I was a schoolboy in Britain in the 1970s. When I was eleven years old, all the children in my class, the top class at primary school, were made to sit an examination called the 11+ (the Eleven Plus). This exam was to have a profound effect on our lives but, of course, we did not know this at the time.

Children who passed the 11+, and I was one, were considered “academic”. That meant we were chosen to go to grammar schools where we would be taught to pass ever more difficult exams before finally going on to university at the age of 18. After university a job in a profession such as medicine, law or business was expected.

Children who failed the 11+ were seen as “non-academic” and were sent to secondary modern schools where they would be prepared for less rigorous tests and would leave school at 16 to get a job in a local factory or office.

So, children who had grown up together and played together    from the age of 5 were separated at 11 and thereafter went separate ways and had totally different destinies. I was the only child from my school to pass the 11+.

My new grammar school was an hour away from my home and I had to take two buses to get there. As I got older I sometimes cycled to school and when I became 17 I bought a motorbike and rode there.

The school buildings were impressively large and old. Some parts were said to date back to the time of the founding of the school in 1556 but I didn’t believe that. The school had a Latin motto, which was printed on the badges of our school uniforms: Praestat Opes Sapientia meaning “wisdom before wealth”.

Of course my grammar school was a boys-only school. There was an all-girls school next door but I was not interested in that, at least not until I entered the fifth form at the age of 16.

The first surprise on entering the school was that we had to     move from room to room according to the timetable of the lessons. For example, if the first period on Monday morning was mathematics, we had to go to Mr Sharma’s classroom on the ground floor of the main block. But if the next lesson was physics then we would all have to troop up to the science laboratories on the third floor of the new wing. This constant moving from room to room between lessons by all the boys in the school meant we had plenty of opportunities to play around with our classmates in the corridors and find excuses to be late for the next period.

Nearly all our teachers were men and we called them, “Sir”. The masters would call us by our family names. Apart from the various subject teachers we also had a form teacher who looked after our class. The form teacher I liked best was when I was in form 3: Crispin Pickles. He was an English teacher and looked like a 19th-century Romantic poet with long, wild hair, tiny round glasses and untidy, colourful clothes. He was fond of quoting Shelley and Keats to us during the morning roll call and his idea of punishing boys who had been naughty was to get them to copy out passages from Shakespeare.

Looking back I realize that many of the teachers at my school were eccentrics. There was Mr Badman, who was very large, completely    bald, taught us medieval history, and would throw the blackboard duster at any boy who failed to remember important dates in our nation’s history. Or Mr Sparks, the master of religious education, who tried to teach us the basics of Christianity but whose constant dribbling and spitting meant that any boy in the first three rows of chairs was in danger of getting sprayed. Or Mr Weavel, the biology master, known to us all as “Bugs”, who taught us about alcohol, the dissection of frogs, and “the facts of life” while singing Bob Dylan songs out loud in class.

I quickly found I was good at some subjects and had to work hard at others. I had no difficulty with languages, either modern or ancient (I took both Latin and Greek) and enjoyed history and geography. But I struggled with the sciences and I had no time at all for art or music. Sport, however, counted for more than any other subject at my school.

My school was famous for sport. It had a very good rugby team, and also did well at cricket. But it was best known for rowing. Being an old school on the river Thames it was expected to produce strong rowing crews. I was part of an “eight” for a couple of years in forms four and five but I found the early morning training on the river on freezing winter mornings no fun at all, and quietly gave up the sport with the excuse that I had to prepare for my “O” levels (as the exams taken around age 16 were then called).

Almost as important as sport was the friendships we made in the break times between lessons. We would go onto the playing fields and play games like “fives”, a sort of squash but using the hand to hit the ball rather than a racket. Or we would sit in groups on the grass and talk about our favourite pop singers and learnedly discuss the meanings of the lyrics of the latest David Bowie songs.

Of my school friends I only keep in touch with one of them now. Then I had many different mates: Graham “Gunner” Gunning, who was tall and thin and who later went to work in a bank; Malcolm “Jock” McKay, who was not Scottish at all, who dropped out of school in his final year and went to live in Paris; and Stephen “Slim” Allen, a very large boy, who was the practical joker in the class, always playing tricks on the masters and the other boys. I bumped into him by chance a couple of years ago in the street. He had married right after leaving school and had had three children, but then had got divorced and was living by himself in a tiny flat near the railway station. He was still as big as ever.

I did well at school, academically. After the “O” levels exams at age 16 I entered the sixth form to prepare for the advanced “A” levels (or matriculation exams, which are also used to enter university). I became a prefect and so wore a special tie and bossed around the younger boys, telling them not to run in the corridors and ordering them to fetch me drinks.

I passed all my exams and was accepted into Cambridge University to read history. It was 1981. I was almost ready to leave home and leave my childhood behind. Life at Cambridge would be wonderfully liberating after the discipline of school, but that is another story...

