成都华德福学校

Salad days

China’s yuppies want schools to be more laid-back

Try a Waldorf

Oct 12th 2017 | CHENGDU

salad days: old-fashioned the time of your life when you are young and not very experienced
yuppie: A yuppie is a young person who has a well-paid job and likes to show that they have a lot of money by buying expensive things and living in an expensive way.
laid-back: informal calm and relaxed; seeming not to worry about anything
= easy-going
e.g. a laid-back attitude to life

1. WITH a postgraduate degree in literature, Ruby Li has ridden China’s education system almost to the top. Now a mother-of-two living in Chengdu, a city in the south-west, she hopes to spare her children the high pressure and long hours of homework that she endured at their age. Some years ago Ms Li and her husband, a businessman, moved their elder son from a conventional kindergarten to another one that uses less formal and rigid methods of teaching. She says that since then he has been happier and healthier, and their home life more harmonious, too.

spare: If you spare someone an unpleasant experience, you prevent them from suffering it.
e.g. The policy has not spared the farming community from severe financial pressure.这项政策并没有使农村社会逃脱沉重的经济压力。

1. 有着文学硕士学位的鲁比李几乎登上了中国的教育系统的顶端。现在她住在（中国）西南的成都市, 已经是两个孩子的妈妈，她希望孩子们不再因她小时候经历过的巨大压力和长时间的家庭作业而受苦。几年前, 李女士和她的丈夫（一名商人）把他们的大儿子从一个传统的幼儿园转移到另一个使用不那么正规和僵化的教学方法的幼儿园。她说, 从那时起, 他变得更快乐、更健康, 他们的家庭生活也更加和谐。

2. Ms Li is among the well-heeled parents who send their children to Chengdu Waldorf School, a fee-paying institution inspired by the quirky philosophies of Rudolf Steiner, an early-20th-century Austrian educationalist. The school (pictured) aims to teach in creative ways, says Zhang Li, one of its founders. That means plenty of music, storytelling and play. The campus is scruffy but cheerful, boasting an ink-stained calligraphy studio and a wall daubed with stone-age cave paintings (the result of a class art project). At going-home-time three small children clamber around in the branches of a tree.

well-heeled: informal rich
boast: If someone or something can boast a particular achievement or possession, they have achieved or possess that thing.有，拥有（值得骄傲的成就或财产）

• e.g. The houses will boast the latest energy-saving technology...这些房屋将应用最新的节能技术。*
  e.g. Frommen says his country boasts a healthy economy.弗罗曼称他的国家经济运行良好。

2. 李女士是把孩子送到成都华德福学校那些有钱的父母之一, 该学校是一家受到20世纪早期奥地利教育家鲁道夫·斯坦纳的奇特哲学启发而成立的收费机构。这所学校 (图) 的目的是以创造性的方式授课, 它的创始人之一张丽说。这意味着（学校课程中有）大量的音乐、讲故事和玩耍。校园并不整洁但充满欢乐, 有一个到处是墨迹的书法工作室和一面涂抹了石器时代壁画的墙壁(一个班级艺术项目的成果)。在放学时分三个小孩子在一棵树的树枝上爬来爬去。

3. The stellar performance of children in China’s richest cities in international tests of ability in maths, science and reading has lent the country’s education system a glossy sheen abroad. But feelings are mixed in China, where parents fret that state schools are too competitive, that the exam culture is too stressful and that curriculums favour cramming over creativity. One result of this is a steady leak of pupils out of the state sector and into private schools that drill for entry into foreign universities. Another trend is the rise of schools that use less structured approaches to teaching than commonly found in mainstream ones. Sun Yifan, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, says such progressive schools are burgeoning “like bamboo shoots in spring”.

stellar: especially AmE extremely good
e.g. the company's stellar growth
注：走红可以说go stellar（英国英语常见），比如：if a pop band, actor etc goes stellar, they become very popular and famous
lend: If something lends a particular quality to something else, it adds that quality to it. 平添；增添；赋予
drill: to teach sb to do sth by making them repeat it a lot of times
e.g. The children were drilled to leave the classroom quickly when the fire bell rang.
burgeon: If something burgeons, it grows or develops rapidly.
e.g. My confidence began to burgeon later in life.我年纪大些之后，信心才开始增强。

