School

被遗弃和被选择 学校

Even before Jobs started elementary school, his mother had taught him how to read. This, however, led to some problems once he got to school. “I was kind of bored for the first few years, so I occupied myself by getting into trouble.” It also soon became clear that Jobs, by both nature and nurture, was not disposed to accept authority. “I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.”

在乔布斯上小学之前，母亲就已经教他阅读了。但这反而造成了一些麻烦。“在学校的最初几年我觉得很无聊，所以我就不断惹麻烦。”很快大家就发现，不论是从天性还是他接受的教育上，乔布斯都不是一个愿意接受权威的孩子。“我遭遇的是自己从未遇到过的另一种形式的权威，而且我不喜欢它。他们几乎都要制服我了。差一点儿他们就把我身上所有的好奇心都赶走了。”

His school, Monta Loma Elementary, was a series of low-slung 1950s buildings four blocks from his house. He countered his boredom by playing pranks. “I had a good friend named Rick Ferrentino, and we’d get into all sorts of trouble,” he recalled. “Like we made little posters announcing ‘Bring Your Pet to School Day.’ It was crazy, with dogs chasing cats all over, and the teachers were beside themselves.” Another time they convinced some kids to tell them the combination numbers for their bike locks. “Then we went outside and switched all of the locks, and nobody could get their bikes. It took them until late that night to straighten things out.” When he was in third grade, the pranks became a bit more dangerous. “One time we set off an explosive under the chair of our teacher, Mrs. Thurman. We gave her a nervous twitch.”

他就读的学校，蒙塔·洛马小学，在他家四条街之外，是由一群20世纪50年代的低矮建筑组成的。他靠玩恶作剧来打发自己的无聊。“我有个叫里克·费伦蒂诺（RickFerrentino）的好朋友，我们会惹上各种各样的麻烦，”他回忆说，“比如我们会制作小海报，上面写着‘带宠物上学日’。那太疯狂了，到处都能看到狗撵猫。老师们都气疯了。”还有一次，他们设法让别的孩子说出了自己自行车锁的密码。“然后我们跑出去把所有的锁都调换了位置，没人能骑走自己的车。他们直到那天晚上才解决了问题。”到他三年级的时候，恶作剧开始有了一点儿危险的成分。“有一次，我们在老师瑟曼夫人（Mrs.Thurman）的椅子下面点燃了炸药。她吓得都抽搐了。”

Not surprisingly, he was sent home two or three times before he finished third grade. By then, however, his father had begun to treat him as special, and in his calm but firm manner he made it clear that he expected the school to do the same. “Look, it’s not his fault,” Paul Jobs told the teachers, his son recalled. “If you can’t keep him interested, it’s your fault.” His parents never punished him for his transgressions at school. “My father’s father was an alcoholic and whipped him with a belt, but I’m not sure if I ever got spanked.” Both of his parents, he added, “knew the school was at fault for trying to make me memorize stupid stuff rather than stimulating me.” He was already starting to show the admixture of sensitivity and insensitivity, bristliness and detachment, that would mark him for the rest of his life.

不出意料，乔布斯在读完三年级之前被送回家两三次。不过父亲当时已经把他当做特殊的孩子来对待了，他以平静但有力的态度向学校阐明，他希望学校也能这么对待自己的孩子。“听着，这不是他的错，”乔布斯回忆当时父亲是这么对老师说的，“如果你提不起他的兴趣，那是你的错。”乔布斯的记忆中，父母从来没有因为他在学校犯错而惩罚过他。“我父亲的父亲是个酒鬼，还会用皮带抽他，但是我连一巴掌都没有挨过。”他又补充说，他的父母“都知道责任在学校，学校没有激发我学习的兴趣，而是让我去背一些没用的东西”。他开始展现出性格中的多面性，敏感又偶尔迟钝，易怒而又超然，这也是他以后生活中的状态。

When it came time for him to go into fourth grade, the school decided it was best to put Jobs and Ferrentino into separate classes. The teacher for the advanced class was a spunky woman named Imogene Hill, known as “Teddy,” and she became, Jobs said, “one of the saints of my life.” After watching him for a couple of weeks, she figured that the best way to handle him was to bribe him. “After school one day, she gave me this workbook with math problems in it, and she said, ‘I want you to take it home and do this.’ And I thought, ‘Are you nuts?’ And then she pulled out one of these giant lollipops that seemed as big as the world. And she said, ‘When you’re done with it, if you get it mostly right, I will give you this and five dollars.’ And I handed it back within two days.” After a few months, he no longer required the bribes. “I just wanted to learn and to please her.”

