pbs高端访谈:丹泽尔·华盛顿对美国辍学率的看法

 　　GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, we launch an 18-month focus on the nation's high school dropout¹ rate.

　　The American Graduate project, a partnership² with public radio and television, will examine the breadth of the problem, as well as its consequences.

　　The numbers are staggering. One-third of U.S. high school students don't graduate on time. And Latino and African-American boys are twice as likely to become high school dropouts, the result: higher rates of incarceration³, unemployment and poverty.

　　Among the solutions increasingly is community involvement and high-wattage celebrity⁴ attention.

　　Oscar-winning film director Ron Howard joined basketball star LeBron James, singer Ashanti, and actor Denzel Washington in Washington today to unveil a new public service announcement for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON, Actor: Every child follows a path in life. For many, that path will lead them to a door, a door that gives them a place to grow.

　　RON HOWARD, Director/Producer: I'm a great believer and lover of the country, believer in the dream and what the country aspires⁶ to, or sometimes I feel what it purports⁷ to aspire⁵ to. And it's up to us to act on that.

　　GWEN IFILL: We spoke⁸ about the dropout crisis afterward⁹ with Denzel Washington, the Boys and Girls Clubs' longtime national spokesman.

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: Fundamentally, we are failing our kids. It is not their fault. It is the—if there is fault to be—it's the fault of the adults.

　　GWEN IFILL: When you say we're failing our kids, there are so many fingers being pointed¹⁰ at the schools, at government, at parents, and sometimes at the kids themselves. Is there a finger for blame?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: Well, I'm not here to point fingers.

　　It starts in the home. I'm about solutions. You know, if three out of 10 drop out, that means seven out of 10 don't. I'm trying to turn that seven into an eight or into a nine. The work we do at the Boys and Girls Clubs are helping¹¹ to do that. In the last 10 years, we have doubled the number of children we reach.

　　We have gone from 1,800 clubs to 4,000 clubs, from two million young people to four million young people. So, I'm about a part—I'm about being a part of the solution. We are making progress, and we're here in Washington to get more support. And we reach out to people across America for their support, because what we're doing at the Boys and Girls Clubs work.

　　It's one thing to sit around and talk about what the problems are, you know, but it's another thing to get off your behind and actually do something about it. And that's what I'm about. I'm not about complaining about what the statistics are and how awful it is. I'm about doing something about it.

　　And if one is not about actually doing something, then one should really keep their mouth shut or move out of the way, and allow someone who wants to help to help. We can all volunteer.

　　GWEN IFILL: Where are the most effective solutions to be found, in government—you're here in Washington—or in communities?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: No, in each and every one of us.

　　Forget talking—asking the government. Now, we at the Boys and Girls Club get a tremendous financial support directly from the Department of Justice, but also from—you know, from the federal government.

　　I mean, the Department of Justice understands if they spend the money with us early, they don't need to spend it on prisons or incarceration or policing later on.

　　GWEN IFILL: There's talk that early warning signs are things that you need to be watching for in order to change these outcomes that we have been talking about.

　　What kinds of early warning signs should, whether it's teachers or individuals or community groups or organizations like yours, be watching for?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: I mean, fundamentally, it's parenting.

　　My mother said that your biggest influence on your children will be in their first five years, because, in those days, it was five years, because once you went to kindergarten, once you started going to school, you were influenced by others.

　　So it starts in the home. I mean, the fundamental responsibility, or problem, if we want to call it that, is the breakdown¹² of the family, and that obviously directly affects the child.

　　GWEN IFILL: Is the solution also to be found inside schools or primarily outside of schools? Because people—there's a lot of discussion about dropout factories...

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: Right. Right.

　　GWEN IFILL: ... and schools which don't turn out performing or high-performing students.

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: Right.

　　Again, I think it starts in the home, your first four or five years of preparation before you go to school. Obviously, the teachers have an obligation. The parents have an obligation. And where we come in—and we're—again, going back to the Boys and Girls Club, the most dangerous time for children are between 3 and 6 o'clock, when they're out of school.

　　They're going to join some club. They're going to line up with, you know, the athletes, the jocks, or the jerks, or the nerds, or the goths, or the druggies. They're going to do something. They're going to be negatively influenced, unless they're positively¹³ influenced. And that is our responsibility as adults.

　　GWEN IFILL: As you balance out the three prongs of this, healthy lifestyles, and good citizenship¹⁴, and academic achievement, how important is academic achievement in all of this?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: Absolutely important.

　　I mean, it's one thing to know—it's one thing to make money. It's another thing to know how to count it. But education—I remember my mother used to take us, put us in the car on Sunday, and ride us around wealthy neighborhoods. And we would imagine which house was going to be ours.

　　And that was a part of our education. You know, they talk about role models, and you see, I don't know, me or LeBron James or somebody on TV bouncing a basketball. But your real role models are those people that are in your club, those people that are in your environment that affect you either positively or negatively.

　　If all you see every day is the drug dealer¹⁵, and he's the only one or she's the only one that has a Mercedes, that's what you're going to aspire to. So it's up to all of us to reach out.

　　GWEN IFILL: As you mentioned, you're here. LeBron James is here. Jennifer Lopez is involved. There's a Beyonce song in the video.

