学生的压力

　　Must not try harder

　　不能更努力了

　　The education ministry tries to ban homework

　　教育部尝试禁止家庭作业。

　　Sep 7th 2013 | BEIJING |From the print editionPURGES may be what political junkies are talking about, but for Chinese families the big issue recently has been homework. Children across the country have returned to their classrooms this week just as the education ministry has put forward plans to decrease the amount of homework pupils must do each day.

　　清洗行动可能会用在政治犯身上，但是对中国家庭来说，最近的大事儿是家庭作业。中国的孩子本周回到学校，同时教育部计划减少小学生每天必做作业的量。

　　The ministry’s proposed guidelines, issued on August 22nd, would ban written homework for any child up to the age of 12, and ban exams for children up to the age of nine. It also said that primary schools should organise more extra-curricular activities, such as visits to museums and places of cultural interest, and “cultivate pupils’ hands-on capabilities through handicrafts or farm work”.

　　教育部在8月22日发布了拟定规定，规定禁止向12岁以下的儿童布置任何书面作业，禁止9岁以下儿童参加考试。同时规定中学应该组织更多的课外活动，比如参观博物馆，文化景点以及通过手工活动和农业活动培养小学生的动手能力。

　　Amid intense competition for university places and jobs, Chinese schoolchildren spend hours on homework each night. Pressure from an early age is the cause of constant hand-wringing in the press. Yet the very notion of lightening the burden has met opposition from the people who complain most: parents. Last spring Beijing attempted its own homework restrictions, but workloads crept back up as insistent parents worried about their children falling behind.

　　在对大学名额和工作的激烈竞争中，中国学生每晚花费数小时完成家庭作业。少年儿童的压力是各媒体持续劝说政府的原因。然而，减负的观念遭到了对压力抱怨最多的家长的反对。上个春天，北京尝试出台了自己的家庭作业规范，但是由于固执的家长担心自己的孩子会落后，使得作业又回到之前状态。

　　The new proposals have drawn tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with older children saying they heard similar ideas of reform when they were at school ten years ago, but nothing changed. On his microblog Wang Xiaodong, co-author of a book called “Unhappy China”, suggested that the ministry stop micro-managing every element of basic education and leave the work to teachers and students. But that idea might lead to more homework, if current patterns hold. The biggest contribution education officials could make, wrote Mr Wang, was “to give themselves a six-month holiday”.

　　新提议在微博上收到了数万条评论，年龄稍大的孩子们说十年前他们在学校的时候也听到过类似的改革，但是没什么变化。《中国不高兴》的一个作者王小东在微博上建议教育部停止管理基础教育的细节，将这些工作让给老师和学生。但是如果保持现在这种模式，作业可能会变得更多。王说，教育部干部能做的最大贡献是先给自己放半年假。

　　The real problem is the underlying system. As one microblogger wrote: “If the employment environment remains the same, if the gaokao [entrance exam] is not cancelled, if the top universities still enroll only the students with the highest score, it is impossible to reduce pupils’ burdens”. All those worries are compounded by corruption, inequity and disparity in teacher-training and compensation. Few believe such deep structural problems can be countered simply by a call for less homework.

　　真正的问题是深层制度。一个微博用户写道：“如果就业环境还是维持现状，如果高考不取消，如果顶尖大学还是只招收成绩最好的学生，小学生减负是无稽之谈。”这些担忧来自腐败，不公平，教师培训和补助的不均。几乎没人相信这种深层结构问题会通过减少家庭作业得到解决。