我是怎么学习爱上废话的？

As I am no longer the FT’s chief bullshit correspondent, I cannot do what I normally do at this time of year and hand out Golden Flannel awards to the business people who have spouted the most heinous guff over the past 12 months.

由于我不再是英国《金融时报》的首席“废话”记者，我今年不能做以往每年这个时候都会做的一件事：为过去12个月中讲废话登峰造极的商界人士颁发“金废话奖”(Golden Flannel awards)。

Yet being a creature of habit, I could not resist peeping into my old guff cupboard as the year turned. There I found much to dazzle from 2017.

然而，我还是旧习难改。在辞旧迎新之际，我仍忍不住打开了那个老旧的废话收集箱。2017年还真有不少可以拿出来晒一晒的胡言乱语呢。

Ford called firings “people efficiency actions”. On LinkedIn someone had replaced “go forward” with “bounce forward”. Best of all was a superlative verb in an email from a PR, which ended: “Let’s voice in the morning.” I looked at these, groaned, laughed, and thought how well bullshit has been getting along without me.

福特(Ford)把裁员称为“人员效率行动” (people efficiency actions)。在领英(LinkedIn)的网站上，有人用“跳跃前进”(bounce forward)替代了“前进”(go forward)。最夸张的是，一份公关公司的邮件在结束语中用了一个高大上的动词，“我们早上再语音。”(Let’s voice in the morning)。看着这些废话，我时而叹气，时而捧腹，我在想，在我离开的这段时间，雷人“惊句”还是层出不穷。

I have been getting on well without it, too. I have completed my first term as a trainee maths teacher in an east London comprehensive, and can confirm that at my school there is far less bullshit than I had been warned to expect. More surprisingly, for the first time in my life I have discovered that some terms I would have previously considered total tosh serve a purpose.

没有这些废话的陪伴，我也过得很好。我在伦敦东部的一所综合学校当实习数学老师的第一学期已经结束。去之前，有人警告我说，在学校会听到许多废话。不过，现在可以确认，我在这所学校听到的废话比人们预想的要少得多。更令人惊讶的是，我平生第一次发现，以前我会认为是纯属废话的说法，其实是有用的。

I am still at war with the word journey and I wish people would not say “pupils couldn’t access the content” when they mean “no one understood what you were on about”, but there are some euphemisms that I have grudgingly come to admire.

我仍在与言之无物的废话作战，我希望，当人们想说“没有人理解你在说什么”(no one understood what you were on about)时， 不用要“学生不能访问这些内容”(pupils couldn’t access the content)来表达。不过，有一些委婉说法，让我不情愿地产生了认同感。

Every time I am observed teaching, I am given two lists by my mentor. One is headed WWW — what went well — while the other is not WWB (-adly), its rightful partner, but EBI — even better if. At first I despised the feeble euphemism. Now, I am warming to it as it makes the industrial quantities of criticism shunted a trainee’s way seem less, well, critical.

每次观摩完我的课，我的导师都会给我两份表格。一份的抬头是WWW(what went well，表现不错之处)，但另一份的抬头不是原本理应与之相对的WWB(what went badly，表现不佳之处)，而是EBI(even better if，还能做得更好之处)。起初，我很鄙视这种软弱无力的委婉说法。现在，我开始接受这些说法了，因为这些委婉语让对一位实习老师的劈头盖脸的尖锐批评变得没那么尖锐了。

I will be even better if I am a) stricter with the children who fiddle with rulers; b) end the lessons on time; c) talk less; d) talk slower; e) write my sums more neatly on the board, and f) hand out glue sticks in a less chaotic fashion. I am not remotely disheartened. I am set on being better.

我在以下几个地方还能做得更好，a) 对玩尺子的学生更加严厉一些; b)按时下课;c)少说一些话; d)语速慢一些; e)板书更工整一些; f) 分发胶棒时更有条不紊一些。我并没有灰心丧气。我决心要做得更好 。

My second change of heart on a euphemism is more profound. At the beginning of term, an experienced teacher gave a talk in which she suggested we stop referring to “low ability” children and talk about “low attaining” ones instead. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. How drearily PC, I thought.

我对委婉语看法的第二个转变更为深刻。在学期之初，一位经验丰富的老师做了一个讲座，她建议我们不再说“学习能力低下”(low ability)的学生，而改说“学习效果较差”(low attaining)的学生。我在心里翻了个白眼。多可怕的政治正确，我想。

Now that I have a bit of experience, I think she might be right. I teach one class in which many of the children are wedded to the idea that a half is smaller than a fifth. I have tried to show them otherwise in several lessons deploying slices of pizzas, cakes and drawing subdivided oblongs on the board. They seem to get it, but then by the next lesson they have lost it again.

现在，我有了一些教学经验，我认为她可能是对的。我教的一个班上有许多孩子固执地认为二分之一小于五分之一。我用了好几节课的时间来解释不是这样，用切成几块的披萨和蛋糕作教具，并在黑板上演示把矩形分成几等份。他们当时似乎懂了，但到下一节课，他们又不明白了。

To think of these children as low ability is to write them off. If I call them low attainers, it puts the onus on me to change matters. To find new ways of explaining fractions in the full expectation that eventually the penny will drop and stay dropped. Given time, they will learn. And, given time, I will learn too. It is all that matters.

认为这些孩子学习能力低下就是彻底放弃他们。如果把他们称作学习效果较差的学生，就是把改变他们的责任放到了我自己的肩上：要完全相信孩子们最终一定会茅塞顿开并且再也不会忘，同时找到新的方法来解释什么是分数。给他们一些时间，他们会学会的。而且，给我一些时间，我也会学会怎么教他们。这才是最重要的。

In my old life, I would wince when grown-up business people got soppy about learning. They made it a noun, made it plural and stuck the word key in front of it. Key learnings had only one thing going for them — they were better than key takeaways.

