你多久没有去图书馆了？

每次去国家图书馆，我都有一种强烈的“自卑感”。我总是发现自己应该看而没有看的书是那么多，而且这个数字不断膨胀，相比之下，自己每年读的那几百本书简直就是微乎其微，如果不是每天都坚持阅读大量国内外报刊的话，真不知道自己还能不能跟得上时代的脚步。

事实上，有许多人都有类似的危机感。我的一个在外企供职的朋友，学管理出身，外语很好，人也精干，但他并不满足于人力资源部经理这个中层职位，还有向上发展的想法。为此，他用业余时间“补课”，一是学技术，因为不懂技术是做不了外企的高级领导人的，二是学财会，因为对财务一窍不通的人也当不了家。他说：“在现实生活中，有的人具有把各种资源整合到一起，统一配置和经营的能力，他们创富的潜力无限，速度惊人，这就是所谓的帅才，而要想成为某个企业甚至某个领域的领军人物，就要在别人优哉游哉的时候不断挖潜、不断进行自我塑造，以良好的心态和精良的装备等待演出的开始。”在他看来，意识不到危机是最大的危机，一位真正的将军是不会等到开战前才想起来训练士兵和准备补给的。

因为工作关系，我接触过很多美国学者，有时真的很佩服他们，很多人都扮演着多重角色，而且都做得十分出色。最有代表性的是弗里德曼，既是经济学家，又是专栏作家，他的观点对民众有巨大的影响，对政府决策也产生着深刻影响。他们之所以能达到这种境界，很重要的原因便是他们做学问的思路，在他们看来，学术是不可以离开现实的，如果一个学人对现实生活无动于衷，他也就等于是没有学术良心，也就对不起社会的期待和纳税人的投入。而为了更有力地联系实际，为了更久地站在学术前沿，他们就必须不断地变更自我，深入地接触生活。在这种氛围中，美国大学里便不再有绝对的权威，谁能跟上知识变更、甚至创造变更，谁就是最好的教授。在美国这样的国度，没有正确思路的人，很难有光明的出路，龙虎多的地方，不好混。

与此相对应的，便是美国教材的频繁更新。美国的教育部规定，任何教材在三年之中必须再版，而且内容的更新要达到一定的程度，在一些学科，甚至会达到三个月换一次教材的程度（美国大学以三个月为一学期），经常是上学期刚发的教材，这学期已经被淘汰了。而翻开新教材看，你会发现绝对没有“新瓶装陈酒”的现象，书里不仅补充了很多最新的研究成果，而且还经常会有理论上的突破，而教授们上课更是很少按照书本来，他们讲的常常是书本上没有的、不好理解的，还有就是本学科的最新研究成果，这与国内有些专业教材十年没有变化，一些教师的讲义多少年都不变，上课就如同背书形成了鲜明对比。

思路决定出路。人们都知道“推陈出新”这个词，你要“出新”吗？那么攻击自己吧，越早越好，越强烈越好，毕竟，这比遭遇他人或现实的无情打击要好。

How Long Have You Been Away from a Library?

Li Ling

I never enter the National Library without being overwhelmed by a sense of “inferiority”. The large number of books that should have been read, I in fact haven’t touched at all—and that number keeps growing. By contrast, the several hundred books that I do manage to read per year are only too insignificant to mention. If it were not for the variety of newspapers and magazines I browsed through every day, I wouldn’t be sure whether I can keep up with the times.

Conceivably, lots of others sooner or later undergo a similar mental crisis. A friend of mine acquired his college degree in management and works at a foreign company in China. He speaks very good English and acquits himself admirably in business administration. Still, he won’t settle for being the head of a human resource department, a mid-level position coveted by many. He wants to climb higher up the corporate ladder. To accomplish that, he is resolved to learn more about technology and finance, because without the former he won’t stand a chance of becoming a high-ranking executive, and without the latter he cannot go much further even if he has secured a senior management job. “In today’s world,” he says, “some people are especially good at integrating, distributing, and making full use of various resources. They’ve got a hunch for creating wealth and are amazingly quick to seize a chance. Such individuals are made to be the core of a business. You’ll never become the leader of a firm, let alone a magnate in any area of endeavor, unless you constantly equip and reshape yourself, tapping your potential to the full, quietly waiting for your moment to put on a fantastic show. If you choose to be a loafer, you’ll have no way to move up!” In his view, nothing constitutes a worse crisis than being unaware of it—a true general will never neglect to train or replenish his soldiers at the approach of a war.

Prompted by a professional need, I associate with lots of U.S. scholars. Secretly, I often adore them. Many of them play diverse roles, and in each role they do equally well. Milton Friedman, for example, acts as both an economist and a columnist. His theories have a tremendous influence on ordinary U.S. citizen as well as on the shaping of U.S. government policy. Friedman and others like him have made such laudable accomplishments fundamentally because of the attitude they adopt towards academic learning. In no way, they believe, can a scholar’s work be separated from reality; indifference towards real-life problems means the loss of scholarly conscience, a frustration to public expectation and an ill-spending of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. To maintain contact with reality and stay competitive academically, scholars in the U.S. have to keep on challenging themselves and to deepen their understanding of society as it is. Hence there is no more talk of absolute authority in U.S. universities. Whoever can keep abreast of the latest developments in a given field or actually initiate such results, is the best professor on campus! In a country like the U.S., if one lacks the right attitude, he or she will hardly have a future. Surrounded by able colleagues on all sides, he or she shouldn’t expect to have an easy time.

Likewise, textbooks are revised or totally changed on a regular basis. As stipulated by the U.S. Department of Education, a textbook must be reprinted at least once per three years, and each new edition must contain a certain portion of updated information. For some courses, however, textbooks are even changed once a quarter (In U.S. universities, one semester typically lasts three months). Any teaching materials issued at the beginning of a previous term might become outdated during this one. Pick up whichever textbook you please, and you will find no “old wine in a new bottle”. Instead, you will come across up-to-date fieldwork results and groundbreaking theories there. Professors seldom repeat what the book already says. They usually only deliver what is not covered in the book, explain really difficult points and present the outcomes of recent exploration. This stands in sharp contrast to the situation in Chinese universities, where textbooks can remain unchanged for a dozen years and teachers give lectures from decade-old notes. In the latter case, classroom instruction has become a matter of sheer mechanical operation!

Attitude determines whether there is a way out. Everybody knows what it means to “vanquish the old to reach out for the new”. If you want to scale new heights, you must first attack your old self! The earlier and harder you do so, the better. After all, receiving vicious blows from oneself is more endurable than being cudgeled by other people or by the ruthless reality of life.