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school was deep-set in a long passageway which was an excellent place for surprise captures and sudden rescues.

6 During recess, David and I came into our own. We ignored the boys playing baseball on the gravel court and the girls giggling at dodge-ball in the dell. Our Superman games made us outlaws, yet gave us a sense of windy superiority. We even found a stand-in for a villain in

Sheldon Fein, the sallow mamma's boy on our block who was left out of the boys' games because he cried whenever

anybody tagged him and always managed to fall down and skin his fat knees.

7 At first, we had to prompt Sheldon in his part, but after a while he became an expert on inventing tortures and even carried them out in private, beyond the game. He used to pull the wings from flies and the legs off grasshoppers, and keep the broken insects captive in a jar hidden under his bed where he could take them out in secret and watch them struggling. David and I never played with Sheldon except at recess. After school we left him to his mamma and his bonbons and his helpless insects.

8 At the time my Uncle Frank was living with us while waiting to be drafted, and I was sure that he bore an extraordinary resemblance to Superman incognito. David couldn't see the likeness as clearly as I did, but he admitted that Uncle Frank was the strongest man he had ever known, and could do lots of tricks like making caramels disappear under napkins and walking on his hands.

黑又脏的后门，非常适合玩意外抓捕和快速解救的游戏。

课间休息时，我和戴维可以大展身手了。 我们对在碎石操场上打棒球的男孩儿们视而不见，也不搭理那些在小山谷里一边玩躲球游戏一边咯咯傻笑的女孩儿们。 超人游戏让我们变得像两个逃犯似的，但也给了我们一种虚幻的优越感，我们甚至找谢尔登 ? 费恩来充当恶棍。他是街区里一个脸色苍白、胆小怕事的孩子，没有男孩儿愿意和他玩，因为一有人追他他就哭，而且老是自己摔倒在地，擦伤他那胖胖的膝盖。

一开始我们还得教谢尔登怎么扮演他的角色，可没过多久他就变成了一位发明虐刑的专家，甚至私下里悄悄实施他的刑罚。 他常常扯下苍蝇的翅膀，揪掉蚱蜢的腿，并把这些残废了的昆虫囚禁在瓶子里，藏到床底下，这样他就可以偷偷把它们拿出来，看着它们痛苦挣扎的样子。 戴维和我只在课间休息的时候和谢尔登玩，放学后我们就让他回家跟他的妈妈、棒棒糖以及那些无助的昆虫为伴。

那时候，弗兰克舅舅住在我们家，等着参军。我肯定他和隐姓埋名的超人长得特别像。 戴维却看不出我舅舅和超人有多么相像，但他承认弗兰克舅舅是他这辈子所见过的最强壮的人，而且他会变很多戏法，比如用餐巾一盖上糖果，糖就没了，他还能倒立行走。

Unit2-2

Cultural Childhoods 不同文化的童年

1 When I look back on my own childhood in 每当我回顾20世纪七八十the 1970s and 1980s and compare it with 年代我的童年时光，并将它与现

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新标准大学英语综合教程3课文与翻译

children today, it reminds me of that famous sentence \do things differently there\

Hartley's novel The Go-Between). Even in a relatively short period of time, I can see the enormous transformations that have taken place in children's lives and in the ways they are thought about and treated.

2 Looking further back I can see vast differences between contemporary and

historical childhoods. Today, children have few responsibilities, their lives are characterized by play not work, school not paid labour, family rather than public life and consumption

instead of production. Yet this is all relatively recent. A hundred years ago, a 12 year old working in a factory would have been perfectly acceptable. Now, it would cause social

services' intervention and the prosecution of both parents and factory owner. 3 The differences between the

expectations placed on children today and those placed on them in the past are neatly summed up by two American writers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. Comparing childhoods in America today with those of the American colonial period (1600–1776), they have written: \tie his or her shoes is impressive. In colonial times, four-year-old girls knitted stockings and mittens and could produce intricate embroidery: At age six they spun wool. A good, industrious little girl was called 'Mrs instead of 'Miss' in appreciation of her

contribution to the family economy: She was not, strictly speaking, a child.\

4 These changing ideas about children have led many social scientists to claim that childhood is a \this term to mean that understandings of childhood are not the same everywhere and that while all societies acknowledge that children are different from adults, how they

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在孩子的童年相比较时，就会想起句名言：“往昔是异国他乡，那里有着不同的习俗”（可参见L.P.哈特利的小说《传信人》） 。甚至在相对短暂的一段时间内，我也能够察觉到儿童的生活以及人们对待儿童的方式上所经历的巨大变化。

回顾更久远的岁月，我可以看到现在和古代童年生活的巨大差别。如今的儿童责任很少，他们生活的主要内容是玩耍而非工作，上学而非劳动，在家里呆着而不是和外界交往，消费而非生产。这种变化也是最近才显现出来的。一百年前，12 岁的孩子在工厂打工是完全可以接受的事情，而现在，这会招来社会服务机构的介入，其父母和工厂主会被起诉。