从前，当看到成年的商界人士总是用“学习”(learning)这个词时，我会皱眉头。他们的完整说法是：“学习到的关键点(key learnings)”。这个说法唯一的优点就是——它比“带走的关键点”(key takeaways)要好。

When the FT was owned by Pearson, the motto “Always Learning” was printed across our business cards. I considered this so brainless I never gave them out. Now I feel differently about it.

当英国《金融时报》的东家还是培生(Pearson)时，我们的名片上都印着“学无止境”(Always Learning)的格言。我当时认为这句话太傻了，因此从来没给人发过这些名片。但现在我有了不同的感悟。

My key learning from last term: the two most durable pleasures available to humankind — to help other people learn new things and to learn new things yourself.

上学期我学习到的关键点是：人类能获得的两种最持久的快乐是——帮助他人学习新东西，和自己学习新东西。

Alas, one thing is in the way of my learning. Despite my new permissive spirit on language, I am still finding my default mental stance — scepticism — a hindrance. 有一样东西阻碍了我的学习。尽管我对语言有了新的宽容精神，但我仍然发现，我根深蒂固的心态——怀疑主义——阻碍了我的学习。

At university I spent three years finding the flaw in every argument. This stood me in good stead as a columnist, and then as a non-executive director — but is a handicap as a trainee teacher.

在大学里，我花了三年的时间寻找每一个论点的缺陷。这种特质在我当专栏作家、之后当非执行董事的时候是个优点——但作为一名实习老师，这一点却成为了障碍。

A tiny example: after one lesson I was told I must write “Example” on the board, underline it, and wait until all pupils had done the same in their books, performing their underlining neatly with a ruler. The judging part of my brain instantly thought: why? It is obviously an example, and whether or not it is underlined with a ruler is not going to help them understand the external angles of a polygon.

举一个小例子：在某一节课后，我被告知必须在黑板上写下“例子”，然后在下面划一条横线，并等待所有的学生在他们的书上完成同样的事，用尺子比着，划一条笔直的下划线。我大脑中喜欢评判的那部分立即想到：为什么? 谁都明白这是个例子。用不用尺子比着在下面划条横线，对他们理解多边形的外角也没有帮助。

Mentally I kicked against the system for a bit, which was daft as the school has its ways of doing things which are markedly successful in squeezing an astonishing amount of knowledge into the heads of all students. The system only works if everyone follows it, helping students form good habits.

我内心对这套系统抗拒了一会儿——这种抗拒是愚蠢的，因为学校有自己的教学方法，这些方法一直非常成功地将大量的知识灌输到学生的脑海中。只有每个人都遵守这个系统，帮助学生养成良好的习惯，这个系统才能发挥其功效。

Just before Christmas, BBC News broadcast a feature on my charity, Now Teach, which recruits 50-somethings like me as trainee teachers. I sat on a sofa in a studio along with a fellow trainee who had previously worked as a diplomat for a quarter of a century.

就在圣诞节之前，英国广播公司新闻(BBC News)播出了介绍我所在的慈善组织Now Teach(现在教书吧)的专题节目。Now Teach招募一些像我一样50多岁的人士去学校当实习老师。我坐在电视台摄影棚的沙发上，和一位曾担任外交官25年的实习老师一起接受了采访。

The interviewer asked us whether “posh older people” belonged in the classroom. Variously she suggested we did not have the energy, that parents would be appalled at having incompetent people in their dotage who could not even master the technology teaching their children. It was a huge risk, she said, and if it goes wrong, the people who will suffer will be the children.

主持人问我们，课堂是不是“50多岁事业有成的人”应该待的地方。她用各种不同的方式暗示我们精力不够，说让像我们这样甚至没掌握教书技巧的衰老无能之辈给孩子们当老师，家长会很担心。这样做的风险很大，她说，如果出了问题，受影响的是孩子。

I replied as politely as I could that energy was not a problem, that parents seemed to rather like us — as did the kids — and we were learning the technology fast.

我尽可能礼貌地回答说，精力不是问题，家长们似乎很喜欢我们——孩子们也一样——且我们学习教学技巧的速度很快。

What I did not say was that age may be hindering us in another way. Everyone on the Now Teach programme has had long and mainly high-powered careers doing other things. All of us have been paid to have opinions all our lives. For my ex-Foreign Office colleague, opinions were his stock in trade.

我没有说的一点是，年龄可能会以另一种方式成为我们的障碍。参加Now Teach教书计划的每一个人都有其他领域长期且非常靓丽的职业生涯。我们这些人一辈子都是靠发表意见挣饭吃。就我这位曾在外交部任职的同事而言，发表意见就是他的看家本钱。

Now, in order to learn faster, we need temporarily to disable our opinions. All the other Now Teach trainees who are faring the best are the ones who understand that for the first year or two they must shut up and learn.

现在，为了更快地学习，我们需要暂时不发表任何意见。所有其他做得好的Now Teach实习老师，都是那些明白在头一两年必须闭嘴并专心学习的人。

In the coming term I have resolved to be even better with glue sticks, with my workings on the board. More than that, I will be even better if I stop questioning everything and do some accepting instead.

在新学期里，我决心在分发胶棒上做得更好，板书也要写得更规范。更为重要的是，如果我不再凡事都问个为什么，而是能够接受一些现有的规矩，我会做得更好。

Verb, noun, singular, plural — learning is what counts.

不论你如何使用“学习”(learning)这个词，学习本身才是最重要的。