Economists1经济学人文章

Studying languages 学习语言 Shout louder 再大声一点

A woeful approach to language education continues 苟延残喘的语言教育

THE last time she was recruiting for her export-sales team, Sarah Grain hired a Lithuanian whospeaks Russian, Polish and German. Her two previous hires for Eriez Magnetics, which makesindustrial equipment in South Wales, were an Italian who also speaks French, and a Venezuelanwho speaks Spanish and Portuguese. All of them speak fluent English.

“There were no Britishapplicants who had the requisite language skills,” she says.

最后一次为自己的海外销售团队招聘，Sarah Grain聘用了一位可讲俄语、波兰语和德语的立陶宛人。她为艺利磁铁—位于南威尔士的一家制造工业设备的公司—先前两次聘用的人分别是会讲法语的意大利人和会讲西班牙语与葡萄牙语的委内瑞拉人。而他们都能说流利的英文。Sarah表示，“没有符合必备语言技能的英国求职者。”

Ms Grain's conclusion is not unusual for a British company. In 2012 a European Commissionsurvey tested the foreign-language proficiency of 54,000 students aged 14 and 15, in 14nations. Sweden came top, with 82% of pupils reaching an “independent” or “advancedindependent” standard. The average for all 14 states was 42%. England came bottom, withjust 9%.

Grain女士对一家英国公司的此般结论已经让人见怪不怪了。早在2012年，欧盟委员会就针对来自14个国家、14到15岁年龄不等的54000名学生进行了外语熟练程度的测试。瑞典学生以其中82％的人可达到“灵活使用”和“驾轻就熟”的程度而位居榜首。所有14个国家的平均人数为42％。英国垫底，仅仅有9％。

Part of the explanation is that many people's second language is English, while many Britonscontinue to believe that, as native speakers of the lingua mundi, they do not need to botherwith foreign languages. They may be right—in terms of communication. But it means that, notonly are they missing out on much cultural interaction, they may also be harming their own jobprospects.

部分原因是许多人的第二外语就是英语，这也是大部分英国人始终坚信的事，而作为以lingua mundi为母语的人，他们着实无需为外语而烦心。他们可能是对的——从沟通方面来说。但这却意味着他们不仅会错失多文化交流机会，也会危及到他们的工作前景。 They have not been helped by the educational policies of successive governments. In 2004 TonyBlair's Labour government abolished the requirement to learn a language after the age of 14,causing the numbers taking a language GCSE exam at 16 to fall by half in state schools overthe next seven years. 历届政府的教育政策并未使他们获益。2004年，托尼布莱尔的工党政府废除了年满14岁就要学习一门语言的要求，此举直接导致之后的七年，公立学校的学生在语言方面GCSE（普通中等教育证书）考试的通过率直降一半。

Concerned about this rapid decline, the coalition government brought in a new performanceindicator called the English Baccalaureate, or EBacc, in 2011. A modern language was one of itsfive core disciplines. Language teachers—an embattled breed—rejoiced. The number ofstudents entering a GCSE language exam in 2013, the first year the changes took effect, roseby 20% (see chart).

考虑到人数骤降，联合政府在2011年颁布了一项名为英国文凭证书（EBacc）的技能指标。现代语言是5个核心学科之一。语言老师——随时严阵以待的一群人—都欣喜若狂。新指标颁布后第一年就见成效，2013年参加GCSE语言考试的学生人数增长了20％。 Now, however, those gains could be lost, as the government has seemingly loosened therequirement. From 2016, under a new initiative called Progress 8, it has extended the numberof core subjects to eight, appearing to make learning a language voluntary. This has pleasedsome teachers, who felt the EBacc was too narrow, but linguists are aghast.

但是现在，随着政府对此项要求的逐渐放松，这些成绩可能会慢慢丢失。自2016年起，在一项名为Progress8（8步走）的新倡议下，核心学科扩展至8门，这一举措使得语言学习更自主化。这让部分老师十分欣喜，他们认为Ebacc范围狭窄，而语言学家却对此举大为震惊。

The decline of languages at GCSE has inevitably had an effect higher up the academic foodchain. Though the number of those studying languages to A Level—the exams taken at 18—willincrease thanks to the GCSE cohort of 2013-14, it is likely to fall back again. French andGerman are half as popular as they were 20 years ago. The number of universities offeringlanguage degrees has fallen, too: by 50% for German and 40% for French since 1998. Thenumber offering Spanish has also fallen. Degrees in other languages, such as Chinese andArabic, are becoming more popular, but they are still rare.

