The burden on students

　　學生的壓力

　　Must not try harder

　　不能更努力了

　　The education ministry tries to ban homework

　　教育部嘗試禁止家庭作業。

　　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.

　　清洗行動可能會用在政治犯身上，但是對中國家庭來說，最近的大事兒是家庭作業。中國的孩子本周回到學校，同時教育部計劃減少小學生每天必做作業的量。

　　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日發布了擬定規定，規定禁止向12歲以下的兒童布置任何書面作業，禁止9歲以下兒童參加考試。同時規定中學應該組織更多的課外活動，比如參觀博物館，文化景點以及通過手工活動和農業活動培養小學生的動手能力。

　　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.

　　在對大學名額和工作的激烈競爭中，中國學生每晚花費數小時完成家庭作業。少年兒童的壓力是各媒體持續勸說政府的原因。然而，減負的觀念遭到了對壓力抱怨最多的家長的反對。上個春天，北京嘗試出臺了自己的家庭作業規范，但是由于固執的家長擔心自己的孩子會落后，使得作業又回到之前狀態。

　　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”.

　　新提議在微博上收到了數萬條評論，年齡稍大的孩子們說十年前他們在學校的時候也聽到過類似的改革，但是沒什么變化�！吨袊�不高興》的一個作者王小東在微博上建議教育部停止管理基礎教育的細節，將這些工作讓給老師和學生。但是如果保持現在這種模式，作業可能會變得更多。王說，教育部干部能做的最大貢獻是先給自己放半年假。

　　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.

　　真正的問題是深層制度。一個微博用戶寫道：“如果就業環境還是維持現狀，如果高考不取消，如果頂尖大學還是只招收成績最好的學生，小學生減負是無稽之談�！边@些擔憂來自腐敗，不公平，教師培訓和補助的不均。幾乎沒人相信這種深層結構問題會通過減少家庭作業得到解決。

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