Lexington

The underworked American
偷懒的美国人
Jun 11th 2009
2009年6月11日
From The Economist print edition
译自经济学人印刷版
Children are exceptions to the country’s work ethic
孩子们是美国工作伦理的例外

AMERICANS like to think of themselves as martyrs to work. They delight in telling stories about their punishing hours, snatched holidays and ever-intrusive BlackBerrys. At this time of the year they marvel at the laziness of their European cousins, particularly the French. Did you know that the French take the whole of August off to recover from their 35-hour work weeks? Have you heard that they are so addicted to their holidays that they leave the sick to die and the dead to moulder?

美国人总喜欢自诩自己为工作奉献一切。他们对自己饱受折磨的工作时间、被挤榨的假期以及时不时打扰黑莓手机津津乐道。在今年的这个时候，他们就开始对他们欧洲特别是法国的表兄弟们的懒散表示惊讶。“你知道吗，法国人是把整个八月份都用来休假，以作为对他们‘每周35小时’工作的疗养？你听说吗，他们沉醉于假期，而把病的放到死，死的放到腐烂？”

There is an element of exaggeration in this, of course, and not just about French burial habits; studies show that Americans are less Stakhanovite than they think. Still, the average American gets only four weeks of paid leave a year compared with seven for the French and eight for the Germans. In Paris many shops simply close down for August; in Washington, where the weather is sweltering, they remain open, some for 24 hours a day.

这其中当然有一定的夸张成分，不仅仅在于对法国殡葬习惯的曲解，因为研究表明美国人并不如他们所自认的那么斯达汉诺夫式 。不过一般美国人一年只有四周的带薪假期而法国人有七周，德国人有八周。在巴黎，很多商店八月份直接关门；而在华盛顿，尽管天气酷热，商店还是要开门，有的甚至是24小时营业。

But when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year.

但讲到年轻一代时，情况正好相反。美国小孩比世界上大多数国家包括被他们认为是懒散的欧洲的小孩要来得轻松。他们一学年的上课时间是最少的，仅仅180天，相比而言经合组织国家平均一学年的上课时间是195天，东亚国家则超过200天。德国小孩比美国小孩多上20天的课，而韩国小孩则超过1个月。按12年来算，每年少15天意味着美国小孩一共少上180天的课，等于1学年。

American children also have one of the shortest school days, six-and-a-half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese.

美国小孩每天的上课时间也是最短的，6.5小时，每周总计32小时。相比之下，在卢森堡每周要上37小时课，比利时44小时，丹麦53小时，而瑞典60小时。最厉害的是，美国小孩每天只需做1个小时的家庭作业，这个数字足以让日本和中国的小孩感到震惊。

Americans also divide up their school time oddly. They cram the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The country that tut-tuts at Europe’s mega-holidays thinks nothing of giving its children such a lazy summer. But the long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month’s-worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics. American academics have even invented a term for this phenomenon, “summer learning loss”. This pedagogical understretch is exacerbating social inequalities. Poorer children frequently have no one to look after them in the long hours between the end of the school day and the end of the average working day. They are also particularly prone to learning loss. They fall behind by an average of over two months in their reading. Richer children actually improve their performance.

美国人还用很古怪的方式的分割他们的上课时间。他们把上课时间塞在早上和下午比较靠前的时段，而在夏天则三个月不用上课。这个一直对欧洲人的超级假期颇有微词的国家却从来没考虑到他们的孩子享受着如此懒散的暑假。但如此的长假却犹如一块记忆的橡皮擦，据说它抹掉了大部分孩子们大多数功课一个月的学习成果，数学更是差不多高达三倍。美国学术界甚至为这种现象发明了一个名词，“夏季学习损耗”。这种教学张力不足加重了社会不平等。贫困的小孩经常在下课时间和正常下班时间之间的时间间隔内无人看管。他们也经常更容易产生学习损耗。他们普遍在阅读方面落后两个月的水平。而富裕的小孩则更能提高他们的成绩。

The understretch is also leaving American children ill-equipped to compete. They usually perform poorly in international educational tests, coming behind Asian countries that spend less on education but work their children harder. California’s state universities have to send over a third of their entering class to take remedial courses in English and maths. At least a third of successful PhD students come from abroad.