　　What difference does it make if these words come from celebrities¹⁶, from well-known people?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: It doesn't make any difference, but there are those people, like I said—when I grew up in the club, I loved Muhammad Ali, but I couldn't get him on the phone.

　　But I was able to talk to my mentor¹⁷, Billy Thomas, or different people in the club. I remember I had a debate. So I was about 9 or 10 years old. I had a debate with the mayor of our town. He asked—he spoke, and then he said, anybody have any questions?

　　And I had a couple of questions. So I didn't particularly believe he was giving me the answers, the real answers, so I kept asking, until they made me sit down.

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: And it's a true story. But there was a gentleman in the club, Charles White, who worked at the club. And he said, "You know, young man, you know, with your smarts, you can be anything you want to be."And I never forgot that. I walked out of that building, and I said, wow, I never heard that before. I can be anything I want to be. Yes, OK, I count. I'm important.

　　So I didn't hear that from Muhammad Ali. I heard that from Charles White.

　　GWEN IFILL: As you have watched children grow through this effort, have things changed? Has it gotten tougher for this generation of young people? Is it—are they different than they were when you came along?

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: I think us older people are just cynical¹⁸, because we have got more years behind us than we do in front of us.

　　You know, I remember speaking. I was doing a movie, "Malcolm X," and we were shooting at Columbia University. And between takes, I was—there was like—we used students. And between takes, we were talking about all the issues of the day, and, oh, it's this, and the world is—and this was 20 years ago.

　　I can imagine what the conversation would be like now. And, basically, I said, so what are you going to do? You going to give up? And they're like, no, no, we're going to change things. That didn't even come into their mind. I said, oh, that's me, the older, cynical one that's thinking like that.

　　So I enjoy working with young people and listening to young people because young people are positive. Us older folk are the ones that: Oh, you know, it's all going to hell in a handbasket. That's the way we think. I don't think that's the way it is.

　　GWEN IFILL: Denzel Washington, thank you so much for joining us.

　　DENZEL WASHINGTON: My pleasure.

　　GWEN IFILL: We will report more on the dropout problem in coming months.

　　American Graduate is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1 dropout   

n.退学的学生；退学；退出者

参考例句：

• There is a high dropout rate from some college courses.有些大学课程的退出率很高。
• In the long haul,she'll regret having been a school dropout.她终归会后悔不该中途辍学。

2 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

3 incarceration   

n.监禁，禁闭；钳闭

参考例句：

• He hadn't changed much in his nearly three years of incarceration. 在将近三年的监狱生活中，他变化不大。 来自辞典例句
• Please, please set it free before it bursts from its long incarceration! 请你，请你将这颗心释放出来吧！否则它会因长期的禁闭而爆裂。 来自辞典例句

4 celebrity   

n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望

参考例句：

• Tom found himself something of a celebrity. 汤姆意识到自己已小有名气了。
• He haunted famous men, hoping to get celebrity for himself. 他常和名人在一起, 希望借此使自己获得名气。

5 aspire   

vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于

参考例句：

• Living together with you is what I aspire toward in my life.和你一起生活是我一生最大的愿望。
• I aspire to be an innovator not a follower.我迫切希望能变成个开创者而不是跟随者。

6 aspires   

v.渴望，追求( aspire的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The fame to which he aspires was beyond his reach. 他追求的名誉乃是他所不能及的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• An old steed in the stable still aspires to gallop a thousand li. 老骥伏枥，志在千里。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 purports   

v.声称是…，（装得）像是…的样子( purport的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She purports to represent the whole group. 她自称代表整个团体。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The document purports to be official but is really private. 那份文件据称是官方的，但实际上是私人的。 来自辞典例句

8 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

9 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。

10 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

11 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

12 breakdown   

n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌

参考例句：

• She suffered a nervous breakdown.她患神经衰弱。
• The plane had a breakdown in the air,but it was fortunately removed by the ace pilot.飞机在空中发生了故障，但幸运的是被王牌驾驶员排除了。

13 positively   

adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实

参考例句：

• She was positively glowing with happiness.她满脸幸福。
• The weather was positively poisonous.这天气着实讨厌。

14 citizenship   

n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份)

参考例句：

• He was born in Sweden,but he doesn't have Swedish citizenship.他在瑞典出生，但没有瑞典公民身分。
• Ten years later,she chose to take Australian citizenship.十年后，她选择了澳大利亚国籍。

15 dealer   

n.商人，贩子

参考例句：

• The dealer spent hours bargaining for the painting.那个商人为购买那幅画花了几个小时讨价还价。
• The dealer reduced the price for cash down.这家商店对付现金的人减价优惠。

16 celebrities   

n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉

参考例句：

• He only invited A-list celebrities to his parties. 他只邀请头等名流参加他的聚会。
• a TV chat show full of B-list celebrities 由众多二流人物参加的电视访谈节目

17 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

18 cynical   

adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的

参考例句：

• The enormous difficulty makes him cynical about the feasibility of the idea.由于困难很大，他对这个主意是否可行持怀疑态度。
• He was cynical that any good could come of democracy.他不相信民主会带来什么好处。