GCSE中语言的减少，不可避免的会对提高学术竞争有所影响。尽管随着2013-14年GCSE的人气回温，那些语言学习高达A级—18岁方可参与的考试—的人数将会增加，但它仍可能再次降低。相较于20年前，法国和德国的人数已降了一半。提供语言学位的大学数量也已减少：自1998年起，德国减少了50％，法国减少了40％。提供西班牙语学习的学校也已减少。其他语种学位，比如汉语和阿拉伯语，正变得越来越多，但它们依然很稀缺。 The economy and the labour market bear the consequences. In 2012 the British Chambers ofCommerce found, in a survey of 8,000 British companies, that 96% had no foreign-languagespeakers. First-time exporters cited language as a barrier to entering international markets.

经济和劳工市场直接承担此般后果。在2012年，英国商会发现，在一份涉及8000家英国公司的调查中，有96％的公司都没有会外语的人。首次试水的出口商将外语定为打入国际市场的一大障碍。

Though Britain makes up 12% of the population of the EU, less than 5% of EU civil servants inBrussels are British. Not enough Britons can fulfil the language requirement of being able towork in French or German. And even if monoglot Brits can get jobs at multinationals, claimsRichard Hardie, non-executive chairman of the British arm of UBS, a bank,

“the chances ofgetting to the top if you only have English are much lower than before”.

虽然英国占欧盟总人口的12％，但在布鲁塞尔担任欧盟公务员的英国人却少于总人数的5％。没有完全合格的英国人能够满足可在法国或德国工作的要求。而且即使只会单一语言的英国人在跨国公司工作，来自瑞银集团—一家银行—英国分公司的理查德·哈迪表示，“若你只会讲英语，那么你能高升的机会相比于以前已经大大降低了。”

This lack of language skills also lowers growth. By exactly how much is hard to say, but oneestimate, by James Foreman-Peck of Cardiff University, puts the “gross language effect”

(theincome foregone because language barriers alter and reduce international trade) in 2012 ashigh as ￡59 billion ($90 billion), or 3.5% of GDP. 语言技能的缺乏也降低了增长。很难精确到用多少来说明，但是据卡迪夫大学

James Foreman-Peck估计， “恶劣的语言效应”（由于语言障碍改变和减少了国际贸易）给2012年带来高达590亿英镑（合900美元），或是3.5％的国内生产总值的损失。 In the linguistic gloom, there are a few bright spots. Some British universities are moving awayfrom literature-based degrees towards joint degrees linked to practical subjects such as law orbusiness studies. Some scientists are learning languages outside their course requirements tomake themselves more employable.

在幽暗的语言世界，有些许明亮之处。部分英国大学正在从以文学导向的学位转变至与类似法律和商业学习的实践学科关联的联合学位。一些科学家正在学习他们学科需求之外的语言，这会使他们更加称职。

Meanwhile, in September 2014 the government mandated that all primary schools must teach alanguage. Getting children started at a young age is admirable. But, with so few languagegraduates coming out of universities, who is going to teach them ?

与此同时，政府在 2014年9月要求所有的小学都要教授语言。让孩子们在幼龄时期接受语言教育是极好的。但是，从大学走出的语言学毕业生几近为零，谁又能来教他们呢？

Teaching economics 经济学教育 The demand side 需求方

The economics curriculum is evolving, but tooslowly for some 经济学课程正在不断发展，但对于某些人来说节奏略慢

“I DON'T care who writes a nation's laws, or crafts itsadvanced treatises, if I can write its economics textbooks.” So said Paul Samuelson, anAmerican economist who more than achieved his aim by producing a bestseller. But debateswirls around the teaching of the dismal science—nowhere more so than in Britain.

“如果我能书写一本关于这个国家的经济学教材，我将不会关心谁来制定国家的法律或者发表先进的论述。”美国经济学家Paul Samuelson如是说，因为其畅销书，他早已达到了他的目标。但是围绕政治经济学教学的争论从未停止——以英国为最甚。

When the financial crisis hit in 2007-08, many economics students found themselves ill-equipped to think about what had gone wrong in the economy or how to fix it. Althoughresearchers in top universities had studied financial panics, their work had not filtered down tothe lecture theatre. Undergraduate courses focused on drier stuff, imparting a core of basicmaterial that had not changed much for decades.

