我讨厌私立学校但我仍然送我的孩子去了那里 [英国媒体]

I hate the idea of private schools, but still send my kids to one

我讨厌私立学校，但我仍然送我的孩子去了那里

Like many parents, Alex Proud puts his principles to one side when it comes to giving his children the best start in life

【日期】2015年10月12日



Students at Eton College, 1929 Photo: Gamma/Keystone/Getty

1929年，伊顿公学学生

I am a big fat hypocrite.

我是个虚伪的胖子。

I am a liberal who believes in paying tax and hates those who avoid it. I believe passionately in a fair society. I work hard in the community in which my business operates to try and give something back, because I know that community has made me fairly rich. I despair of the UK’s rising inequality. I’m a Gladstonian centrist, although some days, I could probably pass as a socialist.

我是个自由党派信任税收系统讨厌的事情一律躲开。我认为在一个公平的社会我会充满激情。我很努力的工作并获得了该有的回报，这让我变成了一个富人。但我却对英国日益增长的不平等感到绝望。我是个格莱斯顿中间派，虽然有时候我更像个社会主义者。

But I send my kids to private school.

但是我把我的孩子们送去私立学校了

Boom. I know - beat that for a dinner party conversation bomb. It’s right up there with “I support hunting”, “I love the EU” and “Invading Iraq was right”. An explosive topic, guaranteed to blow away any pleasant conviviality and leave a bitter, drunken pit of shrill vipers. I guarantee that within an hour of my saying this, someone will leave the table in tears.

很轰动吧。我知道——好比在晚餐会上丢了一颗炸弹。这就像一直以来的“我支持打猎”，“我爱欧盟”还有“入侵伊拉克没错”。这会是个爆炸性话题，就像酒疯的阴险小人，保证能赶跑愉悦留下痛苦。我肯定只要我提起这话题，不到一小时，准保有人哭着离开餐桌。

But this has me thinking. Why do nearly all those of us who can afford it (and a fair number who can’t) send their kids private? Even those who don’t often will contrive to create quasi-selective schools. They either move to catchment areas so expensive that the local school may as well be private – or employ clever underhanded ruses (such as renting flats locally) that are only available to wealthy people. Giles Coren recently wrote a very good piece in The Times about how he’d been unable to get his daughter into the state school up the road for these reasons. He said he’d been forced to go private – and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was secretly relieved.

这让我开始思考。为何我们这圈子里几乎所有能负担起的（这数据也许不完全精准）都把孩子送去了私校？甚至有些对学校选择不怎么挑剔的，他们也都搬去了当地有私立学校的昂贵学区房，或者这只是个诡计（比如房屋租赁局），针对于有钱人的。 Giles Coren最近在《时代》上写了篇非常有意思的文章，列举了三个他闺女不能进入公立学校的理由。然后他不得不把她送进了私校——我忍不住想知道这是否让他偷偷释然了。

As I say, I should be desperately against private schools. And, in the abstract, I am. I will cheerfully agree with you that those Scandinavian countries where everyone goes to the nearest state school and a well-balanced, equal society results are wonderful places. I will endlessly deplore the negative effects of private schools on our own society. I’ll laugh while you joke that they are the only charities that actively increase inequality. And I will shake my head and wonder just what station in life David Cameron might currently be enjoying had he been to the local comp.

就像我说的，我应该反对私校的。从理论上来讲，我很乐意跟你聊聊北欧一些国家，每个人都是去上家附近的学校来保持平衡，而社会的平等造就了美好。我可以讲出一大堆私校给社会带来的负面影响。有人调侃私校就是个积极增加社会不平等的慈善机构时我会笑着赞同。但我也会摇头表示不赞同，我很好奇大卫卡梅伦现在在实际生活中是否会送他娃去当地的综合学校。



Pupils at Eton  Photo: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

伊顿学生照片

Of course, easy though it is to mock the Government's Etonian front bench, I know the Conservatives have no monopoly on privileged education. Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist parents sent him to an independent school – even though, sure enough, it sat uneasily with their beliefs. Just not uneasily enough not to do it. But in the end I can’t really blame them either. After all, they just wanted the best for him. However, my favourite tail of left-wingery and private education is the argument that Christopher Hitchens’ parents are supposed to have had over his schooling. His father said they couldn’t afford private. His mother replied, “If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it.” Christopher went private.