等到他即将进入四年级的时候，校方认为最好将乔布斯和费伦蒂诺放到不同的班级里。教高级课程的是一名干劲十足的女教师伊莫金·希尔（ImogeneHill）,人称“泰迪”，用乔布斯的话说，她成为了“我生命中的圣人之一”。在观察了乔布斯几个星期后，她意识到对付他最好的方法就是收买他。“有一天放学后，她给了我一本练习簿，上面都是数学题，她说要我带回家把题目解出来。我心想：‘你是不是疯了？’这时她拿出一只超大的棒棒糖，在我看来地球也不过这么大吧。她说，你把题目做完之后，如果大多数都做对了，我就把这个给你，再送你5美元。我用了不到两天就做完交给她了。”几个月之后，他不想再要奖励了。“我只想学习和让她髙兴。”

She reciprocated by getting him a hobby kit for grinding a lens and making a camera. “I learned more from her than any other teacher, and if it hadn’t been for her I’m sure I would have gone to jail.” It reinforced, once again, the idea that he was special. “In my class, it was just me she cared about. She saw something in me.”

她会帮他弄到一些小工具，让他可以做些打磨镜头、制作相机之类的事情。“我从她身上学到的东西比从其他任何老师那儿学到的都要多，如果没有她的话，我一定会坐牢的。”这再一次印证了乔布斯是个特殊的孩子。“在我们班，她只关心我一个人。她在我身上看到了一些东西。”

It was not merely intelligence that she saw. Years later she liked to show off a picture of that year’s class on Hawaii Day. Jobs had shown up without the suggested Hawaiian shirt, but in the picture he is front and center wearing one. He had, literally, been able to talk the shirt off another kid’s back.

她看到的不仅是乔布斯的智慧。多年后，她很喜欢展示当年的班级在“夏威夷日”拍的一张照片。那天乔布斯出现的时候没有按要求穿夏威夷衫，但在照片中，他穿着一件夏威夷衫坐在前排中央。原来，他成功说服另一个孩子把自己的衣服脱下来给了他。

Near the end of fourth grade, Mrs. Hill had Jobs tested. “I scored at the high school sophomore level,” he recalled. Now that it was clear, not only to himself and his parents but also to his teachers, that he was intellectually special, the school made the remarkable proposal that he skip two grades and go right into seventh; it would be the easiest way to keep him challenged and stimulated. His parents decided, more sensibly, to have him skip only one grade.

四年级快结束时，希尔夫人给乔布斯作了测试。“我的得分是髙中二年级水平。”他回忆说。不光是他自己和他的父母，连老师们也发现了，他在智力上真的是非常特别，学校允许他连跳两级，直接升入七年级。这也是可以让他挑战自我并受到激励最简单的方法了。他的父母明智地决定让他只跳一级。

The transition was wrenching. He was a socially awkward loner who found himself with kids a year older. Worse yet, the sixth grade was in a different school, Crittenden Middle. It was only eight blocks from Monta Loma Elementary, but in many ways it was a world apart, located in a neighborhood filled with ethnic gangs. “Fights were a daily occurrence; as were shakedowns in bathrooms,” wrote the Silicon Valley journalist Michael S. Malone. “Knives were regularly brought to school as a show of macho.” Around the time that Jobs arrived, a group of students were jailed for a gang rape, and the bus of a neighboring school was destroyed after its team beat Crittenden’s in a wrestling match.

这样一种过渡有些突然。这个有点儿社交障碍的不合群的孩子发现自己身处一群比自己大一岁的人中间。更糟糕的是，他读六年级的地方是另一所学校：克里滕登中学。这所学校离原来的蒙塔·洛马小学不过八条街之隔，但在很多方面这里就像另一个世界，这所学校地处一个充斥着少数族裔帮派的社区。“打架几乎天天发生，厕所里的敲诈也是如此，”硅谷记者迈克尔·S·马隆（MichaelS.Malone）这样写道，“学生们经常把刀带到学校来展现自己的男子气概。”乔布斯到这里的时候，一群学生刚因为轮奸而被监禁，隔壁学校因为在一场摔跤比赛中打败了克里滕登而导致己方的校车被毁。