在兄弟姊妹很罕見的中國，許多人認為集體生活會對孩子有好處。
中國的精英寄宿學校
China’s elite boarding schools｜economist.com
譯者：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.
中國父母高度重視教育，並以此為傲。他們常說，那是他們可以給予下一代的最重要的饋贈。如此一來，他們在負擔得起的情況下，就更加願意把錢花在昂貴的寄宿學校上，因為他們認為孩子在寄宿學校可以潛心學習。鄉村貧困家庭也同樣送孩子讀寄校。但那只是因為他們別無選擇，每天來回學校要麼費錢要麼費力。相比之下，城市裡的寄校通常也遠遠更大。與其說讀寄校是務實的表現，不如說是享受特權的標誌。
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.
像這樣的都市學校，還存在很大的需求量。在許多富裕國家，父母經常害怕把孩子送出國，費用高昂是一部分原因，另一部分原因是如今很多家長更想把孩子留在身邊。然而，在中國，父母親和孩子（大多數是獨生子）分居兩地則被認為是很正常的事情。對城市寄宿生來說，上學距離一般很近，父母通常送孩子去上學，學校和住處距離很近。
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).
寄宿學校為家長們提供了除了把孩子送到爺爺奶奶家之外的另一個選擇，雖然他們經常這麼做，有時還連續好幾天。儘管費用很昂貴，但家長覺得，在幫助孩子學習方面，寄宿學校比在家的長輩更有作用。在兄弟姊妹很罕見的中國，許多人認為集體生活會對孩子有好處。大約有350萬中小學生就讀於城市寄宿學校，佔城市學校人口4%左右。他們當中大多數高中也就讀於寄宿學校（初中生佔比8%，小學生佔比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.
有些寄宿學校特意迎合中國的精英階層，他們幫助學生申請國外大學（在中國，海外教育是另外一種廣受追捧的特權象徵）。近日，鼎石國際學校（Keystone Academy）在北京一處郊區成立，紅磚四合院，與新英格蘭一所寄宿學校的外形相似。該學校每年住宿費高達36萬元（5.2萬美元），比哈佛大學學費還貴。
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，最貴的寄宿學校已經過了鼎盛時期。家長如果有那麼多閒錢，寧願選擇送孩子去上國外的寄宿學校，英美寄宿學校的入學錄一直不斷上升。如果妻子有錢賦閒在家，或者有時間帶孩子，越來越被視為享有很高的地位，傳統性別角色有返潮的趨勢。尹建莉是位有名作家，以前是名教師，2014年她寫了一本關於教育的書，其中一篇文章題為《糟糕的寄宿制》。文中她提出，如果寢室生活真的培育了人們所謂的「集體感」，那麼孤兒院的孩子考試應該全得高分。她建議媽媽們應該更多參與到撫養孩子的過程。
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.
對於普通中等階層的家庭來說，他們越來越負擔得起相比之下沒那麼昂貴的公立寄宿學校，通常一年只花幾千元。但即便如此，其未來也堪憂。在習近平主席的反腐運動下，家長們想靠吃回扣、找關係的慣用方法來找好學校變得越來越困難了。近兩年，如果自己孩子就讀優異公立寄宿學校，會被貼上腐敗的標籤。沒人想要這種「標籤」。
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