3. 中国最富裕城市的儿童在数学、科学和阅读能力的国际测试中的出色表现在海外赋予了该国教育体系虚有其表的光辉。但是, 在中国国内人们的感情是复杂的, 父母们都在担心公立学校的竞争太激烈, 考试文化的压力太大, 课程偏重填鸭而非创造力。这样做的结果之一是, 学生从公立学校中不断地外流, 进入为考取国外大学而反复操练的私立学校。另一种趋势是，与主流学校普遍采用的教学方法相比，越来越多的学校使用的教学方法不那么结构化。剑桥大学的研究员孙一帆说, 这些进步的学校正在蓬勃发展, "就像春天的竹笋"。

4. Waldorf schools are one example. The one in Chengdu opened in 2004, the first in China to use that name. It teaches about 500 pupils from kindergarten through to senior high (between the ages of three and 18). Another 70 or so Waldorfs are sprinkled across China’s other big cities. Their free-spirited style of teaching is similar to that of Montessori schools (of which China now has at least 900 at the kindergarten level, and perhaps many more). It is unlikely that many Waldorf parents fully understand Steiner’s theories about “spiritual science”, let alone his mystical approach to agriculture. But Ms Sun says they hear echoes in them of traditional Chinese philosophy, to which some people in China are far better attuned.

sprinkle: If something is sprinkled with particular things, it has a few of them throughout it and they are far apart from each other. 使…上零星分布(着…)
e.g. Unfortunately, the text is sprinkled with errors...遗憾的是，文本中零星地有一些错误。
echo: A detail or feature which reminds you of something else can be referred to as an echo .相似之处;再现
e.g. The accident has echoes of past disasters.那起事故仿佛是过去灾难的重现。
attuned: If you are attuned to something, you can understand and appreciate it.

4. 华德福学校就是一个例子。该校于2004年在成都开业, 是第一所在中国使用这个名字的学校。它教授的学生从幼稚园一直到高中 (年龄在3岁到18岁之间)大约有500个。另外还有70所华德福学校在中国的其他大城市里零星分布着。他们自由精神的教学风格类似于蒙台梭利学校 (中国目前在幼儿园阶段的至少有 900所, 或许更多)。很多华德福学校的家长们不太可能完全理解斯坦纳关于“灵性科学”的理论, 更不用说他对农业的神秘态度了。但是孙女士说, 他们从中看到了与中国传统哲学的相似之处, 有些中国人对此要了解得多。

5. Another fad is for education that is directly inspired by ancient Chinese culture, often delivered by small schools in the countryside that offer instruction in subjects such as archery, traditional medicine and Confucianism. Some have only a handful of full-time students, but also run popular workshops and summer schools. (Not all their patrons want touchy-feely education: at the far fringes of this movement are schools that require students to do little besides memorising classical literary and philosophical texts, as their ancestors might once have done.)

touchy-feely: If you describe something as touchy-feely, you mean that it involves people expressing emotions such as love and affection openly in a way which you find embarrassing and silly. 煽情的;矫情的;肉麻的
e.g. ...a touchy-feely song about making your life worth living.一支让生活更有价值的煽情歌曲
fringes: The fringe or the fringes of an activity or organization are its less important, least typical, or most extreme parts, rather than its main and central part.
e.g. The party remained on the fringe of the political scene until last year.直到去年为止这个政党一直处在政治舞台的外围。

5. 另一个潮流是受中国古代文化直接启发的教育, 通常是由农村的小学校提供的, 它们教授射箭、传统医学和儒家思想等科目。有些只有少数全日制学生, 但也开办了受欢迎的研习班和暑期学校。(不是所有的顾客都想要矫情的的教育: 在这场运动中另一端的学校要求学生除了背诵古典文学和哲学文本之外什么也不做, 正如他们的祖先可能曾经做过的那样）。

6. A few parents who want to free their children from the state system’s stifling constraints, but who can find no handy alternative, are trying home schooling instead. A survey published this year by the 21st Century Education Research Institute, a think-tank in China, found only about 6,000 families educating their children exclusively at home—still a tiny number, but one that is rising by around one-third each year, the institute reckons.

