High camp
高端夏令营
Summer camps entertain, educate and give kids a competitive edge
夏令营给孩子们提供了娱乐和教育，也赋予了他们竞争优势
Snag: only the affluent can afford them
门槛：只有富人才能负担得起。
Aug 9th 2018
2018年8月9日
IN A classroom at Imperial College London, students sit hunched over laptops, typing lines of code. Just nine years old, they are attending Firetech, a British technology summer camp for children. Courses include “Junior Augmented Reality” and “Creating for YouTube”. Such programmes are proliferating in many countries. They pander to two common demands from well-off parents: to entertain children over the long summer holidays and to give them a leg-up over their peers.
据英国《经济学人》网站8月9日的消息：在伦敦帝国理工学院的一间教室内，学生们弓身而坐，用膝上的笔记本上敲打出一行行代码。年仅九岁的他们正在参加英国Firetech儿童科技夏令营活动。活动课程有《初级增强现实》和《为YouTube创作》等。类似的活动项目在许多国家正在大量涌现，他们迎合了来自殷实家庭父母的两个共同需求：在漫长的暑假里去给其子女提供娱乐，并让其子女从同龄人中脱颖而出。
At most American summer camps children still commune with nature and sing around a campfire. But some camps cater to more niche interests, such as neuroscience, outer space or even atheism. Tom Rosenberg, chief executive of the American Camp Association, says a growing number focus on skills in demand at modern workplaces. The proportion offering science, technology, engineering or maths programmes, for instance, rose from less than a quarter in 2014 to almost a third in 2017.
在大多数美国夏令营中，孩子们仍在亲近自然和在篝火旁唱歌。但是一些夏令营开始迎合更多的兴趣爱好，诸如神经科学、外太空甚至无神论。美国夏令营协会首席执行官汤姆•罗森伯格（Tom Rosenberg）表示，越来越多的人开始关注现代职场所需的技能。举例而言，夏令营提供科学、科技、工程或数学项目的比例从2014年的1/4以下增至2017年的1/3左右。
Students often have an eye on university. Alexandra Boyt and David Stephenson, who run a residential Latin camp in western England, say a lot of students come to prepare for interviews at Oxford and Cambridge. Princeton asks applicants how they spent their past two summers. Entry to the camps themselves can be competitive. Canada/USA Mathcamp accepts just 15% of applicants.
中学生们经常在关注大学。亚历山大•博伊特和大卫•史蒂芬森在英格兰西部经营一所社区式拉丁夏令营。他们表示，许多学生来参加夏令营是为了牛津和剑桥大学的面试做准备。普林斯顿大学会询问申请者是如何度过以往的两个暑假。进入夏令营本身就充满竞争，加拿大/美国数学夏令营申请者的入选率仅仅15%。
In East Asia some parents use the summer to boost their children’s English skills. In a packed classroom at SNT Academy, a private language school in an affluent part of Seoul, the South Korean capital, a group of eight- and nine-year-olds practise debating (topic: should cosmetic surgery be banned?). Many wealthy Chinese parents go further, sending their children on study tours abroad. Ctrip, a Chinese travel agency, believes that 1m Chinese students will go on such trips this year, spending $4.5bn.
|在东亚，一些家长利用暑假来提高孩子的英语水平。SNT学院是韩国首都首尔富人区的一所私立语言学校。在该学院内一间挤满了学生的教室里，一群八九岁的小学生正在练习辩论（话题：整容手术是否应该被禁止？）。许多中国富裕家庭的父母走的更远，将其子女送出国游学。中国携程在线旅行服务公司认为，中国今年将有100万名中小学生参加此类旅行，花费45亿美元。
The fanciest summer programmes can be expensive. Firetech charges £1,300 ($1,700) for week-long residential courses; a week at Space Camp, in Huntsville, Alabama, can cost up to $1,200. Mr Rosenberg says there is a camp for every budget. But as wealthier parents splash out on ever more specialised programmes, it is getting harder for the less well-to-do to keep up in the summer-camp arms race.
最高档的夏令营项目价格不菲。Firetech对为期一周的住校课程收取1300英镑（1700美元）的费用。在阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔的太空营（Space Camp），一周的费用就高达1200美元。罗森伯格表示，市场上存有各种预算的夏令营。但随着越来越富有的父母在越来越专业的活动项目上出手阔绰，那些相对不太富裕的父母想要在夏令营的“军备竞赛”中赶上步伐愈发困难重重。（译：商志远）
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/11/summer-camps-entertain-educate-and-give-kids-a-competitive-edge
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