20世纪70年代，我是英国的一名学生。当我11岁时，我们班是全校的尖20世纪70年代，我是英国的一名学生。当我11岁时，我们班是全校的尖子班，我所在班上的所有孩子都参加了一次叫做11+的考试。这次考试将对我们的人生产生重大影响，当然这一点我们当时并不知道。

通过了11+考试的孩子，被认为是“学术型的”。我是其中之一。这就是说，我们将被选去上文法学校，在那儿我们将学习怎样通过更难的考试，最后在18岁时去上大学。大学毕业以后，我们将有望从事诸如医药、法律或商务之类的工作。

没有通过11+考试的孩子被视为“非学术型的”，被送到现代中学学习，准备参加不那么严格的考试，并将在16岁时离开学校，在当地的工厂或办公室得到一份工作。

这样，从5岁起就一起成长、嬉戏的孩子11岁时就被分开，以后各自走上不同的道路，奔向完全不同的目标。我是我们学校里惟一通过11+考试的孩子。

新的文法学校离我家有一个钟头的路程，到那儿我得乘两辆公共汽车。长大些以后，我有时骑自行车上学，17岁时，我买了一辆摩托车，驾车去学校。

学校里的建筑高大古旧，令人印象深刻。据说有些部分可追溯到1556年学校始建之时，但我不信。学校有一条拉丁文座右铭，印在校服的徽章上面：Praestat Opes Sapientia，意思是“智慧高于财富”。

当然，我所在的文法学校是一所只收男孩的学校。隔壁有家女子学校，但我对女孩子不感兴趣，至少在我16岁进入五年级之前是这样。

进入学校的第一个意外是我们必须根据课程时间安排不停地换教室。比如，如果星期一早上第一节课是数学课，我们就得到主楼一楼夏玛先生的教室去。但如果下一节是物理，那我们就得成群地转移到新建侧翼三楼的科学实验室去。学校里所有的孩子这样不停地在两节课间搬来搬去使我们有充足的机会和同学在走廊上玩，并为下节课迟到找到借口。

我们所有的老师几乎都是男的，我们称为“先生”。老师们用姓称呼我们。除了不同的学科老师以外，还有一位年级老师照顾我们班。我最喜欢的年级老师是我上三年级的老师：科里斯平•皮卡尔斯。他是一位英语老师，看上去像是19世纪的浪漫主义诗人，有着长而蓬乱的头发，带着小圆眼镜，穿着邋遢而花哨的衣服。他喜欢在早晨点名时引用雪莱和济慈的话，而他对捣蛋学生的惩罚就是让他们抄写莎士比亚著作。

回想起来，我发现学校里很多老师都是怪人。其中有巴德曼先生，他很胖，头全秃了，教我们中世纪历史，任何一个孩子要是记不住我们国家历史上重要的日期，他就会把黑板刷扔过去打他。还有宗教教育老师斯帕克斯先生，他努力向我们讲授基督教的基本教义，但总是不停地唾沫横飞，坐在前三排的学生免不了会被溅上。还有生物老师韦弗尔先生，我们叫他“疯子”，他一边在课堂上大声唱着鲍勃·迪伦的歌一边教授酒精的知识、怎样解剖青蛙以及“生命的奥秘(即性生活)”。

我很快就发现我对有的课程得心应手，而对另外一些课程则有些费力。我学语言没有问题，无论是现代的还是古代的(我既修了拉丁语也修了希腊语)，我也喜欢历史和地理。但我学起理科来很费力，并且完全没有时间学习艺术与音乐。但是，体育运动在我们学校比其他任何课程都重要。

我们学校因体育而出名，有一支非常优秀的橄榄球队，板球也很不错。但最出名的是划船。作为泰晤士河上一所古老的学校，它理应培养出优秀的划船手。在我上四五年级的时候，曾经有一段时间是一支八人船队的成员，但我发现在滴水成冰的冬季，一大清早在河上训练一点也不好玩，于是我以准备“O”级考试 (大约16岁时所参加的那次考试，当时是这样叫的) 为由，没怎么声张便放弃了这项运动。

几乎和体育运动同样重要的是我们在课间休息时所建立起来的友谊。我们会到游戏场上玩游戏，比如“墙手球”，这是一种壁球，但用手而不用球拍击球。或者三五成群坐在草地上，谈论最喜欢的流行歌手，煞有介事地讨论大卫·鲍伊最新歌曲歌词的含义。

在学生时代的朋友当中，我现在只与其中的一位保持着联系。那时我有很多性格各异的伙伴：“炮手”格雷厄姆·冈宁，他又瘦又高，后来去了一家银行工作；“小丑”麦克姆·麦凯，他根本不是苏格兰人，在校的最后一年他退学去了巴黎定居；还有“瘦子”史蒂芬·艾伦，一个很胖的小子，他是班里的恶作剧大王，总是拿老师和其他孩子开玩笑。我几年前曾在街上碰见过他。他一离开学校就马上结了婚，已有了三个孩子，但随后又离了婚，一个人住在火车站附近一间小公寓里。他还像从前一样胖。

我在学校成绩很好。16岁“O”级考试之后，我进入六年级准备高阶“A”级考试(或称入学考试，这种考试也为大学入学所采用)。我成了级长，因此佩带着特殊的领带，对年纪小的孩子发号施令，告诉他们别在走廊上乱跑，命令他们给我端茶送水。

我通过了所有的考试，被剑桥大学录取，攻读历史。那是在1981年。我已基本准备好离开家，向我的童年生活告别。在经历了严格的学校纪律后，剑桥的生活肯定会自由得美不可言，但那是另一个故事了……