当07年和08年金融危机席卷全球时，许多经济学的学生发现他们苦思冥想也想不出经济出了什么问题、应该怎样修复。尽管顶尖大学的研究人员对金融恐慌进行了研究，但他们的研究并没有走进课堂。大学本科的课程侧重于枯燥的原理，把多年不变的基本理论的核心传授给学生。

As a result, aspiring economists struggled to analyse burning issues such as credit crunches,bank bail-outs and quantitative easing. Employers complained that recruits were technicallyable but could not relate theory to the real world. Graduates'knowledge of economichistory—crucial during the crisis, given its parallels with the Depression of the 1930s—wasespecially lacking. 这种模式导致心怀大志的经济学家致力于分析和解决燃眉之急，比如信贷危机、银行纾困以及量化宽松政策。雇主们抱怨招募进来的雇员拥有理论知识但不能把理论用于现实。大学生掌握的经济学历史的知识——在此次金融危机中十分重要，因为其与20世纪30年代的大萧条极为类似—尤为缺乏。

Students became dissatisfied, too. Groups such as Rethinking Economics, a London-basednetwork of student reformers, emerged to challenge the conventional wisdom of theclassroom. At Manchester University, a student revolt led to plummeting satisfaction scores,driving the economics course down the league table.

经济学学生也对现状十分不满。学生组织纷纷出现，由伦敦学生改革派组成的 “反思经济学” 开始挑战课堂上传统的经济学思维。在曼彻斯特大学，学生反抗活动使得学生对经济学课程满意度下降，迫使该课程未能登上课程排行榜。

Teachers have now responded. University College London has introduced a new curriculum,the result of a project led by Professor Wendy Carlin. The old textbooks had things the wrongway round, Ms Carlin says. They taught concepts like supply and demand in an abstract wayand then illustrated them with simple examples, such as the market for apples and oranges.By contrast, the new material challenges students to consider real-world topics from theoutset. The section on labour supply begins with the history of real wage growth. The newcourse also acknowledges the limitations of basic models: the trade-off between efficiency andfairness is mentioned early, for instance. Students consider only the first in most introductorycourses elsewhere.

老师们现在终于有所回应。由于Wendy Carlin教授主持的一个项目，英国伦敦大学学院引进了一个新的课程。Carlin女士说，以前的课本完全搞错了方向。它们用一些抽象的方式来教授供给和需求等经济学概念，然后用市场上的苹果和橘子这种简单的例子来告诉学生。而现在，新的教科书鼓励学生从现实生活中找到例子。书中关于劳动力供给的这一部分就是从实际工资增长的历史开始讲起的。这个新课程也认识到基本模型的局限性：比如，效率与公平的权衡在很早就告知了学生。而其他学校的学生在大部分入门课程上只注重前者。 Though Ms Carlin and her colleagues are overhauling teaching methods, the content of thecourse remains fairly mainstream. That irks those who think the financial crisis has posed amore fundamental challenge to the subject. Rethinking Economics wants curricula to coverheterodox schools of thought. For

example, mainstream economic models rely heavily on theconcept of equilibrium—a state in which nobody has an incentive to change their behaviour.Critics say this is never reached in the real world, so is a flawed starting point. They want morephilosophical discussion about how best to approach economics, and point to Leeds,Greenwich and Kingston universities as models of how to do this.

尽管Carlin与其同事在改革教学方式，课程内容仍然跟随主流。这让那些认为金融危机给经济学带来了更为根本性挑战的人们十分恼火。“反思经济学”希望经济学课程能够涵盖非正统的思想流派。举个例子，主流经济学模型严重依赖均衡范式—一种人们没有动机去改变行为的状态。批评者说这在现实生活中根本不可能实现，所以经济学家一开始就错了。们想要在如何更好解决经济学问题上展开更多理论性的论述，并且点名利兹、 格林威治和金斯顿大学作为试点。

Two rather different questions have been posed. One asks whether courses do a good job ofequipping students with the most important insights from mainstream academic research. Theother asks whether young economists should learn more than just today's favoured approach.It would be odd if curricula departed radically from the academic consensus. But perhapsmainstream theory must catch up with its students.

