The Guardian view on reopening schools: safety must come first 《卫报》关于复学的观点：安全第一 The Guardian view on lockdown reading: not just a way of escaping 《卫报》关于封锁期间阅读的观点：不仅是一种逃避方式
The spring holidays have ended, but children are not going back to school. For at least three more weeks, the vast majority of the 10 million British children aged between four and 18 will be spending their days at home. 春假已经结束了，但是学生们还未返回学校。1000万名4岁至18岁的英国儿童中的绝大多数人，将会在至少三个多星期的时间内待在家里。 There are powerful reasons to wish that this was not the case. The economic argument for trying to reopen schools, associated with a faction in the government including the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is that the damage caused by a nationwide shutdown of more than a few weeks could be so severe as to effectively cancel out the benefits of the lockdown. 我们有充分的理由希望事态不会这样发展。设法复学在经济层面的论据是在全国范围内停课超过几周所造成的损失可能会非常严重，以至于实质上抵消了封锁政策所带来的好处。政府中包括财政大臣里希·苏纳克（Rishi Sunak）在内的一派持有这一观点。 But there are also social reasons to push for a return to normal. Children miss their friends, teachers, routines. Their education is suffering. While schools remain open to families where parents are key workers, or children have special educational needs or social workers, it is generally accepted that the impact of closures is uneven and hitting those who are already disadvantaged hardest. 但推动恢复正常也存在一些社会原因。孩子们想念他们的朋友、老师和日常生活。他们的教育遭受负面影响。虽然学校仍然向那些父母是关键岗位人士的家庭，抑或拥有特殊教育需求或由社工照管的孩子们开放，但人们普遍认为，关闭学校的影响是不均衡的，并对那些已经处于不利地位的人打击最大。 If schools were to remain closed until September, children would then have been away from their classrooms and peers for almost six months. Politicians and others rightly regard this as a scenario to be avoided. But while moves towards reopening schools in Germany and Denmark have understandably led parents, as well as the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, to hope for similar steps in England (and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), much work remains to make this a realistic prospect. 如果学校在9月份之前一直关闭，那么孩子们将会远离他们的教室和同龄人长达6个月。政客们等人认为这是一个需要避免的情况，这种想法是正确的。德国和丹麦重新开放学校的举措让家长们和教育大臣加文·威廉姆森（Gavin Williamson）也希望英格兰（以及威尔士、苏格兰和北爱尔兰）采取类似的措施可以理解，但即便如此，要实现这一目标还有很多工作要做。 For now, the more urgent questions than when schools will reopen are why and how. That is, not why people want children to return to school (which is clear enough), but why schools in May, June or September will be any safer – for pupils, their families and teachers – than they are now. The feasibility of physical distancing measures is already the subject of debate, with experts tending towards the view that they won’t work for the youngest children. How to make it possible for teachers and older children to keep their distance – and to what extent it is worthwhile spacing out desks, given the narrowness of corridors and other factors – is under discussion. Other countries plan to shrink class sizes by teaching part-time. 就目前而言，最迫切的问题不是学校什么时候重新开放，而是为何以及如何重新开放。这并不关乎为何人们想要孩子重返学校（这点已经很清楚了），而关乎为何5月、6月或9月的学校对学生、他们的家人和老师而言会比现在更安全。保持身体间距离的措施的可行性已经成为争论的话题，专家们倾向于认为这种方法对很小的孩子不起作用。如何让老师和大一点的孩子保持距离——以及考虑到过道的狭窄程度和其他因素，在多大程度上值得将课桌间隔开——都在讨论当中。其他国家计划通过分时段授课来缩小班级规模。 