当然，嘲笑伊顿是政府前线阵地很容易（这句吐槽政府和高层都是伊顿校友），我知道保守党没有垄断私校教育。 Jeremy在下议院的社会主义者父母送他去了一所私校——就算这样，可以肯定的是，这对他们的信仰没有带来任何不便。顶多有点小局促而已。没人能责怪他们。毕竟，他们只是想给孩子提供最好的环境。但是，我最喜欢的还是在左翼同私校教育辩论中Christopher Hitchen父母得说法，他父亲说他们担负不起私校。他的母亲补充道“如果这个国家确实有上层阶级，Christopher正在加入他们。”Christopher上了私校。



Mummy Hitchens was unusually honest, especially for the time, but this argument rings even truer today. Private school fees have gone up like houses, not wages, in recent years – and, for most us, those state engines of academic excellence, the grammar schools, are long gone. So what kind of income do you need to put two kids through private school these days? If you send them day, that’s about ￡30k after tax a year for the pair. So you’re looking at ￡150k - ￡200k and probably considerably more if you’re paying a London mortgage on top of that.

对于《时代》来说Hitchen太太过于坦诚了，但是这个怪现状就是今天真实的样子。最近几年，私校学费像房价一样猛涨，薪水却不见动静——并且对我们当中的大部分人来说，这个国家优秀的学术引擎，文法学校，已经一去不复返了。来算算你把两个孩子送到私校去需要多少钱呢？如果你把俩娃都送去，一年得税后3万英镑。所以如果你在伦敦偿还按揭的话15-20万镑看起来确实不少。
 
For most of us, grammar schools are long gone  Photo: Getty Images

对我们当中的大部分人来说，文法学校已经一去不复返了。

It’s funny. Before school fees I used to laugh at people with these kind of incomes who claimed to be able to empathise with the money worries of middle earners. But now I totally get it. In fact, now I spend quite a lot of time wishing I’d gone into the diplomatic corps (don’t laugh) so the taxpayer could pick up the bill for my kids' schooling while I drank away the afternoons in some sweaty, second string consulate in East Crudistan.

有意思的是，学费涨价前我曾嘲笑那些对中产阶级收入表示同情的人们。但是现在我也体会到了。事实上，现在我花了不少时间希望可以加入外交使团（别笑）这样纳税人就能够为自家孩子的学费子拿起教育法案，当我在满是二线领事馆的东Crudistan喝酒消磨下午时间的时候。（看不懂啥梗）

Of course as I look at the foregone skiing holidays, the home extensions that never happened and the sports cars that aren’t in my drive, I ask myself again: why? Speaking personally, I have to assume that it’s because we’re genetically programmed to care about our kids more than anything else. More than other people. More than our political views. More than social inequality. More than that nice, left-wing woman who left the dinner party crying.

当然那是在我看着早就预定好的滑雪假期不得不取消以及开跑车的不是我时，我会问自己，这是为啥？通常，我必须假设这是因为我们骨子里关心自个孩子胜过别人，胜过自己的政治观点，胜过关心社会不平等，胜过其他美好的事儿，哭着离开晚宴的都是左翼女性。

Like it or not, right or wrong, these schools are better. They have smaller class sizes and more generous facilities. They have more money. They don’t have the disruptive kids from the local sink estate (this is usually glossed over, but hey, it’s why the grammars worked). Of course, I know there are some great state schools. But in general private schools are better and besides, the great state schools are often the ones that have managed retain some selectivity, either formally or informally.