两个迥然不同的问题随之而来。一个是关于课程是否能够为学生从主流学术研究中找到一个最重要的视角。另一个则是年轻的经济学家是否能够不只是学习现今受大众喜欢的方法。如果课程完全背离学术共识，那也会显得很奇怪。但，毋庸置疑，主流的经济学理论必须赶上学生的脚步。

Reproductive technology 生育技术 Oh, baby 噢，宝贝！

Britain's approval of babies with three geneticparents offers lessons for other countries

英国通过“三亲婴儿”决议，给他国带来的影响。

“PLAYING God” is what medicine is for. Every Caesarean section and cancer treatment is anattempt to interfere with the natural course of events for the benefit of the patient. Not everyprocedure should be allowed, but a general s

ense of what is “unnatural” is a poor guide towhat to ban. Transplants and transfusions were once considered unnatural, but now save manylives. That insight is why MPs were right to agree, on February 3rd, that Britain should becomethe first country to allow the creation of children with genetic material from three peopleinstead of the usual two.

医学的初衷本就是“与上帝过招”。曾经剖腹产和癌症治疗被视为是一种对病人有益但却违背自然法则的手段，可是并非每个步骤都应被人接受，在一般情况下，我们很难对于这类“非自然”的行为颁布禁令，就好比移植和输血曾一度被定为是一种“非自然”手段，然而这两种方式却拯救了无数条生命。正是有这样的见解，在2月3日，英国国会议员行使表决权，认为英国应该成为首个允许利用“一父两母”3人基因共同育子（“三亲婴儿”）的国家，从而打破传统意义上的双亲育儿。

By doing so, they hope to relieve terrible suffering. Faults with mitochondria—the tiny powersources inside cells—afflict about one child in 6,500, or 100 a year in Britain. The manyconditions that result, a lot of them agonising and fatal, have no cure. So scientists hope toprevent them at conception, by transferring the healthy nucleus of an egg cell with damagedmitochondria into the body of an egg with functioning ones.

他们希望通过这样的方式来纾缓一种因线粒体疾病带来的痛苦。线粒体，作为细胞的动力工厂，却往往存在一些缺陷。在英国，大约每6500名儿童中就有一个会饱受因线粒体缺陷所带来的折磨，而这类线粒体相关疾病，每年也约有100例。多数情况下，患者多会感到极为痛苦，因无法治愈，因而多为致命的。因此，科学家们希望能在孕育期间，将捐赠者健康的线粒体与有缺陷的孕方卵子相结合来培育新的生命，以此来阻止或预防这一疾病的发生。 The procedure is not yet allowed anywhere else in the world, partly because it is new anduntested in people but also because of the opposition that reproductive medicine ofteninspires. Mitochondria contain DNA, therefore any child born as a result of such interventionwill inherit genes from three people—hence the headlines in Britain this week about “three-parent babies”. If the baby is a girl the genetic tweak in her mitochondria will be inherited byher children, and in turn by her granddaughters' children. It is a “germ-line modification”, andthus irrevocable.

这一方法尚未允许在其他国家和地区随意使用，不仅是因为这是一项新技术、尚未通过人类测试，更是因为容易激发反生殖医学派的反对。线粒体本身含有DNA，因此任何一个通过该种方式出生的孩子，都会同时继承三方的遗传因子。因此这一周英国的头条新闻均为“三亲婴儿”。如果诞生的是名女婴，那么她的基因突变的线粒体将会遗传给她的孩子，同理的，将会一直遗传给她孙女的孩子，这是一种“胚芽线式的修饰”，因此该基因无法改变。

This ethical objection to mitochondrial donation is decisively outweighed by the good thatought to come from it. Mitochondrial disease is a misery to those who have it and a terror tothose who fear they might pass it on to their children; curtailing it would be wonderful. Thecomplaint that this is the first step on the road to “designer babies” is as weak as any otherslippery-slope argument: approving one procedure does not mean automatically approvingothers.

线粒体捐献的好处远远大于其伦理上的弊端。线粒体病给该病的患者带来深切痛苦，让他们害怕会将此病遗传给其子女，假若我们能通过“一父两母”这样的方法，解决这一问题，该有多好啊！有人指出，线粒体捐献是“设计婴儿”的第一步，但这种言论如同其它站不住脚的论调一样不堪一击，因为允许人为干预这一步骤并不意味着可以自由的发展其他步骤。 A second objection is that this procedure, like any new technique, might not be safe. Thosewho must bear that risk are not yet born, and so cannot consent to the treatment. Butparents already make medical decisions on behalf of their children, even unborn ones. AndBritain's bureaucrats, led by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), whichregulates fertility treatments, have been scrupulous in assessing risks. The HFEA first granteda research licence for the technique in 2005. Since then, a scientific panel has conducted threereviews of trials in test tubes and in animals. These have given no cause for concern.

