雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第2章:下一個星期(7)

He was now at last being taught science, and reported:

艾倫現在終於開始學習科學了，他寫道：

We do do Chemistry 2 hrs. a week. We have only got to about the stages of 'Properties of Matter', 'Physical and chemical change' etc. The master was quite amused by my Iodine making and I shewed him some samples. The headmaster is called 'Chief'. I seem to be doing Greek and not Hellenics. …

我們每週學兩小時化學，剛學到「物質的性質」「物理變化和化學變化」之類的。我給老師講我制碘的事，還給他看了樣品，老師很高興。這裏把校長被叫做「首領」。我想學希臘語，而不是古希臘語……

The master, Andrews, was no doubt 'amused' that Alan already knew so much. He had arrived 'delightfully ingenuous and unspoilt'. And the head boy of Westcott House, Arthur Harris, had rewarded Alan's cycling initiative by appointing him his 'fag', or servant. But neither scientific education nor initiative were exactly Sherborne priorities.

校長安德魯確實因爲艾倫懂那麼多而高興，他說艾倫身上有「令人高興的坦率和天真」。西科特學院的監督生，阿瑟.哈里斯，作爲對單車旅行的獎勵，收艾倫做了自己的小弟，或者說跟班。但無論科學還是單車，在舍爾伯尼，這些都不是重點。

The headmaster used to expound the meaning of school life in his sermons.15 Sherborne was not, he explained, entirely devoted to 'opening the mind', although 'historically … this was the primary meaning of school.' Indeed, said the headmaster, there was 'constantly a danger of forgetting the original object of school.' For the English public school had been consciously developed into what he called 'a nation in miniature'. With a savage realism, it dispensed with the lip service paid to such ideas as free speech, equal justice, and parliamentary democracy, and concentrated upon the fact of precedence and power. As the headmaster put it:

校長常常在講話中，談到校園生活的意義。他說，舍爾伯尼並非完全爲了打開思維，雖然這在過去，是學校的主要意義。現在的英國公學，已經明顯地發展成了小型國家，這裏有殘酷的現實環境，也體現着言論自由，公平正義，議會民主，權益權力等社會概念。校長說：

In form-room and hall and dormitory, on the field and on parade, in your relations with us masters and in the scale of seniority among yourselves, you have become familiar with the ideas of authority and obedience, of cooperation and loyalty, of putting the house and the school above your personal desires …

從教室，從宿舍，從操場，從遊行，從你們和教師的關係，從你們的資格和級別，你們應當開始懂得權威，順從，合作，忠誠，把學校利益置於個人利益之上……