Confidence is key. Whenever schools reopen, their leaders will need clearly presented information to share with staff and parents. The five tests set by ministers include sufficient testing capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment. Given difficulties in the health and care sectors, it is reasonable to assume that adequate resources for schools, colleges and nurseries are some way off. The voucher system for free school meals is not working smoothly. 信心是关键。无论何时复学，学校领导需要都得到清晰的信息来告知教职工和家长。大臣们设定的五项测试指标包括充足的病毒检测能力和个人防护装备供应。鉴于医疗和照管领域存在的困难，我们可以合理地假设目前距离向学校、学院和托儿所提供足够的资源还存在一定差距。免费供应校园伙食的代金券体系还未能顺畅运行。 Whatever is agreed in outline, there will be sticking points: older and vulnerable teachers; pupils living with grandparents or other ill relatives; challenges around discipline in relation to distancing; parents who may be reluctant to send children back; how to make up for all the lost lessons, particularly for GCSE students and younger primary children who have missed chunks of literacy and numeracy learning. 无论在总体上达到何种地步，下一步将存在如下症结：较老且易感染病毒的老师；和祖父母或者其他生病的亲戚共同生活的学生；与保持距离有关的纪律方面的挑战；不愿意送孩子返校的家长；尤其对于参加普通中等教育证书考试（GCSE）的学生和那些错过大量识字和算术学习的小学生而言，如何弥补所有缺失的课程。 Mr Williamson’s apology to children, in Sunday’s press conference, was well judged. Though he did not spell this out, better decision-making by politicians at the start of the year could have spared them – and their teachers – this disruption. Next, he should postpone the new baseline tests for four-year-olds which were due to start in September. They are an unnecessary distraction at a time when what is needed is for Mr Williamson to go beyond the letter of his role as cabinet minister for education, and advocate vigorously for teachers, parents and children. 威廉姆森在周日的新闻发布会上向孩子们的道歉得到了很好的评价。尽管他没有讲清楚，今年年初政客们更好的决策本可以使这些孩子们——以及他们的老师——免遭这种干扰。接下来，他应该推迟原定于9月份开始的4岁儿童新基线评估。在威廉姆森需要超越他担任内阁教育大臣的职责，并大力支持教师、家长和儿童之际，这些都是不必要的干扰。
It’s no surprise that keen readers have looked to books for historical analogues or literary insights into the coronavirus outbreak. Sales of the English translation of Albert Camus’s 1947 novel La Peste (The Plague) are reported to have risen by around 1,000% in recent weeks. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s Peculiar Ground have also all seen their mentions rise. So have other volumes with contagious disease or dystopian themes, presumably because readers hope they might shed some light on our unprecedented global situation. 读书爱好者们从书籍中寻找关于新冠肺炎疫情的历史比照或是文学洞见并不令人惊讶。阿尔贝·加缪（Albert Camus）1947年的小说《鼠疫》（The Plague）的英文版近几周的销量增长了约1000%。丹尼尔·笛福（Daniel Defoe）的《瘟疫年纪事》（A Journal of the Plague Year）、唐·德里罗（Don DeLillo）的《白噪音》（White Noise）和露西·休斯-哈里特（Lucy Hughes-Hallett）的《奇怪的地方》（the odd Ground）也都受到关注，其他关于传染病或反乌托邦主题的书籍也是如此。这大概是因为读者希望这些书籍能为我们前所未有的全球形势带来一些启发。 Of course there is more time for things like reading when we are stuck at home, unable to socialise or go to museums and concerts – or to borrow books, since libraries are shut. But it is notable that fiction sales, along with home-learning titles, experienced the greatest boost as the UK’s lockdown began, because this indicates that it is not facts that people are after, but stories. 诚然，我们眼下有更多的时间来做阅读之类的事情，因为我们被困在家里，无法社交、去博物馆和音乐会——但也因图书馆闭馆，而无法借书。但值得注意的是，小说和家庭学习类图书的销量在英国开始封城后出现最大幅度的增长，这表明人们想要的不是事实，而是故事。 