导读：教育永远是一个国家的重中之重，但是教育中不公平的现象却也不可避免的。农村孩子和城市里的孩子在教育环境、教育资源、受教育程度和长远发展等方面有着天壤之别，而且我国的户口政策又拔高了许多农村孩子“跃龙门”的高度。在教育落后的地域，劳动力普遍廉价，不得不承认这些廉价劳动力是中国这些年来经济发展中的无名砥柱，但是在经济逐渐摆脱廉价劳动力束缚的转型时期，政府是不是该以更加紧迫的姿态来缩小教育差距呢？当然经济学人的立场有一贯的偏见，不过问题确实存在，大家可以讨论学习。
“ 英文部分来自经济学人，译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。”
Chinese schools discriminate against 60% of the population. This is both cruel and counterproductive.
中国的学校歧视60%的人口，既残酷又适得其反。
counterproductive /ˌkaʊntəprəˈdʌktɪv/
ADJ Something that is counterproductive achieves the opposite result from the one that you want to achieve.产生相反结果的；事与愿违的；结果出人预料的；帮倒忙的In practice, however, such an attitude is counterproductive.
LAST year some images went viral on the internet in China. They showed children descending an 800-metre (2,600-foot) rock face on rickety ladders made of vines, wood and rusty metal. Their destination: school. The photographer was told by a local official that “seven or eight” people had died after losing their grip. Yet the children did this regularly—there is no school at the top of the mountain in Sichuan province where they live. The photographs conveyed two striking aspects of life in the Chinese countryside: a hunger for education so strong that children will risk their lives for it, and a callous lack of government attention to the needs of rural students.
去年，中国网络上流传着一些照片。照片显示孩子们抓着藤蔓、木头和锈迹斑斑的金属制成的梯子顺着800米（2600英尺）的悬崖往下爬。他们的目的地是学校。当地的政府官员告诉摄影师，七八个人失手坠下悬崖并因此而丧命。然而，孩子们依然经常攀爬，因为在他们生活的地方四川省的大山顶处没有学校。这些照片折射出中国农村生活的两个惊人的方面：第一是孩子们对教育的渴求如此强烈以至于会拿自己的生命冒险；第二是政府对农村孩子需求无情的漠视。
Went viral: become popular
Rickety: in bad condition (摇摇欲坠的）
a hunger for:渴求
Acallous (cruel) lack of
In many ways, education in China is improving. Since 2000 the annual tally of students graduating from university has increased nearly eightfold, to more than 7.5m. Butmany rural studentsare neglected by China’s school system, and they are not the only ones. So, too,are the children of migrantswho have moved to the cities from the countryside andpoor studentswho want to go to senior high school.
在许多方面，中国的教育有所改善。2008年开始，中国每年的大学毕业生总人数增长了8倍，超过750万。但是许多农村学生被中国的教育体系所忽视，而且他们不是唯一被忽视的，同样遭到忽视的还有从农村迁移到城市的民工子女以及希望上高中的贫困学生。
The annual tally of是the total number of... every year的灵活表达法。
这段话的后半部分表明了受歧视的三类群体：农村学生、民工学生以及因为贫困就学存在困难的学生（原文中以下划线标注）
This is not only unfair; it is also counterproductive. China faces a demographic crunch: its workforce is shrinking and it can no longer depend on cheap, low-skilled migrant labour to power its growth. Its young—especially those with rural roots—need to become more skilled. That calls for better education.
这不仅不公平而且会破坏生产力。中国面临着人口问题：劳动力减少，不能再依赖低技能的廉价民工促进发展。年轻人，尤其是农村的年轻人需要提高技能。这需要改善教育。
The government has not been completely blind to the need to ensure that rural people have enough schooling to work in factories, but it has shown little sense of urgency. The schoolchildren from Sichuan are a case in point. So perilous was their journey to school that officials arranged for them to board, like tens of millions of children in rural China. They travel back home only every few weeks.
为了能去工厂工作，农村人口需要足够的教育，政府对这一需求并未完全熟视无睹，但是并没有表现出紧迫感。四川这些小学生就是一个例子。他们去学校的路如此危险，政府工作人员为他们安排了住宿，就像乡村中国数千万学生一样。他们只能每隔几周回家一次。
That may sound like progress. Since the population of young people in the countryside is falling so smaller schools are closing. Better to board than to trek for miles every day to one that is still open. But conditions at these boarding schools are often appalling. Many children do not get enough to eat, which affects their health and their ability to learn. So poor is their nutrition that they are often shorter than their counterparts at day schools.
这听起来像是一种进步。因为农村年轻人口下降，一些规模小一点的学校也关闭了。寄宿要比每天跋涉数英里去那些还在运营的学校要好得多。但是这些寄宿学校的条件往往很糟糕。许多孩子没有足够的食物，会影响他们的健康和学习能力。由于营养不良，他们往往比走读学校的孩子们更矮小。
And it is not just the boarders who suffer. In all kinds of education, rural children have less chance of doing well than their urban counterparts. Less than 10% of them go to senior high-school, compared with 70% of their peers in cities. That is because the government stacks the system against them.
不仅仅是这些寄宿生们受折磨，在各个等级的教育中，农村孩子的学习成绩不如城市学生。不到10%的农村孩子能上高中，而城市孩子则达到了70%。这是因为政府的教育制度对农村孩子不利。
Stack the system against them
Stack against sb不利于
Everyone in China has to attend school for nine years—until the end of junior high school. But it was not until 2007 that all rural children could do so without paying. Like city dwellers, they still have to pay for senior high school. But their families tend to be much poorer, so few can afford it. And rural schools are far more rudimentary. Local governments are responsible for running them. If officials have tax revenue to spare, they see no point in doling it out in the countryside. How can you boost growth, they wonder, by spending money on villagers who will eventually move away?
中国的每一个人需要上九年学——直到初中毕业。但直到2007年，农村孩子才能免费上学。和城市居民一样，他们上高中也得交学费。但是他们的家庭更贫穷，很少家庭能负担高中学费。而且农村学校很不成熟。当地政府负责这些学校的运营。如果政府有多余的税收，他们会觉得投入到农村没有意义。他们认为，把钱花在终将离开农村的村民身上并不会促进当地的发展。
To spare意识是剩下，多余left over or more than you need.
Dole out to give something发给
It is no better for the migrants once they are in the cities. China’s household-registration system, known ashukou, treats rural migrants as second-class citizens. Their children are often barred from state-funded urban schools. They must pay to send them to ramshackle private ones instead, which are often worse than rural state schools. Even there, children’s education is frequently disrupted: officials have forced many such places to close, citing safety and other concerns.
民工移居到城市情况也好不到哪里去。中国的户籍制度——户口，将民工视作二等公民。他们的孩子无法就读于公立学校。他们必须自掏腰包，把孩子送到破败的私立学校。这些私立学校的条件往往比农村的公立学校更差。即便是在私立学校，孩子们的教育也常常被迫中断。官员们会借口安全或其他原因强制关闭学校。
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