我写《文化县》的初衷是打算向盅以外的读者介绍中国引人注目的教育历史。现在，中译本就要出版了，它将使以学生或以教师身份亲身经历过我所讨论的那些历史变迁的中国读者，有机会了解一个外国人是如何阐释中国历史的这一重要组成部分的。对此，我感到非常高兴。
从表面上看，现代教育在世界各国都有一些非常相似的经验。在任何一个国家，都是儿童们坐在教室里，学习阅读、写作和算术，他们也要接受有关本国和世界历史、地理知识的教育。通过这一教育过程，他们被塑造成国家的公民。然而，尽管有这么多的相似之处，但以国与国之间，公民社会化的具体方式还是有着相当大的不同；即便是在文化比较相似的欧洲国家内部，你也可以在各国的教育制度，特别是所谓的学校“精神”之间，发现它们彼此的显著着异。所以说，研究教育也就是研究深深地植根于教育背后的文化规范和习俗。
参观中国的教室并与众多中国人谈论他们的求学经历，是我深入了解中国并探讨中国人思考自己过去、现在和未来的方式的一次绝佳机会。当然，可能有些中国读者会不同意我书中的某些观点，但我希望他们能够看到，我试图尽可能地如实反映邹平学生是如何经历20世纪这些教育变革的。同时，我也特别欢迎能够得到来自中国读者的批评指正。

Getting in is only half the battle. The Privileged Poor reveals how―and why―disadvantaged students struggle at elite colleges, and explains what schools can do differently if these students are to thrive.
The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors―and their coffers―to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Jack reveals that the struggles of less privileged students continue long after they’ve arrived on campus. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This bracing and necessary book documents how university policies and cultures can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why these policies hit some students harder than others.
Despite their lofty aspirations, top colleges hedge their bets by recruiting their new diversity largely from the same old sources, admitting scores of lower-income black, Latino, and white undergraduates from elite private high schools like Exeter and Andover. These students approach campus life very differently from students who attended local, and typically troubled, public high schools and are often left to flounder on their own. Drawing on interviews with dozens of undergraduates at one of America’s most famous colleges and on his own experiences as one of the privileged poor, Jack describes the lives poor students bring with them and shows how powerfully background affects their chances of success.
If we truly want our top colleges to be engines of opportunity, university policies and campus cultures will have to change. Jack provides concrete advice to help schools reduce these hidden disadvantages―advice we cannot afford to ignore.