As schools reopen, how can pupils make up for lost time?

随着学校重新开学，学生们如何弥补失去的时间?

The hard-up find it hardest

穷人发现这是最难的

词汇

hard-up/缺钱，手头紧

Jul 18th 2020 |

LAST YEAR Kiana Jones took a summer job at a trampoline park, supervising birthday parties and keeping an eye out for overzealous bouncers. This season Ms Jones, an undergraduate in Tennessee, is spending seven weeks in a community centre drilling children in reading and maths. She is one of around 600 locals swiftly assembled by the Tennessee Tutoring Corps, a charity set up in May by a former state governor to help children who have missed months of school. It will pay each tutor $1,000, more than many had expected to make during a summer overshadowed by the pandemic.

去年，奇安娜·琼斯(Kiana Jones)在一个蹦床公园做了一份暑期工作，负责监督生日派对，并密切关注那些过分热情的保镖。这个季节，琼斯女士，田纳西州的一名大学生，将在一个社区中心花七个星期的时间训练孩子们阅读和数学。她是田纳西州辅导团(Tennessee Tutoring Corps)迅速召集的约600名当地居民中的一员。这个慈善组织是由一位前州长于今年5月成立的，旨在帮助数月未上学的孩子们。该组织将向每位导师支付1000美元，这一数字超过了许多人在疫情笼罩下的夏季的预期收入。

词汇

Trampoline/蹦床；弹簧垫

Overzealous/过分热心的

Bouncer/保镖

The efforts of those such as Ms Jones are a rare bright spot in America’s scholastic landscape. The government has largely failed to control the pandemic. Schools have largely stayed closed. President Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, have threatened to defund schools that refuse to reopen. Those that do welcome back children in the autumn may have to rely on rota systems that allow pupils to attend in person only part-time.

像琼斯女士这样的人的努力是美国学术界少有的亮点。政府在很大程度上未能控制住疫情。学校大部分仍处于关闭状态。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)和教育部长贝特西·德沃斯(Betsy DeVos)威胁要取消对拒绝复课的学校的资助。那些在秋季欢迎返校学生的学校可能不得不依靠轮班制度，这种制度允许学生在业余时间亲自上学。

词汇

rota system/轮值表系统

pupil/ 学生；未成年人

In other parts of the rich world, however, children are already coming back. In countries such as France, Denmark and New Zealand social-distancing rules have been relaxed to allow most children to return to classes every day. Schoolchildren in England will return full-time from September, the British government says. But getting children back into classrooms is only the first step in repairing the damage the pandemic has done to their learning. Educators must now work out how to make up for lost time.

然而，在其他发达国家，孩子们已经回国了。在法国、丹麦和新西兰等国家，社交距离规定已经放宽，允许大多数孩子每天重返课堂。英国政府表示，英国的学龄儿童将从9月份开始全日返校。但是，让孩子们重返教室只是修复疫情对他们学习造成的破坏的第一步。教育工作者现在必须想办法弥补失去的时间。

 

The challenge is huge. Lessons from the year now ending remain untaught. When children spend any significant time out of school (including normal summer holidays), they tend to forget some of what they have already learnt. Analysts at NWEA, an American test-provider, reckon that by autumn some children will be a year behind in maths.

但教育人员人面临巨大挑战。从今年开始到现在结束的课程仍然未进行教学。当孩子们长时间不在学校时(包括正常的暑假)，他们往往会忘记一些已经学过的东西。一家美国考试机构NWEA的分析师估计，到秋天，一些孩子的数学成绩将落后一年。

 

Poor children will suffer most. Many were some way behind their peers before the pandemic. Some American classrooms included pupils whose true learning levels spanned seven grades, according to NWEA. This gap has only widened as children have missed months of school, making teachers’ jobs even harder.

贫穷的孩子将遭受最大的痛苦。在大流行之前，许多人都落后于同行。NWEA称，一些美国教室里的学生，其真正学习水平跨越了7个年级。随着孩子们缺课数月，这一差距进一步扩大，使得教师的工作更加困难。

 

Guidance produced by UNESCO and McKinsey, a consultancy, identifies three types of catch-up strategies. Schools can give children more time. They can adjust their curriculums. Or they can try to improve the quality of their instruction. The greatest success will probably come from a combination of all three.

联合国教科文组织和咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)发布的指南指出了三种追赶战略。学校可以给孩子更多的时间。他们可以调整他们的课程。或者他们可以努力提高教学质量。最大的成功可能来自三者的结合。

 

Some countries have already tinkered with timetables. Singapore pulled forward its month-long annual recess—usually in June—to May, when the country’s lockdown was already keeping schools shut. In some parts of Vietnam schools have crunched the usual three-month break down to a few weeks.

一些国家已经在修改时间表。新加坡将其长达一个月的年度休假(通常在6月)提前到5月，而此时该国的封锁措施已经导致学校停课。在越南的一些地方，学校已经把通常的三个月的假期压缩到了几个星期。

词汇

Tinker/（徒劳地或马虎地）小修补；笨手笨脚地做事

Others are expanding existing summer programmes. New York City is requiring about 100,000 students to enroll in online summer schools, twice as many as last year. The difficulty is that children often fail to turn up to real summer schools frequently enough to benefit from them. It is even harder to ensure they attend lessons conducted online.

其他一些学校正在扩大现有的暑期课程。纽约市要求大约10万名学生注册参加在线暑期学校，是去年的两倍。困难在于，孩子们经常不能足够频繁地真正的参加暑期学校教学，从而无法从中受益。要确保他们参加在线课程就更难了。

 

Squeezing curriculums to create more time for the most important subjects is less painful than it sounds. Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, says that politicians have long found it easy to add fashionable new topics but more difficult to take things away. As a result, he continues, syllabuses have become “a mile wide but only an inch deep”. David Steiner of Johns Hopkins University says much of American pupils’ time is wasted on material that is less challenging than it should be.