有两位美国作家，芭芭拉·埃伦里奇和迪尔德丽·英格利希，她们简要地概括了过去和现在人们对儿童的期待的差异。在比较美国现在的儿童和殖民地时期（1600–1776）的儿童时，她们写道：“今天，如果一个四岁的孩子能自己系鞋带就很了不起了。而在殖民地时期，四岁的女孩会织长筒袜和连指手套，能做复杂的刺绣，六岁就能纺毛线了。一个善良勤快的女孩被称为‘夫人’而不是‘小姐’，这是为了表彰她对家庭经济的贡献，严格说来她不是一个孩子了。

对儿童的看法不断变化着，这使得许多社会科学家宣称童年是一种“社会建构”。他们用这个术语来说明不同的地区对童年的理解是不一样的，虽然所有社会都承认儿童与成年人有区别，至于他们之间有何不同，

are different and what expectations are placed on them, change according to the society in which they live.

5 Social anthropologists have shown this in their studies of peoples with very different understandings of the world to Western ones. Jean Briggs has worked with the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and has described how, within these communities, growing up is largely seen as a process of acquiring thought, reason and understanding (known in Inuit as ihuma). Young children don't possess these qualities and are easily angered, cry frequently and are incapable of understanding the external difficulties facing the community, such as shortages of food. Because they can't be

reasoned with, and don't understand, parents treat them with a great deal of tolerance and leniency. It's only when they are older and

begin to acquire thought that parents attempt to teach them or discipline them.

6 In contrast, children on the Pacific island of Tonga, studied by Helen Morton, are regularly beaten by their parents and older siblings. They are seen as being closer to mad people than adults because they lack the

highly prized quality of social competence (or poto as the Tongans call it). They are regularly told off for being clumsy and a child who falls over may be laughed at, shouted at, or beaten. Children are thought of as mischievous; they cry or want to feed simply because they are naughty, and beatings are at their most severe betweenthe ages of three and five when

children are seen as particularly wilful. Parents believe that social competence can only be achieved through discipline and physical punishment, and treat their children in ways that have seemed very harsh to outsiders. 7 In other cases, ideas about children are radically different. For example, the Beng, a small ethnic group in West Africa, assume that very young children know and understand

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人们对儿童又有何期待，不同的社会给出了不一样的答案。

社会人类学家在研究那些跟西方国家持有不同世界观的民族时也表明了这个观点。琼·布里格斯研究过加拿大北极地区的伊努伊特人，她描述了在这些社会群落中成长是怎样大体上被看成是一个获得思想、理性和理解力（伊努伊特人称之为 ihuma）的过程。小孩子不具备这些素质，所有才容易生气，常常会哭，无法理解群落所面临的诸如食物短缺之类的外在困难。由于无法跟他们讲理，即便讲了他们也不明白，父母对他们很宽容、很温和。一直要等到他们年龄大一点，并开始有自己的思想时，父母才会尝试着去管教他们，约束他们。

相反，根据海伦·莫顿的研究，太平洋岛国汤加的儿童经常挨父母和哥哥姐姐的打。人们认为儿童和成年人相比更像疯子，因为他们缺乏被大家看重的社会能力（汤加人称之为 poto）。小孩子经常因为笨手笨脚而挨骂，他们连摔跤都会被嘲笑、呵斥，甚至被打。人们认为儿童很顽皮，都是因为淘气他们才哭闹，或者要东西吃。在大人看来，三至五岁的儿童尤其任性，因此他们打这个年龄段的孩子也打得最狠。父母们相信，只有靠训导和体罚才能使孩子获得社会能力，所以他们用一种在外人看来非常严厉的方式对待孩子。

