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  劍5Test3雅思閱讀譯文Passage1-兒童早期教育

  Early Childhood Education

  New Zealand’s National Party spokesman on education, Dr Lockwood Smith, recently visited the US and Britain. Here he reports on the findings of his trip and what they could mean for New Zealand’s education policy.

  兒童早期教育

  新西蘭國家黨教育發言人Lockwood Smith博士最近訪問了美國和英國。下面是他撰寫的一份報告，文中闡述了他此行的收獲以及這些收獲對新西蘭教育政策的意義。

  ‘Education To Be More’ was published last August. It was the report of the New Zealand Government’s Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. The report argued for enhanced equity of access and better funding for childcare and early childhood education institutions. Unquestionably, that’s a real need; but since parents don’t normally send children to pre-schools until the age of three, are we missing out on the most important years of all?

  《教育增進能力》是一份由新西蘭政府兒童早期關懷和教育工作小組所作的報告，于去年8月出版。該報告呼吁促進機會均等、加強對兒童的關愛和對兒童早期教育機構的資助。毫無疑問，這的確是必要的。但是一般而言，家長直到孩子3歲時才把他們送到早期教育學校，這樣一來，我們是不是錯過了教育孩子的最佳時期?

  A 13-year study of early childhood development at Harvard University has shown that, by the age of three, most children have the potential to understand about 1000 words — most of the language they will use in ordinary conversation for the rest of their lives.

  哈佛大學進行了一項長達13年的兒童早期發展的研究，結果表明：到了3歲時，大多數孩子已經具備理解1000個單詞的能力，這些詞匯是他們在以后的一生中進行日常對話時會經常用到的。

  Furthermore, research has shown that while every child is born with a natural curiosity, it can be suppressed dramatically during the second and third years of life. Researchers claim that the human personality is formed during the first two years of life, and during the first three years children learn the basic skills they will use in all their later learning both at home and at school. Once over the age of three, children continue to expand on existing knowledge of the world.

  該研究還表明：盡管每個孩子都有與生俱來的好奇心，但是這種好奇心卻可能在2歲到3歲時受到強烈的壓抑。研究人員表示，人的個性是在出生后的兩年中形成的，到了3歲的時候，孩子們已經掌握了將來在家庭和學校中會用到的基本技能。從3歲以后，孩子們就開始在已有知識的基礎上繼續拓展對世界的認識。

  It is generally acknowledged that young people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds tend to do less well in our education system. That’s observed not just in New Zealand, but also in Australia, Britain and America. In an attempt to overcome that educational under-achievement, a nationwide programme called ‘Headstart’ was launched in the United States in 1965. A lot of money was poured into it. It took children into pre-school institutions at the age of three and was supposed to help the children of poorer families succeed in school.

  人們一般認為，家庭社會地位和經濟條件不太好的孩子往往在學校表現不佳。不僅新西蘭有這種情況，澳大利亞、英國和美國也都有這種情況。為了改變這種狀況，美國于1965年在全國開展了一項“先發優勢”計劃，并投人大量資金。按照該計劃，孩子在3歲時被送進早期教育學校，以幫助家境不好的孩子在學校取得成功。

  Despite substantial funding, results have been disappointing. It is thought that there are two explanations for this. First, the programme began too late. Many children who entered it at the age of three were already behind their peers in language and measurable intelligence. Second, the parents were not involved. At the end of each day, ‘Headstart’ children returned to the same disadvantaged home environment.

  盡管投人了大量資金，結果卻令人失望。這可能有兩個原因。首先，該計劃所定開始年齡太大，許多3歲時進入早教學校的孩子此時已經在語言和智力發育上落后于他們的同齡人了。其次，這些孩子的家長并沒有參與進來。每天放學后，這些孩子又回到了不利于他們成長的家庭環境中。

  As a result of the growing research evidence of the importance of the first three years of a child’s life and the disappointing results from ‘Headstart’, a pilot programme was launched in Missouri in the US that focused on parents as the child’s first teachers. The ‘Missouri’ programme was predicated on research showing that working with the family, rather than bypassing the parents, is the most effective way of helping children get off to the best possible start in life. The four-year pilot study included 380 families who were about to have their first child and who represented a cross-section of socio-economic status, age and family configurations. They included single-parent and two-parent families, families in which both parents worked, and families with either the mother or father at home.