教学张力不足也使得美国小孩在竞争中显得装备不足。他们通常在国际教育竞赛中表现不佳，落后于教育投入低但对小孩严格要求的亚洲国家。加州的州立大学不得不用他们超过三分之一的入门课程来教英语和数学。至少三分之一的优秀的博士生来自于国外。

A growing number of politicians from both sides of the aisle are waking up to the problem. Barack Obama has urged school administrators to “rethink the school day”, arguing that “we can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home ploughing the land at the end of each day.” Newt Gingrich has trumpeted a documentary arguing that Chinese and Indian children are much more academic than American ones.

越来越多来自两党的政治家们都开始意识到这一问题。奥巴马要求学校管理者们“对上课时间重新规划”，他说“我们不能再放任一个按照美国还处于农夫们需要小孩下课后回去帮忙耕田的年代制定的课时安排表了”。纽特•金瑞茨则用文档宣称说中国和印度的小孩的教育水平越来越超过美国了。

These politicians have no shortage of evidence that America’s poor educational performance is weakening its economy. A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the lagging performance of the country’s school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, has wreaked more devastation on the economy than the current recession.

这些政治家们找出大量的证据证明美国糟糕的教育水平正削弱其经济实力。最近一份来自管理咨询公司麦肯锡的报告称，该国学生落后的学业比当前的衰退对经济发展的破坏更大。

Learning the lesson
吸取教训

A growing number of schools are already doing what Mr Obama urges, and experimenting with lengthening the school day. About 1,000 of the country’s 90,000 schools have broken the shackles of the regular school day. In particular, charter schools in the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP) start the school day at 7.30am and end at 5pm, hold classes on some Saturdays and teach for a couple of weeks in the summer. All in all, KIPP students get about 60% more class time than their peers and routinely score better in tests.

越来越多的学校开始按奥巴马要求的那样去做了，并且加长每天上课时间。该国90000多所学校中的大约1000多所已打破以往学期制度的限制。特别地，参加“知识就是力量项目”（KIPP）的特许学校早上7：30开始，下午5点结束，有时周六也上课，并在夏季也上几个星期的课。总的来说，KIPP学生比他们同样学龄的孩子们学时多出大约60%而在竞赛中的成绩也要来的好。

Still, American schoolchildren are unlikely to end up working as hard as the French, let alone the South Koreans, any time soon. There are institutional reasons for this. The federal government has only a limited influence over the school system. Powerful interest groups, most notably the teachers’ unions, but also the summer-camp industry, have a vested interest in the status quo. But reformers are also up against powerful cultural forces.

美国学生们还没办法在短期内像法国学生那么努力，更别说像韩国学生。这有其制度原因。联邦政府对学校体制的影响力是有限的。强有力的利益集团，尤其是教师工会和夏令营产业，对现有体制都有其既得利益。此外，改革者们还要面对很强的文化阻力。

One is sentimentality; the archetypical American child is Huckleberry Finn, who had little taste for formal education. Another is complacency. American parents have led grass-root protests against attempts to extend the school year into August or July, or to increase the amount of homework their little darlings have to do. They still find it hard to believe that all those Chinese students, beavering away at their books, will steal their children’s jobs. But Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. And brain work is going the way of manual work, to whoever will provide the best value for money. The next time Americans make a joke about the Europeans and their taste for la dolce vita, they ought to take a look a bit closer to home.

一方面原因在于情感；美国小孩都是哈克贝里•费恩型的，他们对正规的教育不感冒。另一方面原因在于自满。美国父母们开展了草根抗议行动抵制把学期延长至七月或八月，或者增加他们的小宝贝们需要做的家庭作业。他们不相信那些埋头苦读的中国学生能够抢走他们孩子的饭碗。但是哈克贝里•费恩是1884年的小说形象了。而脑力活和体力活一样，仅属于更值得所付工资的人。下次美国人再嘲笑欧洲人和他们的“甜蜜生活”的时候，他们应该更关注一些他们自己的家里了。

《经济学人》（The Economist ( http://www.economist.com ))
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