Unit 2
PASSAGE A
Is Education Still an Important Part of Youth Athletics?
expressed翻译Education is an important part of youth athletics in the US. Young kids, cooped up in class, long for the relative freedom of the football field, the basketball court, the baseball diamond. They long to kick and throw things, and the fields of organized play offer a place in which to act out these impulses. Kids are basically encouraged, after all, to beat each other up on the football field. Yet for all the chaos, adult guidance and supervision are never far off, and time spent on the athletic fields is meant to be productive. Coaches seek to give lessons in teamwork, self-sacrifice, competition, winning, and losing. Teachers at least want their pupils worn out so that they’ll sit still in reading class.
教育是美国青少年体育的一个重要部分。被局 限于教室内的孩子们，是很向往自由空间的，像足球场，篮球场，和棒球场。他们渴望踢和扔，而这些空旷 的场地正好为他们提供了一种
宣 泄和表 演的平台。孩子们基本上是被鼓励在足球场上打败对方的。然而对于所有的混乱，成年人的指导和监 督是不会离开半步得到，花在运动常识的时间目的在于 让训练去的成效。教练设法给队员们上课，教会他们什么是自我牺牲，竞 争，胜利和失败。老师们则希望他们的学生疲 惫不堪，这样的话学生们就会好好地坐在课室里看书了。
By the time children start competing for spots on junior high soccer or tennis teams, the kids’ gloves have come off to some extent. The athletic fields become less a place to learn about soft values like teamwork than about hard self-discipline and competition. Competitiveness, after all, is prized highly by Americans, perhaps more so than by other peoples. For a child, being cut from the baseball team or denied a spot on the swimming is a disappointment –and perhaps an opportunity for spiritual growth.
当孩子们开始竞 争初中足球队或网球队的职 位时，在某种程度上他们都已经做好了战 斗准备。运动场变成了一个更像学习自我约束和竞争多过于学习团 队合 作这种内在品质的地方。毕竟竞 争力是受到美国人民高 度重 视的，至少相比其他民族的人要重视。当一个孩子被从棒球队或游泳对剔 除是很失 望的——但也许这是一次心灵成长的机会。
High school basketball or football teams are places where the ethos of competition is given still stronger emphases. Although high school coaches still consider themselves educators, the sports are not simple extensions of the classroom. They are important social institutions, for football games bring people together. In much of the US they are events there young people and their elders mingle and see how the community is developing.
高中篮球或足球队是个竞争意识很强的地方。尽管高中的体育教练会把自己当成教育者，但体育已经不仅仅是课堂的简单延伸了。他们已经成了社会的一个重要机构，因为体 育加强了人们的联系。在美国的大多数地方，体育是一件能使年轻人和长辈加强沟 通联系并且从中看到社会进步历程的重要 事 项。
For the best players, the progression from little league to junior high to high school leads to a business or organization paying the costs of attending a big-name college. College athletes are apparently student-athletes, an ideal that suggests a balance between the intellectual rigors of the university and the physical rigors of the playing field. The reality is skewed heavily in favor of athletics. One would be hard-pressed to show that major US coll
ege sports are about education. Coaches require far too much of players’ time to be truly concerned with any thing other than performance in sports. Too often, the players they recruit seem to care little about school themselves.
对于一个最优秀的运动员来说，从一个小联盟到初中到高中的进展会与一个企业或组织是够愿 意为他们进入名牌大学的费 用买 单紧密挂钩。大学运动员显然就是学生运动员，有一个观点提出了要在学校智  力教育和运动场上的体质教育之间到平 衡点。但事实却似乎更倾向于体育。很难去说明美国的重点大学体 育是关于文化教育的。教练们要求运动员花大量的时间在运动方面的表现上远远多过于其他的事情。而大多数情况下，他们所招 募的运动员似乎也极少关心学校的名气。
This was not always the case. Universities –Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Yale --were the birthplaces of American football and baseball; education –the formation of “character” –was an important part of what those coaches and players thought they were achieving. In 1913, when football was almost declared illegal in the US, the game’s most famous figures traveled to Washington and argued successfully that football was an essential part of the c
ampus experiences and that the nation would be robbed of its bravest young men, its best potential leaders, if the game were banned.
但也并非总是如此。像普林斯顿，哈佛，罗格斯和耶鲁，是美国足球和棒球的发源地；而它们的教育---性格的塑造，也是那些教练和运动员们引以为豪的取到的重要成就。在1913年，当足球被美国 政 府宣布是不合法的时候，一个体育界著名人物游 经华盛顿，他成功地诠释了足球是大学生涯的一个重要的组成部分，如果国家禁止了它，那么也同时将失去它最勇敢的年青人 和潜在的领 导人。
The idea that competitive sports build character, a Western tradition that has lasted since ancient Greece, has obviously fallen out of fashion in today’s US. Educators, now tending to see the kind of character shaped by football and basketball in a dark light, have challenged the notion that college sports produce interesting people. Famous athletes, such as boxer Muhammad Ali and basketball star Charles Barkley, distanced themselves from the earlier ideal of the athlete as a model figure. Today’s US athlete is thus content to be an entertainer. Trying to do something good and helpful for the society, like being a role model, will make you seem over earnest and probably hurt your street credibility.