Brilliance in a Box 在狭缝中优异——全球最好的教室看起来是怎样的？

Brilliance in a Box

在狭缝中优异

What do the best classrooms in the world look like?

全球最好的教室看起来是怎样的？

By Amanda Ripley

作者：Amanda Ripley

Imagine if we designed the 21st-century American classroom to be a place where our kids could learn to think, calculate, and invent as well as the students in the top-performing countries around the world.

想象我们在建美国21世纪的教室，正如世界上成绩最优异的学生们做的那样，那里是学生们学习思考、计算、创造的地方。

What would those spaces look like? Would students plug into mini-MRI machines to record the real-time development of their brains' executive functions? Would teachers be Nobel Prize winners, broadcasting through screens installed in the foreheads of robots that don't have tenure?

那些地方看起来是怎么样的呢？学生们是不是被塞进微型核磁共振机器为他们大脑的执行功能增加最新进展的记录？老师们是不是都是诺贝尔奖得主，在超级机器人额头上的屏幕来播放演示文稿？

To find out, we don't have to travel through time. We could just travel through space. At the moment, there are thousands of schools around the world that work better than our own. They don't have many things in common. But they do seem to share a surprising aesthetic.

找出这些问题的答案，我们不需要穿越时间。我们只需要穿越空间。现今，全球有数千所学校比我们的优秀。它们没有很多共同点。但是他们确实都让人感到异常漂亮。

Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking. They look, in fact, a lot like American ones—circa 1989 or 1959. Children sit at rows of desks, staring up at a teacher who stands in front of a well-worn chalkboard.

总的来说，那些拥有表现最好的学生的国家的教室包含非常少的科技产品。事实上，它们看起来非常像1959至1989年间美国的教室。孩子们一排一排坐在课桌前，抬头看着站在被磨损得快坏了的黑板前的老师。

"In most of the highest-performing systems, technology is remarkably absent from classrooms," says Andreas Schleicher, a veteran education analyst for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development who spends much of his time visiting schools around the world to find out what they are doing right (or wrong). "I have no explanation why that is the case, but it does seem that those systems place their efforts primarily on pedagogical practice rather than digital gadgets."

“在多数成绩优异的教育系统中，科技都不会存在于教室之中，”安德烈亚斯·施莱克尔说，他是经济合作与发展组织一位经验丰富的教育分析师，他花了许多时间访问世界各地的学校，找出他们做了什么对的（或错的）事情。“我没法解释为什么会如此，但是看起来确实是比起数字玩意，他们更注重教学实践。”

And yet, when politicians and bureaucrats imagine the classroom of the future, they often talk about a schoolhouse that looks like an Apple store, a utopia studded with computers, bathed in Wi-Fi, and wallpapered with interactive whiteboards (essentially giant touch screens used in place of chalkboards in more and more classrooms nationwide). "In the 21st century," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a speech in Washington, D.C., this March, "schools can't be throwbacks to the state of education 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. … We must make the on-demand, personalized tech applications that are part of students' daily lives a more strategic part of their academic lives."

然而，当政客和官僚们谈及未来的教室时，他们说的是一个看起来像苹果商店一样的教学楼，一个塞满电脑的乌托邦，被Wi-Fi覆盖，墙壁是交互式白板（全国越来越多的教室在采用巨大的触摸屏幕代替黑板）。“在21世纪，”教育部长阿恩·邓肯在今年三月在华盛顿的一场演说中说，“学校不能再回到50年，20年，甚至是10年前的教育状况中了。……我们必须使最新的、个性化的科技应用成为学生日常生活的一部分，他们学术生涯中意义重大的一部分。”

Kristin De Jesus在她的韩国学校里。

But the most innovative schools around the world do not tend to be the ones with the most innovative technology inside them. To American exchange students, the difference can be disorienting. Kristin De Jesus is currently attending a public school in South Korea through an international study program called Youth for Understanding. De Jesus came to Korea, which consistently ranks at the top of the world in international exams, from a high school outside of San Diego, where she would be a junior.

