, the waiting isn’t as passive as that
metaphor implies, because the school “provides so many opportunities to
figure out what’s important for you in life.”
The chemical and
biological engineering major I talked to sounded less like a recruiting
brochure but made the same point. “I think it’s kind of good that
Princeton breaks people,” she said, “because it forces people to think,
What am I actually passionate about? Not, What is good for my future?”
Despite her struggles, she had opted to stay in her demanding field
because she genuinely loved the subject.
Learning to deal with
defeat -- to take it seriously but not to find it crippling -- is one of
the proverbial ways in which sports builds character. We take athletic disappointments
as part of the game. We understand that even at the highest level not
everyone can be the best. We expect fiercely competitive players to be
frustrated, sad, and angry when they don’t win. We also expect them to
get over it.
Building character is a horribly old-fashioned
concept. Although it inspired their founders, secular universities like
Princeton would never invoke the concept today. Explicitly or not,
however, building character is still something they do.
The pain
and struggles that generate so much public fretting are real. But unless
elite schools start reserving a quarter of their slots for the
unmotivated or unqualified, they’re also unavoidable. Wanting to excel
is not a character flaw, and shouldn’t be treated as one in the guise of
concern for students’ mental health. Ambitious students deserve the
same respect we accord ambitious athletes. (Clarifies academic record of student quoted in 6th paragraph.)
In a follow-up Q&A,
Scelfo contradicted the thrust of her long feature, acknowledging that
“there is no data indicating that suicide is more prevalent at elite
institutions than at two-year or four-year colleges. In fact, college of
any kind seems to be a form of protection against suicide.”
When
I was a student, the male-female ratio was 2:1, which in my minority
opinion is ideal. Today the undergraduate population is 51 percent male.
She didn’t tell me about her high-school accomplishments; I Googled her, thereby demonstrating her point about search engines.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
My comments:
I
guess we fare better when you dare to fail.The ability to deal with disappointments in life should be seen a skill
to acquire.
To build a greener economy, Bhutan wants to go organic by
2020
By Stella Paul
An aerial view of Bhutan's capital Thimphu
is seen from a hilltop October 11, 2011.
Reuters/Adrees Latif
SATSAM, Bhutan (Thomson
Reuters Foundation) - Farmer Phub Zam, 55, is in a hurry. Monsoon rains have
hit her farm in Bhutan’s Paro valley and Zam is rushing to harvest her broccoli
before crop is damaged.
"Of all my vegetables,
broccoli is the most sought after," she said. “Each kilogram sells for 90
rupees ($1.40)."
That’s 15 to 30 cents more
than broccoli imported from neighboring India. Zam gets the higher price
because her produce is grown without the use of chemicals, making it healthier,
more flavorful and more in demand.
"I apply organic manure
that I compost right at home," she said. “The imported vegetables do not
taste so good."
After decades of subsistence
farming, Zam went organic four years ago. Now she grows 21 crops on her
1.3-acre farm — including grains, fruits and vegetables — and sells them, as
well as homemade compost, to hotels, local vendors and nursery owners.
She earns 40,000 rupees
($600) per month, three times more than she made before, she said.
Zam’s success is part of
Bhutan’s plan to support sustainable farming as one key to build a thriving
“green" economy.
In 2011, the government
launched the National Organic Program, which aims to make the country’s
agriculture 100 percent organic by 2020.
By teaching farmers good
organic farming practices and how to earn more money by growing organic
produce, and by providing financial support, Bhutan hopes to reduce waste,
decrease the country’s dependence on imported food, and ensure it remains
climate-neutral, producing no more climate-changing emissions each year than
its forests absorb.
Already praised by
environmentalists for its low carbon emissions and heavy use of hydropower,
Bhutan hopes to become even greener by showing that environmentally friendly
farming can also make money.
CASH FROM TRASH Zam’s switchover came when a
team of officials from the agriculture ministry told her they were offering
women farmers in her village free training in organic farming, including
composting and selling the compost for a profit.
After attending a three-day
training course, Zam started her home compost heap. Today, she sells about 60
kilograms of compost — made of grass, leaves, cow dung and sawdust — every two
months to tourist resorts and other buyers.
Zam also uses the compost at
her farm, including in the two greenhouses she bought and installed with an 80
percent subsidy from the government.
Before learning how to compost,
she would end every harvest season with two or three truckloads of dead leaves
and other organic waste that she would either burn or pay someone to dispose
of.
"Now, from leaves to
cow dung to chicken poop, everything is used," she said. “I have no trash,
only compost."
Nedup Tsering, executive
director of the government-funded Clean Bhutan project, which aims to make
Bhutan a zero-waste country by 2030, notes that the country generates over 100
tons of garbage daily but has no centralized waste management program.
"We want citizens to
practice the 5 Rs: Rethink, reduce, recycle, reuse and re-create," Tsering
said.
THE HURDLES According to Kesang Tshomo,
coordinator of the National Organic Program, Bhutan faces some hurdles on its
path toward fully organic farming, however.
"We have to be
practical and consider the realities facing our farmers," she said.
One is that the country
produces relatively little of its food. According to a 2014 study on food
security by the Royal Bhutan College of Thimphu, less than 4 percent of
Bhutan’s total land is under food cultivation, which is why almost 50 percent
of the country’s rice is imported from India and Thailand.
To persuade Bhutan’s farmers
to use organic methods, showing that the switch can lead to higher production
is key, Tshomo said.
In June, officials announced
that the government had so far provided 176 greenhouses to farmers and planned
to install 650 more. It said its combined policies of pursuing organic farming
and modernization — such as building greenhouses and fencing — had helped
increase agricultural production 3 percent since the start of the organic push.
The government is banking on
the Clean Bhutan Project to also help Bhutan keep its pledge to remain carbon
neutral. Currently, the country’s carbon emissions rate is a negligible 0.8
metric tons per capita, according to the World Bank.
Promoting organic farming
practices like composting is a “logical step towards the goal of remaining
carbon neutral," said Peldon Tshering, chief strategist of Bhutan’s
environmental commission.
Zam, the Paro valley farmer,
supports the government’s plan to convert its farmers to organic agriculture.
But for the project to succeed, she said, the government needs to help widen
the market for organic produce.
Most of the hotels near her
farm still mainly buy imported vegetables from India because they are cheaper,
she said.
"If the government
could convince people to buy from local farmers, it would help us a lot,"
Zam said. “I could sell all my produce within hours, without spending extra on
driving a wagon from one market to another."
(Reporting by Stella Paul;
editing by Jumana Farouky and Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson
Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers
humanitarian news, climate change, women's rights, trafficking and corruption.
Visit www.trust.org/climate)
My comment:
Organic fruits, vegetables or poultry are
free from pesticides, chemical fertilizers and they taste nicer or sweeter.I have years of experience tasting to know
the differences.