7. 一些父母想从国家系统令人窒息的限制中解放孩子, 却找不到现成的替代品, 他们正在尝试家庭教育。今年21世纪教育研究所 (中国的一家智库) 发表的一项调查发现, 只有大约6000个家庭只让他们的孩子在家接受教育, 这仍然是个很小的数字，但据研究所估计，该数字每年都在增长约1/3。

Rules bent and broken

7. The national curriculum, which is compulsory for children in the first nine years of school (ie, aged between six and 15), allows some room for experimentation. Primary schools can usually find time to supplement mandatory material with some of their own choosing, says Jiang Xueqin, a researcher and consultant. Motivated teachers can deliver the obligatory stuff in unconventional ways. But some of the progressive schools pay only lip service to the state’s curriculum. Some of them obtain government approval to operate as schools. But others affiliate themselves with licensed schools to avoid the tricky process of having to get their own permits. Many smaller institutions get by without official blessing.

If you say that someone pays lip service to an idea, you are critical of them because they say they are in favour of it, but they do not do anything to support it.
e.g. Unhappily, he had done no more than pay lip service to their views.不幸的是，他对他们观点的支持只是口惠而实不至。
If you can get by with what you have, you can manage to live or do things in a satisfactory way.
e.g. Melville managed to get by on a small amount of money.梅尔维尔仅靠一点点钱勉强度日。
blessing: If something is done with someone's blessing, it is done with their approval and support.

7）在学校的前九年 (即年龄介于6岁和15岁之间) 的儿童必修的国家课程允许一些实验空间。一名研究者及顾问姜瑜说, 小学通常可以有时间用自己选择的一些材料来补充必修的材料。有积极性的教师可以用打破传统的方式讲授必修的课程。但是一些进步学校只是表面上支持国家的课程。它们中的一些获得政府的批准, 以学校的方式运作。但其他则依附于有执照的学校, 以避免获得自己许可证的棘手的过程。许多较小的机构没有得到官方许可而勉强度日。

8. Better-off parents appear unfazed by the lack of proper paperwork for some progressive schools (the Waldorf in Chengdu has licences for its nursery and primary schools, but the authorities want it to find a bigger campus before they will issue a permit for its secondary school). However, some worry about the later years of their children’s schooling. Parents who want their offspring to study abroad can safely keep them in progressive schools. Those who want them to cram for the national entrance exam for universities in China, or gaokao, often choose to move them back into conventional schools for that period of study. Few parents want to take risks with a potentially life-changing test.

Better-off: having more money and possessions
unfazed: not worried or surprised by sth unexpected that happens
e.g. The Prime Minister appeared to be totally unfazed by the protesters.

8. 更富有的家长似乎并不担心一些进步学校缺乏适当的书面文件 (在成都的华德福在其托儿所和小学有执照, 但当局希望它能找到一个更大的校园才颁发中学许可证)。然而, 有些人担心他们的子女（在这些学校）上学的最后几年。希望子女出国留学的父母可以安稳地将他们留在进步学校。那些想让他们为中国大学高考而临时抱佛脚的父母通常会选择把孩子转到传统学校学习。很少有父母愿意用一场有改变生命可能的考试冒险。

9. The government itself sees benefit in having well-educated youngsters who are self-starting and creative—the kind of people needed to build a more innovative economy. In the early 2000s it began encouraging schools to make lessons more lively and textbooks more varied. Yet the gaokao system continues to give schools a strong incentive to stuff their students with stodgy facts. Parents deplore the pressure that the gaokao imposes. But they also distrust less objective types of assessment, which may be prone to corruption.

stuff: If you stuff a container or space with something, you fill it with something or with a quantity of things until it is full
deplore: If you say that you deplore something, you think it is very wrong or immoral.

9. 政府本身认为拥有受过良好教育的青少年是有好处的, 他们有自驱力、有创意, 是建立一个更具创新性的经济所需要的人。在21世纪初, 它开始鼓励学校使课程更加生动, 课本更多样化。然而, 高考制度仍然为学校给学生灌输一些乏味的知识提供了很强的动机。家长们强烈反对高考强加的压力。但他们也不信任不那么客观的评估（考试）类型, 这可能容易导致腐败。

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原文出处：经济学人

翻译：七呵夫

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