但是世界上最具有创新力的学校，并不想成为拥有最新的技术的学校。对于美国的交换生，这中差别可以让人非常迷茫。Kristin De Jesus正通过一过一项叫做Youth for Understanding的学习项目在韩国的一所公立学校学习，De Jesus来到韩国（一向在国际考试中名列前茅）之前在圣地亚哥郊区的一所中学学习初中课程。

In her Korean school, near Seoul, her classmates have iPod touches and iPhones and play Nintendo, just like her classmates in America. But the classroom itself is austere. "In California, we use white boards, while in Korea they use chalkboards," she says. "There is a dirt field outside. We have a projector, that's about it." Back home, teachers would hand out Mac laptops for kids to work on in class. But in Korea, the only computers are older PCs, and they remain in the computer lab, which is used only once a week for computer class.

她的韩国学校临近首尔，她的同学也和美国同学一样有iPod touch，iPhone，玩任天堂。但是教室本身却非常简朴。“在加利福尼亚，我们用白板，在韩国他们用黑板，”她说。“外面有防尘区。我们有一个投影仪，是为了保护它。”在家里，老师们会发给孩子们苹果笔记本来完成课堂上的任务。然而在韩国，唯一的电脑是老式的PC机，而且它们都放在计算机房里，只在一周一次的计算机课上才能用。”

Kristin De Jesus的低科技韩国教室

So how to explain that these old-fashioned classrooms tend to crank out kids who possess far more of the math and science skills valued by modern-day employers? For one thing, while the American school day can be as short as six hours, Korean kids attend school about eight or nine hours a day—and then many of them continue studying alone or with tutors until late into the night. Korean parents also put enormous pressure on kids to study. "The American system is a lot easier," De Jesus says. "When I was in California, I barely ever studied and did pretty well in my classes."

那么怎么解释这些老式教室里的学生拥有被现代雇主认为更优异的数学和科学技能呢？有一点，美国学校一天可能只有六个小时，而韩国的孩子一天要在学校呆八小时——并且他们很多人在回家后继续自己学习或是请家庭教师，一直学习到深夜。韩国的家长对孩子的学习施加巨大的压力。“美国体制简单多了，”De Jesus说。“我在加利福尼亚的时候，几乎不花什么功夫学习，却依然在班上名列前茅。”

School does not have to be grueling to be good. In Finland, the schools have almost nothing in common with the pressure-cooker classrooms of Korea. Finnish students start going to school a year later than American kids, and they do less homework on average. Standardized tests are rare. And yet, in 2006, Finnish teenagers ranked first in math and science among 30 OECD countries. (The United States ranked 25th in math and 21st in science.)

学校们并不需要削尖脑袋成为最好的。芬兰的学校基本上韩国高压锅似的学校没有任何相似的之处。芬兰学生比美国学生晚一年进入学校，并且他们总体来说作业更少。标准化的考试也不多。可是，在2006年，芬兰学生在30个经济与合作发展租住成员国中学和科学排名第一。（美国数学排名25，科学排名21。）

Around the world, countries have found a variety of ways to make schools work—even for poor kids or immigrant kids. They spend less money per pupil than we do but distribute it more efficiently and more equitably. More importantly perhaps, school systems in Singapore, Finland, and Korea recruit 100 percent of their teachers from the top one-third of their academic cohort, according to a 2010 McKinsey & Co. report, "Closing the Talent Gap."In the United States, about 23 percent of new teachers—and only 14 percent in high-poverty schools—come from the top one-third. "It is a remarkably large difference in approach, and in results," the report concludes.

世界上，每个国家都有不同的使学校运转的方法——即使对于贫困的孩子或是移民的孩子。他们在每个孩子身上花的钱更少但是却更有效率更公平。据麦肯锡公司2010年的报告，最重要的一点恐怕是，新加坡、芬兰、韩国的学校所有的师资都来源于1/3成绩最优异的人，这有助于“缩小与天才间的鸿沟”。在美国，只有23%的新教师——在贫困学校更是只有14%——来自成绩最好的1/3。报告总结说，“这在方法和结果上都差异巨大。”

Even within the United States, the best schools are not the most tricked-out ones. In Southeast D.C., Lisa Suben teaches fifth-grade math at KIPP DC: AIM Academy, one of 99 Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools around the country. When her students come into her classroom, they perform about two years behind, on average. By the time Suben has had nine months with them, they are mastering grade-level work.