  由于越來越多的研究表明兒童3歲前的時間是非常重要的，而且“先發優勢”計劃的結果又令人失望，所以，美國密蘇里州實施了一項試點項目，其核心就是把家長作為孩子的第一任老師。研究表明：與家長合作而不是繞過家長，是幫助孩子獲得人生最佳起跑點的最有效方式。密蘇里州的這個項目正是以這一研究成果為基礎的。該項目為期4年，包含了380個即將迎來第一個孩子的家庭，涵蓋了不同家庭經濟狀況、社會地位、年齡段和家庭構成，其中包括單親家庭、雙親家庭、雙職工家庭以及父母中有一方居家的家庭。

  The programme involved trained parent — educators visiting the parents’ home and working with the parent, or parents, and the child. Information on child development, and guidance on things to look for and expect as the child grows were provided, plus guidance in fostering the child’s intellectual, language, social and motor-skill development. Periodic check-ups of the child’s educational and sensory development (hearing and vision) were made to detect possible handicaps that interfere with growth and development. Medical problems were referred to professionals.

  該項目派出受過專業訓練的教育學家進行家訪，與家長和孩子共同合作。項目提供了孩子發展的相關知識，以及孩子成長過程中要注意的事項。此外，該項目還提供在促進孩子智力、語言、社會和運動技能等方面的指導，定期檢查孩子教育和感官(聽覺和視覺)能力的發展情況，以及時發現孩子在成長和發育過程中的障礙，其中涉及到的醫療問題則由專門的醫生處理。

  Parent-educators made personal visits to homes and monthly group meetings were held with other new parents to share experience and discuss topics of interest. Parent resource centres, located in school buildings, offered learning materials for families and facilitators for child care.

  教育學家親自進行家訪，對家長進行培訓，并每月召開集體會議與那些新做爸爸媽媽的家長分享經驗，討論他們關心的問題。位于校內的家長資源中心則為家長和資助者提供關愛孩子的學習資料。

  At the age of three, the children who had been involved in the ‘Missouri’ programme were evaluated alongside a cross-section of children selected from the same range of socio-economic backgrounds and family situations, and also a random sample of children that age. The results were phenomenal. By the age of three, the children in the programme were significantly more advanced in language development than their peers, had made greater strides in problem solving and other intellectual skills, and were further along in social development. In fact, the average child on the programme was performing at the level of the top 15 to 20 per cent of their peers in such things as auditory comprehension, verbal ability and language ability.

  當密蘇里項目中的孩子3歲時，研究人員將這些孩子與來自相同經濟狀況、社會地位、家庭狀況的孩子以及隨機抽取的同齡的孩子放在一起，共同進行評估。結果是驚人的。到了3歲的時候，參與項目的孩子在語言發育方面已遠遠領先于他們的同齡人。他們解決問題的能力和其他的知識技能得到了更明顯的提高，在社會交往方面也取得了很大的進步。事實上，在諸如聽力理解、口頭表達和語言能力方面，參與項目的孩子一般都處于同齡人中前15%-20%的位置。

  Most important of all, the traditional measures of ‘risk’, such as parents’ age and education, or whether they were a single parent, bore little or no relationship to the measures of achievement and language development. Children in the programme performed equally well regardless of socio-economic disadvantages. Child abuse was virtually eliminated. The one factor that was found to affect the child’s development was family stress leading to a poor quality of parent-child interaction. That interaction was not necessarily bad in poorer families.

  最重要的是，結果還表明傳統意義上的一些不利因素，如家長的年齡和受教育程度、是否是單親家庭等，與孩子所取得的進步大小和語言發育幾乎沒有任何關系。無論項目中的這些孩子所處的經濟條件或社會條件如何不利，他們的表現都毫不遜色。虐待兒童的現象幾乎完全消失了。人們發現惟一一個會影響孩子發展的因素就是由干家庭壓力所導致的親子交流質量不佳，而這種交流在較為貧困的家庭倒不一定差。

  These research findings are exciting. There is growing evidence in New Zealand that children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are arriving at school less well developed and that our school system tends to perpetuate that disadvantage. The initiative outlined above could break that cycle of disadvantage. The concept of working with parents in their homes, or at their place of work, contrasts quite markedly with the report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. Their focus is on getting children and mothers access to childcare and institutionalized early childhood education. Education from the age of three to five is undoubtedly vital, but without a similar focus on parent education and on the vital importance of the first three years, some evidence indicates that it will not be enough to overcome educational inequity.

  這些研究結果是令人激動的。在新西蘭，有越來越多的例證表明家庭經濟條件和社會背景不佳的孩子入學時的發育就不是很充分，但我們的教育體制卻在延續這種劣勢。而上述項目中創新的做法則可以打破這種惡性循環。與家長在家庭、單位中進行合作的理念與兒童早期關懷和教育工作小組的報告提出的觀念形成了鮮明的對比。該小組所關注的是使母親和孩子能得到兒童保育，并使早期教育制度化。3歲到5歲間的教育無疑是非常重要的，但某些實例表明：如果不重視對家長的培訓，不重視孩子3歲前的時間，那么這種教育將無法克服教育上的差距。

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