There is an ongoing debate about whether leadership can be taught, and whether business schools, in particular, are teaching it.

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问题     There is an ongoing debate about whether leadership can be taught, and whether business schools, in particular, are teaching it. There are fair arguments on both sides, but I would broaden the discussion. Our entire education system, from elementary school to graduate school, is poorly constructed to teach young people leadership. Schools do many things well, but they often cultivate habits that can be detrimental to future leaders. Given that most of us spend 13-20 years in educational institutions, those habits can be hard to break.
    Consider first the emphasis schools have on authority. Schools are hierarchical: The teacher is the authority in the classroom. Principals or deans preside over teachers and professors. Seniors "rank" higher than juniors, and so on. In our years in the educational system, many of us become obsessed with hierarchy. We think we’re leaders if we’re the "boss" , and if we’re not the boss, we should simply do as we’re told. In reality, even the most senior people in organizations can’t rely solely on hierarchy, particularly given the much needed talents, experiences, and intelligence of the others who surround them. Leadership is an activity, not a position, a distinction explored deeply by Ron Heifetz in Leadership Without Easy Answers. Many great leaders like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela have led others, despite having little to no formal authority, and writers are now exploring methods for leading without formal authority. While some hierarchy may be needed, leaders who learn to lean too hard on formal authority often find themselves and their organizations frustrated, stunted, and stagnant.
    Schools also teach us to deal with information as if it is certain and unchanging, when there’s rarely a stable " right answer. " In my first job, I was constantly frustrated by the lack of guidance I received. If you gave me a textbook, I could learn almost anything. But in the workplace, there were no textbooks. Real world problems are complex. They evolve. They’re organizational and analytical. And success is often driven as much(Or more)by successful and rapid implementation as by developing the "correct" approach. Understanding that there’s rarely one right answer can make a person more adaptive , agile, and open to the thoughts of their peers. But that understanding is rarely cultivated through textbooks and multiple choice tests.
    Critically, these failures teach us to reflect and to ask questions—of ourselves and of others—so that we can learn and grow(one of life’s worst failures can be wasting a failure). And failure itself indicates that we are taking on challenging tasks and stretching the limits of our current capabilities. A lot of people are raising questions about the way business schools and corporations teach leadership, but we need to dramatically broaden the scope of that question. In a world that’s growing ever flatter and more complex, we need societies full of capable leaders. But the only way to raise those leaders properly is to structure our educational system—from elementary school through graduate school—to train them.
How are students usually taught to deal with information in school?

选项 A、They are taught to share thoughts with other students.
B、They are taught to find stable and certain answers.
C、They are taught to obey any orders from the teacher.
D、They are taught to think things out for themselves.

答案B

解析 细节题。根据题干定位到第三段,定位词为:information。第三段第一句指出“学校教我们处理信息的方式,犹如信息是毋庸置疑而且一成不变的一样”。故[B]选项为正确答案。第三段最后一句指出“只有一个正确答案的情况很罕见,如果我们了解这一点,我们的适应能力就会更强、更敏捷,而且能以开放的胸襟接受同僚的思维。但是这样的了解很少是通过教科书和多项选择题测验培养出来的。”由此可知,[A]选项说法错误,故排除;[C]选项说法过于绝对,故排除;[D]选项说学生被教会独立思考,但原文并未提及,故排除。
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