TED | Do Schools Kill Creativity?-1 | Break "Hierarchy of Subjects"
TED | 学校是否扼杀了创新力？-1 | 打破学科等级制度
每天坚持半小时，2017一起进步。
1）GRE/TOEFL/IELTS写作题目引出话题；
2）赏析TED精彩段落，中英对照、高亮表达；
3）总结破题思路，提供写作参考范文段落；
TOEFL—Writing
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Younger school children (aged five to ten) should be required to study art and music in addition to math, language, science and history. (2009-05-30 NA)
五到十岁的孩子除了学习数学、语言、科技和历史之外，是否应该学习艺术和音乐？
TOEFL—Speaking
Your friend is studying in a business school now, but he likes playing musical instrument. Which suggestion would you give to your friend? To keep studying business, or to learn to play music?
(2013-03-08 NA)
正在攻读商科的朋友非常喜欢乐器，你建议他继续学习商科还是开始学习音乐？
IELTS—Writing
Schools should concentrate on teaching students the academic subjects that will be useful for their future careers. Subjects such as music and sports are not useful. To what extent do you agree or disagree? (2010-05-8 A)
学校应该教授一些能为协助学生们未来就业的专业科目，有人认为音乐和体育没有价值，你同意吗？
GRE—Writing
In order to become well-rounded individuals, all college students should be required to take courses in which they read poetry, novels, mythology, and other types of imaginative literature.
为了追求全面发展，所有的大学学生都应该学习诗歌、小说、神话以及其他类型的想象类型文学作品，你同意吗？
这些来自各种考试类型的写作、口语题目，都向我们抛出了同一个主题：
我们应该如何设计教育课程体系？
艺术、音乐、文学以及体育这些非刚需学科的价值究竟在哪里？
为了追求高分、学业成功，甚至为了节省时间、精力，我们是否应该放弃这些学科？
与以往过于功利和现实的思路不同，Ken Robinson在他的TED演讲中非常严肃地讨论了这个主题，他认为：
When people travel around the world, something strikes you: every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. On the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.
And in pretty much every system too, there’s a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday the way they teach mathematics.
Why? I think math is very important, so is dance.
环视全世界，你会发现一个令人惊讶的情况：地球上每一个教育体系都有同样的“学科等级制度”。数学和语言在这个金字塔的顶端，人文类学科居后，艺术类学科垫底。
而在每一个艺术类学科内部，也有一个“等级制度”。艺术和音乐比戏剧和舞蹈的地位更高。全世界任何一个教育体系中，没有老师会像每天教孩子们数学那样教孩子们学跳舞。
为什么会这样呢？我觉得数学很重要，但是舞蹈也同样不可忽视。
What’s for, public education? I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output—who really succeeds by this, who does everything they should, who get all the brownie points, who are the winners—I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. They are the people who come on to the top. But we shouldn’t hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. That’s just a form of life.
公共教育的目的究竟是什么？我们得承认，如果只看结果的话——哪些人能获得成功，能充分被挖掘潜能，能取得高分，能成为最终的胜利者——那么我们的结论是：全世界教育的目的其实是为了培养大学教授，好像只有他们才是生物链顶端的存在。但是，我们绝对不应该把这些大学教授当成人类成就的标杆。他们也只是很多种生活方式中的一种而已。
Truthfully, what happens is as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads and more often than not slightly to one side.
事实上，在孩子长大的过程中，我们开始对他们腰部以上进行教育，更关注他们脑部的发展。而且，往往更强调半个大脑的开发。
是的，我们需要一个全面的教育体系。轻视和放弃艺术、音乐、体育竞技这些非刚需的学科意味着我们局限了未来发展的方向、剥夺了对未来生活方式的选择权利。
感兴趣的话，请尝试翻译以下段落。
无论是五到十岁的小孩子，还是已经成年的大学生，都应该在学校学习艺术、音乐和体育。换句话说，我们应该打破传统的“学科等级制度”，把这些看似不够具有现实意义的学科提升到它们应得的位置。
因为，教育的目的不仅仅是为了培养象牙塔中的学者们，他们固然扮演者推动社会进步的重要角色。教育的成果还包括其他行业的人们——音乐家，画家，运动员，他们同样值得我们尊重。我们绝对不应该把这些大学教授当成人类成就的标杆。他们也只是很多种生活方式中的一种而已。当教育体系剥夺了艺术、音乐、体育的学习机会，相当于扼杀了孩子们做出开发爱好的机会和选择生活方式的权利。
Art, music and sports should be a compulsory part of education for both younger school children aged five to ten and mature college students. That is to say, we shouldput an end to conventional "hierarchy of subjects", which puts more emphasis on math and language than arts and music. Educators need to elevate these seemingly useless subjects to a higher position that they richly deserved.
The purpose of education lies in not only nurturing professors in the ivory tower, though no doubt they are entitled as the driving force behind the social progress. Education also aims at cultivating active and passionate participants involved in other fields, such as musicians and painters worth acknowledgement and respect. We shouldn’t hold professors up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. That’s just a form of life, in the midst of a variety. The truth is when deprived of the chance to get in touch with art and music, accordingly children are robbed from the opportunity to explore their potential as well as the right to choose their own way of living.
