英文解釈教室の出典を探る(65)

Chapter 10 修飾語の位置（１）

例題 10.3

研究によると、「疲れたからもう無理…」はたんなる言い訳。「もう年だから覚えられない」も大ウソ。むしろ逆で、子供より大人の方が学習できるそうです。

The will to learn seems capable of triumphing over the most astonishing obstacles. It can triumph over fatigue. There is abundant evidence that one can go on and on with the most exacting mental tasks with astonishingly little decline in efficiency. Even after a job of work has become acutely distasteful, it still remains possible to go on doing it well. Indeed, the suggestion has been made in highly responsible quarters that there is no such thing as mental fatigue at all, in the sense of sheer inability to produce any more results as a consequence of continuous work. What we usually call mental fatigue is commonly a combination of tired eyes, an aching back, and a violent wish to do something else. When we want to stop we salve our consciences by saying that we can't continue. Again, the will to learn can triumph over age. Few psychological dogmas have been more easily swallowed than the notion that we learn best when we are young; but it is entirely unsubstantiated by ascertained fact. We assume it to be true, not because we are aware of any proof, but merely because we have been told many times that it is so, and because to believe it comports so well with the besetting laziness and timidity of mankind.

On the contrary, however, there is excellent reason to hold that a man of thirty, forty, or even fifty can learn nearly anything better than he could when he was fifteen. To many readers this may seem heresy so violent that I hasten to bulwark myself behind authority. Professor E. L. Thorndike, in his book, Adult Learning, has brought together all the investigations ever made on learning at advanced ages. He finds no scintilla of evidence for the notion that children learn better than adults because of the flexibility of their muscles or the plasticity of their minds. A child of ten can acquire almost any technique better than when he was six. A man in his thirties or forties can acquire almost anything quite as well as he could in his teens and probably better. This applies even to learning a new language. As far as the psychological processes themselves go, it would be better to attend school between the ages of twenty and thirty-two than between the ages of six and eighteen. The only difficulty would be that of earning a living. Why, then, do so many adults give up learning new things ? Here is the point for our discussion. They stop learning because of a subtle but fatal disintegration of the will to learn. To begin something new at an elementary level seems to them queer, even shameful. The cares of life enmesh them….

出典：JAMES L. MURSELL, "THE MIRACLE OF LEARNING"

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数学は逆に、大人より子供の方が教えやすいという話。

語学も、遅くとも10歳までに始めないといけない。