He was now at last being taught science, and reported:

艾伦现在终于开始学习科学了，他写道：

We do do Chemistry 2 hrs. a week. We have only got to about the stages of 'Properties of Matter', 'Physical and chemical change' etc. The master was quite amused by my Iodine making and I shewed him some samples. The headmaster is called 'Chief'. I seem to be doing Greek and not Hellenics. …

我们每周学两小时化学，刚学到「物质的性质」「物理变化和化学变化」之类的。我给老师讲我制碘的事，还给他看了样品，老师很高兴。这里把校长被叫做「首领」。我想学希腊语，而不是古希腊语……

The master, Andrews, was no doubt 'amused' that Alan already knew so much. He had arrived 'delightfully ingenuous and unspoilt'. And the head boy of Westcott House, Arthur Harris, had rewarded Alan's cycling initiative by appointing him his 'fag', or servant. But neither scientific education nor initiative were exactly Sherborne priorities.

校长安德鲁确实因为艾伦懂那么多而高兴，他说艾伦身上有「令人高兴的坦率和天真」。西科特学院的监督生，阿瑟.哈里斯，作为对单车旅行的奖励，收艾伦做了自己的小弟，或者说跟班。但无论科学还是单车，在舍尔伯尼，这些都不是重点。

The headmaster used to expound the meaning of school life in his sermons.15 Sherborne was not, he explained, entirely devoted to 'opening the mind', although 'historically … this was the primary meaning of school.' Indeed, said the headmaster, there was 'constantly a danger of forgetting the original object of school.' For the English public school had been consciously developed into what he called 'a nation in miniature'. With a savage realism, it dispensed with the lip service paid to such ideas as free speech, equal justice, and parliamentary democracy, and concentrated upon the fact of precedence and power. As the headmaster put it:

校长常常在讲话中，谈到校园生活的意义。他说，舍尔伯尼并非完全为了打开思维，虽然这在过去，是学校的主要意义。现在的英国公学，已经明显地发展成了小型国家，这里有残酷的现实环境，也体现着言论自由，公平正义，议会民主，权益权力等社会概念。校长说：

In form-room and hall and dormitory, on the field and on parade, in your relations with us masters and in the scale of seniority among yourselves, you have become familiar with the ideas of authority and obedience, of cooperation and loyalty, of putting the house and the school above your personal desires …

从教室，从宿舍，从操场，从游行，从你们和教师的关系，从你们的资格和级别，你们应当开始懂得权威，顺从，合作，忠诚，把学校利益置于个人利益之上……