新标准大学英语3 unit2-Cultural Childhoods原文+译文

Cultural Childhoods不同文化的童年

1 When I look back on my own childhood in the 1970s and 1980s and compare it with children today, it reminds me of that famous sentence "The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there" (from L. P. 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.

每当我回顾20世纪七八十年代我的童年时光，并将它与现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。

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.

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。

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: "Today, a four year old who can 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."

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。”

4 These changing ideas about children have led many social scientists to claim that childhood is a "social construction". They use 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 are different and what expectations are placed on them, change according to the society in which they live. 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，人们对儿童又有何期待，不同的社会给出了不一样的答案。

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. 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。

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 potoas 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 between the 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.

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 …… 此处隐藏：8762字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……