在其他的例子中，有关儿童的观念则截然不同。例如，西非的一个叫孟加拉的很小的族群认为，不管说什么、用什么语言

新标准大学英语综合教程3课文与翻译

everything that is said to them, in whatever 说，小孩子都能听明白，并且能language they are addressed. The Beng, 理解。另一位人类学家阿尔who've been extensively studied by another 玛·戈特利布对孟加拉族进行了anthropologist, Alma Gottlieb, believe in a 广泛的研究，孟加拉族人认为小spirit world where children live before they are 孩子出生前居住在灵界，在那里born and where they know all human 他们通晓人类所有的语言，能理languages and understand all cultures. Life in 解所有的文化。灵界的生活很惬the spirit world is very pleasant and the 意，小孩子在那里有很多朋友，children have many friends there and are often 他们通常极不愿意离开那儿，来very reluctant to leave it for an earthly family 到地球上的家庭中（本·奥克雷(a fictional account of a spirit child's journey 的小说《饥饿之路》就描述了一between the spirit and the earthly world is 个小孩在灵界和人世之间往返given in Ben Okri's novel, The Famished Road). 的故事） 。他们出生后仍然与When they are born, they remain in contact 那个世界保持长达数年的联系，with this other world for several years, and 如果没有得到良好的照顾，他们may decide to return there if they are not 就可能要返回灵界。因此，父母properly looked after. So parents treat young 们悉心照料孩子，以免他们受到children with great care so that they're not 诱惑，回归灵界，而且对他们也tempted to return, and also with some 有几分敬畏，因为他们具备大人reverence, because they're in contact with the 所不具备的通灵的本领。 spirit world in a way that adults aren't. 8 There's a tendency to view children in the 在英国及其他西方国家，越UK, and in the Western world in general, as 来越多的人认为儿童缺乏能力，incompetent and dependent. But this isn't the 依赖性强。但也不是全世界的人case throughout the world. In many societies 都持这种看法。在很多社会里孩children work and contribute to the family in 子从小就开始工作，寻找各种机whatever way they can from a very early age. A 会为家里挣钱。以看管孩子为good example of this is childcare. In the UK, it 例，在英国，14岁以下的儿童is illegal for a child under the age of 14 to look 在没有成人监督的情况下照看after another child unsupervised, because 其他孩子是非法的，因为人们认they're deemed incompetent and 为他们缺少看孩子的能力和责irresponsible. In other cultures, this is not the 任心。而在其他文化里，情况并case. Michelle Johnson has written about the 非如此。米歇尔·约翰逊曾写过Fulani of West Africa describing how by the 西非的富拉尼族女孩四岁就得age of four, girls are expected to be able to 照看年幼的弟弟妹妹，要打水、care for their younger siblings, fetch water and 拾柴，六岁就得舂米、挤奶、做firewood and by the age of six will be 黄油，并和妈妈一起到市场上去pounding grain, producing milk and butter 贩卖这些东西。 and selling these alongside their mothers in the market. 9 Across the world, among the Yanamam? 另一位人类学家拿破仑·沙of the Amazonian rainforest, another 尼翁证实了在世界的另一端，地anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon, has 处亚马逊雨林的亚那马莫族孩

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shown how different these children's childhoods are from Western ones, and also how differently boys and girls grow up in comparison with other parts of the world. He has written how a Yanamam? girl is expected to help her mother from a young age and by the age of ten will be running a house. By the age of 12 or 13 she is probably married and will have started to have babies. Boys on the other hand, have far fewer responsibilities. They don't marry until later than girls and are allowed to play well into their teens. Western notions of childhood simply do not \these cases, where children's competence and responsibilities are understood very differently.

10 Social anthropologists ask questions

about how childhood, and the role of children, is seen within the communities they study, rather than how it fits into Western ideas about childhood. By doing this they seek to avoid imposing outside ideas onto people with very different understandings of the

world or of making value judgments on other people's ways of raising their children. While Westerners might take exception to eight- year-old girls working or to 12-year-old girls marrying, within their own communities such activities are seen as a normal and positive part of childhood. Indeed, seen through the eyes of non-Westerners, many \Western childcare practices are seen as extremely bizarre and possibly harmful to children. Placing children in rooms of their own, refusing to feed them on demand, or letting them cry rather than immediately

tending to them, are viewed very negatively in many societies and lead some to think that Westerners don't know how to look after children properly.

11 Childhood is a changing social

phenomenon, of continual fascination and concern. Looking at it from a cross-cultural

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子的童年与西方孩子的童年有什么不同，以及那里的男孩儿女孩儿们跟世界其他地方的男孩儿女孩儿的成长方式的差异。他写道，亚那马莫族女孩儿很小就得帮妈妈做家务，到十岁就开始管家。到十二、三岁时可能就结婚生子了。男孩儿的责任则要少得多，他们比女孩儿晚结婚，可以玩到十八九岁。西方的童年观在这里根本不适用，因为这里的人们对儿童的能力和责任有着完全不同的理解。

社会人类学家探寻的是在他们所研究的族群里人们是如何看待童年，以及儿童扮演的角色问题，而不是研究那些地区的童年观是否符合西方的观念。他们这么做是为了避免把外界的观念强加给那些持不同世界观的人身上，或者是为了避免对其他民族养育孩子的方式作价值观方面的判断。西方人可能会反对八岁的女孩儿打工，反对12岁的女孩结婚，但在他们自己的族群里，这些事情被视为童年生活的一个积极的常态。的确，在非西方人看来，许多“正常的”西方育儿方式极其怪异，可能对孩子是有害的。让孩子在自己的屋里呆着，想吃东西的时候不给他们吃，或者任由他们哭闹而不赶快去安抚他们，这些在很多社会里都是不对的事情，会让人觉得西方人根本不懂得如何照看孩子。

童年是一种处于变化之中的社会现象，具有持续的吸引力，并且不断受到关注。从跨文