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.
According to the author, which of the following is NOT true about the school educators?

选项 A、They should realize their key role in cultivating future successful leaders.
B、They should leave students alone and not give them guide anymore.
C、They should rethink their model of fostering students’ leadership abilities.
D、They should encourage students to be more open to different answers.

答案B

解析 推断题。根据原文定位到最后一段,该段最后一句指出“实实在在培养这些领导者的唯一途径,是构建从小学至大学的教育体系,来训练他们。”[B]选项说教育工作者不再管学生,不再给学生指导,无中生有,从文中并不可以得出,故[B]选项为正确答案。教育工作者在培养未来领导者上发挥重要角色,故[A]选项排除;[C]选项说教育工作者应该重新考虑在培养学生领导力方面的思维模式,由最后一句可推出[C]选项的说法,故[C]排除;第二段讲到学校过于重视权威,故作者应该鼓励的是教育者们培养学生开阔的思维,故[D]选项排除。
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