作者│Robert Fritz

Often, to learn something new, you must unlearn something, just like when filling a tub with fresh water, you have to drain the old water. That description isn’t quite right because it suggests there just so much room in your brain, and to put more in, you have to, like a filled hard drive, trash some of the old files. It is more like this: the new learning may be in conflict with the ideas you’ve picked up along the way. Most people are more able to add new ideas and techniques than they are at unlearning what needs to be replaced.

一般来说，要学习新的事物，首先必须先反学习、忘记某件事物。就好比要在水缸里装入干净的水之前，首先要将原来的污水丢弃。或许这并不是很好的形容方法，因为这好像是在说，你的脑容量其实有限，如果要放多点东西，可能要像内存般先删除老旧的档案。比较好的说法可能是：新的学习可能会与过去你所接触到的讯息有所冲突。大多数的人可能比较容易学习全新的技巧与想法，反而比较不容易反学习，忘记原本需要更新的东西。

A few years ago it was popular for people to say with a certain pride, “I’m a lifetime learner.” That was a phrase that was in vogue, and, in fact, it was a good idea. But too often, they thought of a “lifetime learner” as a collector of things, as one might collect stamps or baseball cards or recipes. These types of collections do not lead to contradictions. To have a Babe Ruth baseball card doesn’t contradict also having a Ted Williams baseball card.

几年前有些人会很自豪地说：〝我是个终生学习者。〞这在当时算是很流行，也是很好的想法。不过他们心目中的〝终生学习者〞比较像是一种收藏，类似集邮、收藏棒球卡或收据这类的行为。这种收藏的模式并不会带来任何的冲突。拥有一张 贝比●鲁斯（Babe Ruth）的棒球卡和 泰德●威廉斯（Ted Williams）的棒球卡本身并无冲突。

But you can’t agree with Darwin’s theory of evolution AND creationism. They say two completely different things about the origins of the species. If you thought one was true, you would have to think the other was not. New learning often contradicts old learning, and if one were truly a “lifetime learner,” there would be a lot of unlearning that would come with the territory.

但是你不能同时认同达文主义，又认同神创论。这两种理论对于各种生物的根源有完全不同的论述，如果你觉得其中一个论点是对的，那就必须反对另一个论点。新的学习常常和旧的学习有所不同，所以如果某个人是一个真正的〝终生学习者〞，就必须遗忘许多过去所学的事物。

People don’t usually talk about unlearning. You hardly ever hear someone say, “I’m a lifetime UN-learner.” Yet that’s what learning might take. When I first went to The Boston Conservatory of Music, my clarinet teacher was the great Attilio Poto. I’ve written about him before in my books as the teacher who kept giving me harder and harder lessons. Instead of letting me spend more time on each lesson, he kept moving to the next more difficult lesson. I thought I wasn’t making any progress, until weeks later, he turned back to the first lesson, and, low and behold, I could play it, as I could with the next number of lessons.

人们很少谈到反学习这件事。你很少会听人说〝我是终生的反学习者〞。但是其实学习就是要这样。我最早去波士顿音乐学院就读时，我的单簧管老师是 Attilio Poto。我在我的书里面曾经提到，这就是那位经常教我很困难的课程的老师。他不断教我更难的课程，而不是让我在每一堂课都慢慢吸收。原本我以为我根本赶不上进度，但是几个星期过后，他回到第一课，没想到我居然会吹奏，而且后面的几首乐曲我都做得到。

But one thing I didn’t write about was that on the first lesson, he changed my embouchure (the way I held the mouthpiece and the use of facial muscles.) This change was not easy. There was a lot of unlearning to learn the new technique. The best way to replace an old habit is by adopting a new habit. You can’t do them both. You need to unlearn the old one by learning the new one.

但是我的书里面并没有提到我们上的第一堂课。他当时换掉了我的吹奏方式（我用吹嘴的方式和嘴部肌肉的动作）。这是很困难的改变，需要很多的反学习。换掉旧习惯得最好方法，就是采用新的习惯。你没办法两个都做，必须学习新的方法，才能忘记旧的。

Robert Frost said there are some very educated people in the world, and of course, they will resent having to learn anything new. His observation has a built-in assumption: that these very educated people have their identities tied with how much they know. For such a person, new learning is made harder because it creates an identity crisis. Ideas cannot be considered based on their own merits. They become abstract symbols of how smart the person is. This may be one reason that the phrase “lifetime learner” has lost some of its popularity. Too often the phrase, itself, is about identity.

佛洛斯特（Robert Frost）曾经说，世界上有很多受高等教育的人，他们当然会排斥学习新的东西。他的观察中有一个假设，就是这些受教育的人将自己的自我认同与他们所学的东西连结起来。对这样的人来说，新的学习比较难，因为会带来自我认同上的冲突。他们无法根据想法本质来判断，这些想法成为反映此人有多聪明的象征。或许是因为这样，〝终生学习〞的名词不如以前流行，因为这往往代表的是一个人的身份认同。

To ability to change one’s mind in light of new information or experience is essential to true learning. My friend Peter Senge likes to use the word “Metanoia.” It is an Ancient Greek term that means a change of one’s mind. I like the idea, but there is something about that word, the sound of it I guess, that leaves me a little cold. Sounds a little like something you wouldn’t want to catch. But the thought is so right, the orientation, the flexibility, the suppleness of mind in which unlearning is as common as learning, and new worlds can open to you.

能够在接触到新的信息或体验时改变主意，是真正学习的关键。我朋友彼得●圣吉 喜欢用〝心意转化Metanoia〞这个取自古希腊语的用词，意思就是改变心意。我喜欢这个想法，这个字，可能是它的发音吧，让我有点凉凉的，听起来很像你不想要传染的东西。但是这个想法却又无比贴切，心意的转化那种弹性、柔软度，让反学习就像学习一样司空见惯，一个全新的世界可能就此在你眼前敞开。

作者：Robert Fritz（罗伯特●弗利兹，是美国一位成功的作曲家，电影制片人，作家，组织咨询顾问）。文章来自 ICA （The Institute of Cultural Affairs，文化事业学会），经授权转载。