For busy people, time to read fiction is often associated with holidays. With family get-togethers and outings disallowed, the fortnight either side of Easter was hardly that – even for children and adults with time off work. But the pandemic has forced a break in routine and presented people of all ages with many hours to fill up. Spying an opening for one of her enthusiasms, the Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li set up an online book group to read one of the longest of all novels: Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Waterstones reported that big names including F Scott Fitzgerald and Toni Morrison were selling well – although cutbacks by wholesalers have led to delays and difficulties, particularly for independent retailers (in San Francisco, the iconic City Lights bookshop raised $500,000 from supporters after warning that its future was in jeopardy). 对于忙碌的人来说，读小说的时间通常与假期联系在一起。由于家庭聚会和外出活动被禁止，复活节前后那一个月都很难熬——即使对有时间休息的成年人和孩子们而言也是如此。而疫情已迫使人们打破常规作息规律，所有年龄段的人也因此有了更多需要被填满的空闲时间。美籍华裔作家李艺云为自己的阅读热情寻到了出口，成立了一个在线读书会，来阅读所有小说中最长的一部：列夫·托尔斯泰（Leo Tolstoy）的《战争与和平》（War and Peace）。水石书店（Waterstones）报道称，弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德（F Scott Fitzgerald）和托妮·莫里森（Toni Morrison）等大名鼎鼎作家的著作销量良好——尽管批发商削减开支造成到货延迟和经营困难，其中独立零售商尤甚（在旧金山，标志性的城市之光（City Lights）书店在对其经营前景岌岌可危发出警告后从支持者那里筹集了50万美元）。 “The house of fiction has not one window, but a million,” wrote Henry James. People read and write novels in a multitude of ways. While Camus’s readers are curious about how a French existentialist thought a disease outbreak might pan out, some people will be seeking entertainment or distraction. But there is one thing that readers of fiction have in common: the wish to be absorbed in a story that is not about themselves. 亨利·詹姆斯（Henry James）写道，“小说的房子里不只有一扇窗户，而有一百万扇。”人们阅读和写作小说的方式多种多样。加缪的读者们对法国存在主义者眼中的疾病爆发将会如何发展感到好奇，而也有人会从中寻求娱乐或消遣。但小说的读者们有一个共同点：他们都希望沉浸在一个与自己无关的故事中。 It’s not hard to see why such flights of imagination attract those who are physically confined. Not only because they have the power to lift us out of our domestic settings and away from the panicked scrolling of news headlines, but also because they can interest us in the lives and characters of other, made-up people. 我们不难发现为何这些天马行空的文字能吸引被迫宅在家里的人。这不仅因为它们拥有带我们离开所生活的环境、远离滚动播出的新闻头条所带来的恐慌的力量，还因为它们能让我们对虚构的人物形象以及他们的生活充满兴趣。 Except for young children, reading is usually a solitary activity. But it is the opposite of antisocial. Of course there are cruel and cynical novels, and many that are not primarily interested in human beings or relations. But plays, poetry and fiction have made a vast contribution to our knowledge and understanding of each other. As well as a private pursuit, reading is a builder of fellow feeling. That’s why many people find bookshops, libraries and book groups so congenial. 除了给儿童讲故事外，阅读一般是一种个人活动。但并不代表它是反社交的行为。的确有些小说语言粗鲁、愤世嫉俗，很多小说也并不主要关注于人类或描绘人际关系。但戏剧、诗歌和小说确实极大地增进了我们对他人的认识和理解。通过阅读建立的情感既包括个人追求，又关乎与他人建立情感共鸣。这就是为什么很多人认为书店、图书馆和读书小组的氛围舒适宜人。 EM Forster once described words as “the wine of life”. Clearly this is the wrong metaphor for non-drinkers. But it neatly conveys the garrulous aspect of literature: the ambition that it should bring people together. That people reach for books in such bleak times can give us hope that empathy, not misanthropy, is winning. 爱德华·摩根·福斯特（EM Forster）曾把文字比喻成“生命之酒”。对于不喝酒的人而言，这无疑是个错误的比喻，但它却巧妙地表达出文学无可争议的一面——其理想是把人类汇聚到一起。人们在这样黯淡的时刻捧起书卷给予了我们希望：人类正在走向共情而非厌世。
