经济学人:分心的青少年 邻家梦中人

 　　Finance and economics: Distracted teens The dreamboat next door

　　财经：分心的青少年，邻家梦中人

　　It's official: having friends of the opposite sex is bad for children's grade.

　　官方数据显示：与异性交朋友不利于孩子的学业成绩。

　　Do friends of the opposite gender¹ distract teenagers, hampering² their academic performance?

　　与异性交朋友会使青少年分心，影响学业成绩？

　　It may seem obvious, at least to paranoid parents, and yet it is hard to prove.

　　至少对多疑的家长而言这似乎显而易见，但证明起来很难。

　　青少年早恋.png

　　Simple analysis of a survey of American schoolchildren conducted in 1995, for example, suggests no link between the proportion of a girl's friends who were boys and her grades.

　　比如，对1995年美国在校儿童一项调查的简单分析表明：女生的学业成绩与其异性朋友的比例无关。

　　Boys with lots of female friends actually achieved better results than those with fewer.

　　实际上，相较于异性朋友少的男生，异性朋友多的成绩更高。

　　A new paper by Andrew Hill of the University of South Carolina, however, digs deeper into the data, and comes to a different result.

　　然而，南卡罗来纳大学的助理教授安德鲁·希尔发表的最新论文深入分析了这些数据，得出了不同的结论。

　　Friendship groups are not random³, which makes it tricky⁴ to isolate⁵ the effect of fraternising with the opposite sex on school performance.

　　朋友圈的非随机性使得单独考虑异性友谊对学业成绩的影响十分困难。

　　Pushy⁶ parents, for instance, may both encourage after-school activities (hotbeds of hobnobbing across the gender divide) and help out with homework.

　　例如，望子成龙的父母可能既鼓励课外活动（异性间亲密接触的温床）又赞同帮助解决家庭作业中的难题。

　　By the same token, the sort of boys who do not find it embarrassing to join a clique⁷ composed mainly of girls may also be more studious.

　　同理，不会因加入以女生为主的小团体而感觉难为情的男孩也更加好学。

　　Mr Hill gets around this by looking at the proportion of schoolmates of either sex living near each student.

　　为了解决上述问题，希尔将目光投向每位同学邻居中男女同学的比例。

　　He reasons that parents do not choose where to live based on the sex of their neighbours' children.

　　他推断父母不会以邻居家孩子的性别作为选择居所的标准。

　　The gender mix of near-neighbours should therefore be unrelated to the invisible factors that influence both friends and grades.

　　因此邻居家孩子的性别构成也应该与影响朋友和成绩的隐性因素无关。

　　But the mix of neighbours does influence friendship groups in school, since children are much more likely to befriend other children who live close by.

　　但是邻居间孩子的性别构成确实影响学校中朋友圈的形成，因为孩子们更倾向与住得近的孩子交朋友。

　　Mr Hill calculates the share of boys and girls among each child's 20 closest neighbours and uses this to identify random differences in friendship groups.

　　希尔先生计算了每个儿童20个最亲密的邻居中男女孩的比例并用上述计算结果确定了朋友圈的随机差异。

　　He can then isolate the effect of having more friends of the opposite gender on school performance.

　　他排除了学生交更多异性朋友对其学业成绩的影响。

　　He finds that for every 10% more children of the opposite sex among a student's friends, his or her grade-point average (GPA) declines by 0.1 (GPAs range from 0 to 4) .

　　他发现一个学生的朋友中每多10%的异性朋友其各科平均绩点（GPA）会下降0.1(各科平均绩点从0~4)。

　　Below the age of 16, the effects are restricted to science and maths, but beyond 16 they spill over to English and history as well.

　　这种影响在16岁以下仅限于科学和数学，但是在16岁以上会波及到英文和历史。

　　Girls seem to be more prone⁸ to distraction⁹, though Mr Hill cannot muster¹⁰ the statistical¹¹ power to be certain.

　　尽管希尔先生没有搜集到确凿的统计数据，但是女孩子似乎更容易分心。

　　This tentative result is consistent with other studies that find that girls gain more from moving to single-sex schools.

　　这种不确定的结果与其他研究一致，这些研究都表明，转到女子学校上学的女孩子将学到更多。

　　Readers rushing to remove their children from co-ed schools should know, however, that Mr Hill's results came with a twist.

　　然而，那些匆忙让自己孩子从男女同校转走的家长应当了解：希尔先生的结论有个意外发现。

　　Having more friends of the opposite sex may be bad for grades, but it has other effects, too.

　　交更多的异性朋友可能不仅不利于学业成绩，还有其他影响。

　　Among the children from the original survey who were successfully re-interviewed 14 years later, those whose grades had been dragged down by friends of the opposite gender were more likely to be (or have been) married.

　　在那些14年后顺利再次会面的参加初次调查的孩子中，因交异性朋友而成绩下降的孩子更可能（或已经）结婚。

　　Traditionalists worried about a child mooning over the heartthrob next door may comfort themselves with that.

　　传统主义者担心痴想邻家梦中情人的孩子以此来安慰自己。

　　1.next door 隔壁邻居；隔壁的

　　例句:I went next door to the bathroom.

　　我去了隔壁的卫生间。

　　2.dragged down 拖累

　　例句:I'm afraid the children will all be dragged down to his level.

　　我看他的孩子也要跟他学坏了。

　　3.help out 帮助...解决困难

　　例句:I help out with the secretarial work

　　我帮着做些秘书工作。

　　4.close by 附近的

　　例句:I was close by as Lester was stretchered into the ambulance.

　　莱斯特被用担架抬进救护车时我就在旁边。

1 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

2 hampering   

妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• So fraud on cows and development aid is seriously hampering growth. 因此在牛问题上和发展补助上的诈骗严重阻碍了发展。
• Short-termism, carbon-trading, disputing the science-are hampering the implementation of direct economically-led objectives. 短效主义，出售二氧化碳，进行科学辩论，这些都不利于实现以经济为主导的直接目标。

3 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

4 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

5 isolate   

vt.使孤立，隔离

参考例句：

• Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
• We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。

6 pushy   

adj.固执己见的，一意孤行的

参考例句：

• But she insisted and was very pushy.但她一直坚持,而且很急于求成。
• He made himself unpopular by being so pushy.他特别喜欢出风头，所以人缘不好。

7 clique   

n.朋党派系，小集团

参考例句：

• The reactionary ruling clique was torn by internal strife.反动统治集团内部勾心斗角，四分五裂。
• If the renegade clique of that country were in power,it would have meant serious disaster for the people.如果那个国家的叛徒集团一得势，人民就要遭殃。

8 prone   

adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的

参考例句：

• Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
• He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。

9 distraction   

n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐

参考例句：

• Total concentration is required with no distractions.要全神贯注，不能有丝毫分神。
• Their national distraction is going to the disco.他们的全民消遣就是去蹦迪。

10 muster   

v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册

参考例句：

• Go and muster all the men you can find.去集合所有你能找到的人。
• I had to muster my courage up to ask him that question.我必须鼓起勇气向他问那个问题。

11 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。