中国的精英寄宿学校
在兄弟姊妹很罕见的中国，许多人认为集体生活会对孩子有好处。
中国的精英寄宿学校
China’s elite boarding schools｜economist.com
译者：Jenny_Peng
CHINESE parents pride themselves on the importance they attach to education; it is, they say, the most important gift they can bestow on the next generation. That makes themall the more willing to shell out, if they can afford it, on expensive boarding schools which they believe will enable their children to concentrate fully on their studies. Poor families in the countryside pack their children off to board, too. But that is because they have no choice: daily commuting would be too expensive or arduous. In the cities, boarding schools are usually far grander. Attending them is more a badge of privilege than evidence of pragmatism.
中国父母高度重视教育，并以此为傲。他们常说，那是他们可以给予下一代的最重要的馈赠。如此一来，他们在负担得起的情况下，就更加愿意把钱花在昂贵的寄宿学校上，因为他们认为孩子在寄宿学校可以潜心学习。乡村贫困家庭也同样送孩子读寄校。但那只是因为他们别无选择，每天来回学校要么费钱要么费力。相比之下，城市里的寄校通常也远远更大。与其说读寄校是务实的表现，不如说是享受特权的标志。
There is considerable demand for such urban schools. In many rich countries, parents often fret about sending their children away to board, partly because of the high cost and partly because these days many parents prefer to have their children with them. In China, by contrast, it is considered very normal for a couple to live apart from their child (they usually only have one). For urban boarders, the distance is seldom great: parents usually send their children to schools very close to where they live.
像这样的都市学校，还存在很大的需求量。在许多富裕国家，父母经常害怕把孩子送出国，费用高昂是一部分原因，另一部分原因是如今很多家长更想把孩子留在身边。然而，在中国，父母亲和孩子（大多数是独生子）分居两地则被认为是很正常的事情。对城市寄宿生来说，上学距离一般很近，父母通常送孩子去上学，学校和住处距离很近。
Boarding school offers an alternative to foisting a child on grandparents, which parents often do, sometimes for days on end. It may be costly, but parents reckon that such schools can do more to help children study after class than the elders can at home.In a country where siblings are so rare, many also see communal living as good for their offspring. Some 3.5m children now board in cities, around 4% of the urban school population. The vast majority of them do so at high school (8% of secondary-school pupils board, compared with 1% of primary schoolers).
寄宿学校为家长们提供了除了把孩子送到爷爷奶奶家之外的另一个选择，虽然他们经常这么做，有时还连续好几天。尽管费用很昂贵，但家长觉得，在帮助孩子学习方面，寄宿学校比在家的长辈更有作用。在兄弟姊妹很罕见的中国，许多人认为集体生活会对孩子有好处。大约有350万中小学生就读于城市寄宿学校，占城市学校人口4%左右。他们当中大多数高中也就读于寄宿学校（初中生占比8%，小学生占比1%）。
A few of the boarding schools court the country’s elite by offering to prepare children for admission to universities abroad (in China, foreign education is another much-desired symbol of privilege). The redbrick quadrangle of the recently built Keystone Academy in a suburb of Beijing resembles a boarding school in New England. The institution’s annual boarding fee of 360,000 yuan ($52,000) is higher than tuition at Harvard University.
有些寄宿学校特意迎合中国的精英阶层，他们帮助学生申请国外大学（在中国，海外教育是另外一种广受追捧的特权象征）。近日，鼎石国际学校（Keystone Academy）在北京一处郊区成立，红砖四合院，与新英格兰一所寄宿学校的外形相似。该学校每年住宿费高达36万元（5.2万美元），比哈佛大学学费还贵。
But the most expensive boarding schools may have had their heyday. Many parents with that much cash to spare would often prefer to send their children to board abroad: enrolments in American and British boarding schools are rising fast. Social trends are also changing. A wife who can afford not to work—and who has time to parent a child—is increasingly seen as someone who enjoys high status: traditional gender roles are making a comeback. In 2014 Yin Jianli, a popular author and former teacher, included an essay entitled “Boarding is a Bad System” in a book she wrote about education. It argued that if dorm-life really fostered the “sense of collectivism” that its proponents claim, then children from orphanages would score top marks. She said that mothers should be more involved in child-rearing.
然而，最贵的寄宿学校已经过了鼎盛时期。家长如果有那么多闲钱，宁愿选择送孩子去上国外的寄宿学校，英美寄宿学校的入学录一直不断上升。如果妻子有钱赋闲在家，或者有时间带孩子，越来越被视为享有很高的地位，传统性别角色有返潮的趋势。尹建莉是位有名作家，以前是名教师，2014年她写了一本关于教育的书，其中一篇文章题为《糟糕的寄宿制》。文中她提出，如果寝室生活真的培育了人们所谓的“集体感”，那么孤儿院的孩子考试应该全得高分。她建议妈妈们应该更多参与到抚养孩子的过程。
For ordinary middle-class parents, less fancy state-run boarding schools are becoming more affordable: often they cost only a few thousand yuan a year. But even their future may be threatened. President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft drive is making it harder to secure a place in the best ones by using the once common methods of paying backhanders and pulling strings. These days having a child at a good state boarding-school can be a sign of corruption. No one wants that badge.
对于普通中等阶层的家庭来说，他们越来越负担得起相比之下没那么昂贵的公立寄宿学校，通常一年只花几千元。但即便如此，其未来也堪忧。在习近平主席的反腐运动下，家长们想靠吃回扣、找关系的惯用方法来找好学校变得越来越困难了。近两年，如果自己孩子就读优异公立寄宿学校，会被贴上腐败的标签。没人想要这种“标签”。
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