不管对错，不管是否喜欢，这些学校更好。它们规模小设施足。他们都很有钱。他们不会有破落户家（这块通常会一笔带过，但是，嘿，这就是为何我们需要语法）捣乱的孩子。当然，我也知道不少很棒的公立学校。但是普通的私校还是更甚一筹。好的公校总是经常选择保留一些尖子生，不论正式的还是非正式的。


 
History Boys: 'Of course, there are some great state schools'  Photo: REX FEATURES

历史课上的男生：当然，也有很多非常棒的公校

Anyway, given our natural desire to give our own genes the best start in life, it’s no wonder that only the most morally rigorous of us say no to this educational sweet shop if we can just about afford it. I don’t think Brits are especially odd in this respect. Koreans pay for crammers to get into crammers. New Yorkers employ nursery advisors and even coaches for play dates. Even supposedly egalitarian Germany has wealthier parents battling to maintain a system which favours their own offspring. Everywhere you look, parents put their kids above everything else.

总之，这是一种天性，我们都想给自己的下一代更好的生活起点，这也没啥奇怪的，我们当中只有道德极度严谨的人才会在可以负担的起的情况下拒绝给孩子提供优秀的教育环境吧。这方面英国人不是特例。韩国人掏钱送孩子上补习班。纽约人雇佣育儿顾问甚至为游戏请教练。甚至更平等的德国，富裕的父母也在为后代维持一个优良的环境而竞争。这种事到处都有，父母总是以孩子为先。

Yet – and again in the abstract - I still think it is all wrong. We should all have the same chances in life. I would love a system that was fairer. I often wonder if you might be better off just giving parents vouchers and letting them choose schools, effectively making every school independent and giving all parents school fees to spend which they could top up. On a less radical note, we could do much more to reward brilliant teachers and be tougher on bad ones. We could focus more on the basics and drop the stupid notion that we should all go to university. We could make our existing private schools work a lot harder justify their charitable status...

但是—从道理上讲，我还是认为这样是不对的。我们所有人都应该在生活中有同样的机会。我期待一个公平的体系。我常想是否可以给父母们一个凭证，让他们可以自主的选择学校，让每一个学校都像私立学校一样，并且（凭证）上有足够的学费。并出台个不那么激进的制度，对优秀老师厚奖，对不好的老师严格要求。我们可以把重点放在基础教育上，放弃我们所有人都应该上大学这种蠢观点吧。我们应该对现有的私校再严格一点，让他们为“慈善形象”作出解释……

But the trouble is, I can’t see a real way of making any education system entirely fair. At some point, you always run into the grammar problem which is that, academically speaking, not everyone gets the same genetic start in life. There are plenty of rich kids who will never go to Oxford and quite a few poor kids who have the potential to become Professors at Cambridge. I suppose that all you do is try and design a system that works best for the greatest number. I’m at a loss as to what this might be – although I’m pretty certain that it’s not what we have now.

但问题是，我看出什么可以让教育系统公平化得体系。在某些时候，你就会遇上语法问题，从学术上讲，不是所有的人都能得到同样的遗传。富人家的孩子，他们很多人不会去上牛津，穷人家的孩子，他们也有可能成为剑桥的教授。我们我们能做的就是尝试去设计一个更好更合适的体系----虽然我很肯定现在我们的（教育体系）不怎么样。

Until we do, I’m afraid I am buying my kids a headstart in life. And I also can’t see any way of my not doing it, short of a brilliant (and probably just as inequality-friendly) grammar school appearing nearby. I can be talked out of buying a big polluting car and talked into agreeing that inheritance tax is well worth paying. But you won’t convince me to send my kids state.

直到我们真正去做了，恐怕在这之前我还是得花钱给我的孩子提供一个好的生活起点。并且除此之外我也没别的办法，附近出现的文法学校辉煌一时（可能是不公平但友好的）。我可能会被忽悠买个大排放的汽车或者同意支付继承税是对的。但是谁也别想说服我吧孩子送去公立学校。

As I say, this makes me a massive hypocrite. Still, I suppose that unlike many liberal, middle class parents, I’ll admit it makes me a hypocrite. So I’m not a liar about being a hypocrite. That’s something isn’t it?

正如我所说，这让我看起来是个十足的伪君子。但是，和许多开明的中产阶级父母们不同，我承认自个是个伪君子。所以我没撒谎坦然的做个伪君子。那也不是什么大事是吧？