挤占课程，为最重要的学科腾出更多时间，并没有听起来那么痛苦。经济合作与发展组织的Andreas Schleicher说，政客们早就发现，增加时髦的新专题很容易，但要取消话题就更难了。因此，他继续说，教学大纲变得“一英里宽，但只有一英寸深”。约翰·霍普金斯大学的大卫·斯坦纳说，美国学生的大部分时间都浪费在了缺乏挑战性的材料上。

 

Experts are most enthusiastic about using tutors to help children catch up. The British government has put aside £350m ($439m) to launch a national tutoring programme in September. Schools can use existing organisations or hire graduates who would work full time. They can top this up with money from another pot of £650m that schools can use for any remediation strategies they deem helpful. The Dutch government has earmarked €244m ($277m) for a similar programme. It plans to enlist trainee teachers to help bring struggling learners up to scratch.

专家们最热衷于使用家教来帮助孩子们赶上进度。英国政府已经拨出3.5亿英镑(4.39亿美元)在9月份启动了一项全国辅导计划。学校可以利用现有的组织或聘用全职工作的毕业生。他们还可以从另外一笔6.5亿英镑的资金中追加这笔资金，学校可以使用任何他们认为有用的补救策略。荷兰政府已经为一个类似的项目预留了2.44亿欧元(合2.77亿美元)。它计划招募实习教师来帮助有困难的学习者达到标准。

词汇

Remediation/  补救；矫正；补习

Trainee/练习生，实习生

  

Robert Slavin, director of the Centre for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, would like America to mount a federally funded tutoring programme. Trained graduates could be deployed in teams to each American school, beginning with those whose students have been worst affected by the closures. They could teach pupils one-to-one or in small groups. A few American politicians like the idea but the government has shown no interest in doing anything on this scale. Tutoring jobs would be welcomed by graduates entering a terrible market, reckons Matthew Kraft of Brown University. Getting large numbers of graduates to work as tutors might help to reduce teacher shortages by encouraging more youngsters to consider teaching as a career.

约翰·霍普金斯大学教育研究与改革中心主任罗伯特·斯莱文希望美国能发起一个由联邦资助的辅导项目。训练有素的毕业生可以组队到每一所美国学校，从那些学生受封锁影响最严重的学校开始。他们可以一对一或小组教学。一些美国政客喜欢这个想法，但政府对这么大规模的行动毫无兴趣。布朗大学的马修•克拉夫特(Matthew Kraft)认为，在一个糟糕的市场下，辅导工作将受到毕业生的欢迎。通过鼓励更多的年轻人考虑以教书为职业，让大量的毕业生担任家教可能有助于减少教师短缺。

 

Schools will have to work hard to ensure that everyone gets the help they need. A survey carried out in early May by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a British think-tank, found that poorer parents were less inclined than rich ones to send their children back to school as soon as it is allowed. An American poll found that black and Hispanic parents are much less likely than white ones to consider classrooms safe.

学校必须努力确保每个人都能得到他们需要的帮助。英国智库财政研究所在5月初进行的一项调查发现，与富裕家庭相比，一旦学校允许，贫困家庭的父母更不愿意把孩子送回学校。一项美国民意调查发现，与白人家长相比，黑人和西班牙裔家长更不可能认为教室是安全的。

 

Ultimately no child will learn anything “unless they feel psychologically and emotionally safe”, says Pasi Sahlberg of the University of New South Wales in Australia. When schools reopen, he reckons, they will need to provide children with counselling and time to play as they adjust to their return. Tute Porter-Samuels, a primary-school teacher in New Zealand, says that when her school in Wellington reopened it devoted two weeks to music and art.

澳大利亚新南威尔士大学（University of New South Wales）的Pasi Sahlberg说，最终，“除非他们在心理和情感上感到安全”，否则学生根本上学不进任何东西。他认为，当学校重新开学时，他们需要为孩子们提供咨询和玩耍的时间，以适应他们的回归。Tute Porter-Samuels是新西兰的一名小学教师，她说当她的学校在惠灵顿重新开学时，学校花了两个星期的时间来学习音乐和艺术。

Still, there are grounds for optimism. Home schooling has introduced parents to the horrors of trying to educate their children while holding down a job. But it has also made parents more sympathetic to teachers, says Odile Cordelier, a teacher in the French city of Dijon.

尽管如此，仍有乐观的理由。家庭教育让父母们陷入了一边工作一边教育孩子的恐惧之中。但法国第戎市的一名教师Odile Cordelier说，这也让家长们更加同情老师。

Distance-learning, despite its glitches, has made teachers more familiar with technology. Recessions may force governments to trim school budgets but they may also get some new blood into the teaching profession. In Britain applications to teacher-training programmes surged in May and June. A recent study found that teachers in Florida who started their careers in downturns were better at raising test scores than those who did not. Schools will need all the help they can get.

尽管远程教育存在一些问题，但它使教师们对技术更加熟悉。经济衰退可能迫使政府削减学校预算，但也可能为教学行业注入一些新鲜血液。在英国，教师培训项目的申请在5月和6月猛增。最近的一项研究发现，在经济衰退时期开始职业生涯的佛罗里达教师比那些没有这样做的教师在提高考试成绩方面做得更好。学校将需要所有他们能得到的帮助。

词汇

Glitch/小故障；失灵