即使在美国，那些最好的学校也不是那些最特立独行的。在华盛顿东南，AIM Academy是美国99所“知识就是力量计划”认证学校之一，Lisa Suben在这里教授五年级的数学。她刚接手这些学生的时候，他们的平均水平只有三年级。Suben教了他们九个月之后，他们已经掌握了毕业班水平的课程了。

Watching Suben teach on a recent October afternoon, I initially forgot to note whether her classroom contained any modern-day technology. Her class of 31 African-American students sat spellbound as she led them in call-and-response chants to practice their multiplication tables, pasted stickers on their foreheads for getting questions right, and timed how long it took them to get all their homework into a pile in the first row (18 seconds).

最近十月的一个下午，我去听了一节Suben的课，我忘怀了注意她的教室是否拥有现代科技产品。31名非裔美国学生全神贯注地听讲，她用问答方式来帮助他们牢固掌握乘法表，答对问题就在额头上贴一张贴纸，计算他们能在多长时间内把他们的作业堆成一堆（18秒）。

Finally, I remembered why I was there. I counted four computers in the back of the room, an ink-jet printer, and an overhead projector that looked to be at least 15 years old. Later, I asked Suben, who has been teaching for eight years, what the perfect classroom would look like. "If I were designing my ideal classroom, there'd be another body teaching. Or there'd be 36 hours in the day instead of 24."

最后我终于想起来我为什么在那里了。我在教室后面发现四台计算机，一台喷墨打印机，还有一个至少用了15年的投影仪。后来，我问Suben，她教书已经八年了，最好的教室应该是怎样的。“如果我来设计我理想的教室，那在这里教书的就是另外一个人了。或者一天应该有36个小时而不是24个小时。”

Suben, like most great teachers, is in a hurry. She said computers can be useful, but mostly because they save her time—by assessing what her kids know more efficiently than she can. Three times a year, her students take computer-adaptive tests, which get harder as the student goes along. Suben gets the results instantly, which means she can see how a student is doing compared with the other kids in her class, the school, and around the country. "It might say, 'You know how to round to the hundreds, but you don't know how to round to the thousands?' That's, for me, an aha moment."

Suben，就像很多杰出的教育工作者那样，总是在忙碌之中。她说计算机可以很有用，但主要因为可以节省她的时间——她的学生比她更能熟练地运用。一年三次，她的学生进行电脑化的考试，题目会随着考试进行而越来越难。Suben可以立即得到结果，这意味这她可以知道一个学生和同班，同学校的，全国的的学生比表现如何。“它可能会说，‘你知道如何数到100，难道你不知道如何数到1000吗？”这，对我来说，是个开心的时刻。”

Ask middle-school teachers what they would like to change about classroom design, and they suggest a bathroom for the kids. When I ask Suben which gadget she would bring with her if she had to teach on a desert island, she chooses the overhead projector, without hesitation. "I wouldn't be able to give up the overhead, because then I'd have to turn my back to the class," she said. The oldest technology in the room is the one that helps her the most with a fundamental human skill—presenting material while staying connected to every student in the room, watching who is getting it and who is not, without having to turn to write on a chalkboard.

当询问中学教师他们希望教室的设计能有什么变化使，他们建议给孩子增加一个盥洗室。当我问Suben如果她要到一个荒岛上去教书的话，她会带什么东西时，她毫不犹豫地选择了投影仪。“我不会丢掉投影仪的，因为不然我就得背对着学生了，”她说。教室里最陈旧的技术却是带给她帮助最大的一个，和人交流最基础的技巧——在演示资料的时候依然和教室里的每一个人保持交流，看谁理解了谁没理解，而不用转身去写黑板。

The KIPP charter schools have proved to be among the most effective schools in the country. But their classrooms would be very familiar to anyone who went to school before there was such a thing as charters. KIPP DC founder and former teacher Susan Schaeffler says she could theoretically put a fancy interactive white board in every classroom in Suben's school for about $300,000. But, she adds, only about half the teachers would use them. "I'd rather pay Lisa Suben more to stay forever."

“知识就是力量”认证学校被认为是全国最有效率的学校。但是他们的教室和有“认证”之前没有什么区别。“知识就是力量”计划创立者，前教师Susan Schaeffler说她本可以花30万美元给Suben学校的每个教师配上交互式白板，但是只有不到一半的老师会使用它们。“我更愿意多付给Lisa Suben工资让她永远留下。”