综合教程 第五册 Unit8 Text2 Education

Education

E.B.White

_1_ I have increasing admiration for the teacher in the country school where we have a third-grade scholar in attendance.She not only undertakes to instruct her charges in all the subjects of the first three grades, but she manages to function quietly and effectively as a guardian of their health,their cloths, their habits, their mothers, and their snowball engagements. She has been doing this sort of Augean task 1 for twenty years,and is both kind and wise.She cooks for the children on the stove that heats the room,and she can cool their passions or warm their soup with equal competence.She conceives their costumes, cleans up their messes,and shares their confidences.My boy already regards his teacher as his great friend,and I think he tells her a great deal more than he tells us.

_2_ The shift from city school to country school was something we worried about quietly all last summer.I have always rather favored public school over private school2, if only because in public school you meet a greater variety of children.This bias of mine ,I suspect,is partly an attempt to justify my own past (I never knew anything but public schools)and partly an involuntary defense against getting kicked in the shins by a young ceramist on his way to the kiln3. My wife was unacquainted with public schools, never having been exposed (in her early life ) to anything more public than the washroom of Miss Winsor's4 . Regardless of our backgrounds,we both knew that change in schools was something that concerned not us but the scholar himself.We hoped it would work out all right.In New York our son went to a medium-priced private institution with semi-progressive ideas of education,and modern plumbing.He learned fast ,kept well,and we were satisfied.It was an electric,colorful,regimented existence with moments of pleasurable pause and giddy incident.The day the Christmas angel fained and had to be carried out by one of the Wise Men was educational5 in the highest sense the term;our scholar gave imitations of it around the house for weeks afterward,and I doubt if it ever goes completely out of his mind. _3_ His days were rich in formal experience.Wearing overalls and an old sweater (the accepted uniform of the private seminary),he sallied forth at morn accompanied by a nurse or a parent and walked (or was pulled) two blocks to a corner where the school bu made a flag stop6. This flashy vehicle was as punctual as death: seeing us waiting at the cold curb,it would sweep to a halt,open its mouth,suck the boy in,and spring away with an angry growl.It was a good deal like a train picking up a bag of mail.At school the scholar was worked on for six or seven hours by half a dozen teachers and a nurse,and was revived on orange juice in mid-morning.In a cinder court he played games supervised by an athletic instructor,and in a cafeteria he ate lunch worked out by a dietitian.He soon learned to read with gratifying facility and discernment and to make Indian weapons of a semi-deadly nature.Whenever one of his classmates fell low of a fever the news was put on the wires and there were breathless phone calls to physicians,discussing periods of incubation and allied magic.

_4_ In the country all one can say is that the situation is different,and somehow more casual.Dressed in corduroys,sweatshirt,and short rubber boots,and carrying a tin dinner-pail,our scholar departs at crack of dawn for the village school,two and a half miles down the road,new to the cemetery.When the road is open and the car will start,he makes the journey by motor,courtesy of his old man.When the snow is deep or hoof.In the afternoons he walks or hitches all or part of the way home in fair weather ,gets transported in foul.The school house is a two-room frame building,bungalow type,shingles stained a burnt brown with weather-resistant stain.It has a chemical toilet in the basement and tow teachers above stairs.One takes the first three grades,the other the fourth,fifth,and sixth.They have little or no time for individual instruction,and no time at all for the for the esoteric.They teach what they know themselves,just as fast and as they can manage.The pupils sit at their desks in class,and do their milling around outdoors during recess.

_5_ There is no supervised play.They play cops and robbers (only they call it \and throw things at one another--snowballs in winter,rose hips in fall.It seem to satisfy them. They also construct darts, pinwheels,and 'pick-up sticks\school itself does a brisk trade in penny candy7, which is for sale right in the classroom and which contains\The most highly prized surprise is a fake cigarette,made of cardboard,fiendishly lifelike.

_6_ The memory of how apprehensive we were at the beginning is still strong.The boy was nervous about the change too.The tension,on that first fair morning in September when we drove him to school,almost blew the windows out of the sedan.And when later we picked him on the road,wandering along with his little blue lunch-pail,and got his laconic report\day had gone,our relief was vast.Now,after almost a year of it ,the only difference we can discover in the two school experiences is that in the country he sleeps better at night and that probably is more the air than the education.When grilled on the subject of school of school-in-country vs.school-in-city,he replied that the chief difference is that the day seems to go so much quicker in the country.\like lightning,'he reported. Notes

1.Augean task (Paragraph1) an extremely difficult and unpleasant task

2.Public school over ,in the private school (Paragraph 2) Public school U.S.,is an elementary or secondary school controlled and maintained by civil authority,acting through an official board,expending public money,and open to all local children.Public schools include grade or grammar schools,junior and senior high schools,and vocational schools;they are distinguished from private or independently financed schools.Private education is also offered at many American preschools as well as at many colleges, universities,and technical institutes.

3.Partly an involuntary defense against getting kicked in the shins by a young

ceramist on his way to the kiln(Paragraph 2) to some extent a kind of instinctive protection against a physical assault from a young ceramist on his way to his working place

In this part the author wants to insinuate that one is likely to meet in public schools different children,including those from laborers' families that tend to be rather rude in behavior.Therefore,one should always be ready to defend himself from any possible physical attack.

ceramist:a maker of ceramic objects,which include,in addition to pottery,bricks,cement,grinding tools,sewer pips,and other products used in industry 4.the washroom of Miss Winsor's(Paragraph 2) the toilet of Miss Winsor's school,which is most likely a private one

The author intends to mean that since she attended private school,his wife was almost never exposed to public places except the washroom of a school,and a washroom of a school is usually for public use.

5.The day the Christmas angel fainted and had to be carried out by one of the Wise Men was educational(Paragraph 2) During the school Christmas nativity pageant,the child playing the angel role fainted and had to be carried off stage by another actor.That taught us something that we did not know before.

6.flag stop(Paragraph 3) a place where buses stop only if they are asked to do so 7.Penny candy (Paragraph 5) (AmE,old-fashioned) a sweet that costs one cent for a piece

Questions for discussion

1.In the country school,what are the duties of the teacher outside class? 2.How does the author use humor to narrate his son's school experiences? 3.What serious point about education does the author make in this story? 4.In the author's opinion,what are some characteristics of a good teacher? 5.How does the author communicate a general message about education?

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