第二个反对的声音则来自于该技术本身。毕竟作为一项新的技术，它并非足够安全。而这一次要承担风险的则是那些尚未出生的婴儿，因而有人反对采用这一治疗方式。但换言之，当今父母早就开始代表他们的孩子做出了足够多的医疗决策，当然包括他们未出世的孩子们。人类受精与胚胎管理局（HFRA）作为英国一家管理不孕不育的机构，一直引导着英国的一些政府机构谨慎的评估该风险。HFRA从2005年起，便首次颁发许可证允许开展这一技术的研究。从那时起，该科学小组就已在试管婴儿及动物身上进行了三次检验，检查结果也并未显示存在问题。

From the land of the test-tube baby 源于试管婴儿

That scrupulousness is one reason why the vote passed as easily as it did. Doctors andpatients' groups sometimes criticise the HFEA for being too conservative. But its somewhatponderous, consensus-seeking approach (the HFEA has conducted consultations, ethicsreviews and several opinion polls) has h

elped Britain steer clear both of American-style culturewars and of the lax oversight found in some Asian countries.

英国在这一问题上始终小心谨慎是该提案得以轻松通过的原因之一，在该问题上有时医生及患者还指责HFEA在这一研究上过于保守。可是正因为这种略显迟缓、但又始终保持广征民意（HFEA多次进行了意见咨询，道德审查及民意测验）的态度，使得英国成功避开了美式文化战和一些法律监管有所疏漏的亚洲国家的反对。

Mitochondrial donation will not be the last piece of controversial medicine that the HFEA willneed to wrestle with. It is already possible, for example, to sequence the genes of embryosand discard those that carry incurable genetic diseases. Choosing beneficial characteristicsis, for now, illegal. But as the human genome becomes better understood, patients mayagitate for exemptions. The HFEA, or something like it, offers the best method for evaluatingthe benefits and risks of such procedures. Sometimes bureaucrats are just what you need.

线粒体捐献虽然还饱受争议，但这仍旧不是HFEA所要面对的最后一件具有争论性的医学技术问题。例如，现今的医学水平已能对胚胎基因进行排序，甚至剔除那些不可治愈的基因性疾病的基因。虽然，目前人为地选择有益基因是违法的，但是随着人类对自身基因的不断研究和深入理解，患者或许会产生对撤销这一法律规定的诉求，那时HFEA及其类似机构则应为这些医学技术及步骤进行深入的利弊评估，服务民众本就是政府机构的职责所在。

Poverty, crime and education 贫困、犯罪与教育

The paradox of the ghetto 贫民窟的悖论

Unnervingly, poor children seem to fare better inpoor neighbourhoods 令人奇怪的是，穷人家的孩子若是生活在贫困区域，表现反而更好。

THE poorest people in Leicester by a wide margin are the Somalis who live in the St Matthewshousing estate. Refugees from civil war, who often passed through Sweden or the Netherlandsbefore fetching up in the English Midlands, they endure peeling surroundings and appallingjoblessness. At the last census the local unemployment rate was three times the nationalaverage. But Abdikayf Farah, who runs a local charity, is oddly upbeat. Just look at thechildren, he says.

生活在Leicester郊区最穷的人是索马里人，他们生活在St Matthews住宅区。在他们来到英国中部之前，作为内战的难民，索马里人经常穿越瑞典或者荷兰。他们忍受环境的盘剥，因没有工作而担惊受怕。在最近的人口普查中，当地的失业率是不列颠全国平均水平的三倍。但在当地从事慈善事业的Abdikayf Farah却莫名的乐观。他说，看看那些孩子就明白我为什么乐观了。

Close to Mr Farah's office is Taylor Road Primary School—which, it turns out, trumps almostevery school in Leicester in standardised tests. Its headmaster, Chris Hassall, credits the Somaliimmigrants, who insist that their children turn up for extra lessons at weekends and harry himwhen they seem to fall behind. Education is their ticket out of poverty. Poor district, wonderfulschool, well-ordered children: in Britain, the combination is not as unusual as one mightsuppose.

紧挨着Farah办公室的是泰勒路小学——这个小学在Leicester地区的标准化测验中的成绩优于本地区绝大多数学校。该校校长Chris Hassall赞叹道，Somali的移民，坚持让他们的孩子在周末补课，而当孩子们的成绩落后的时候，就敦促校长严格要求。教育是他们摆脱贫困的通行证。贫困的街区、完美的学校、秩序井然的孩子们：在不列颠，如此的组合并不是人们通常想的那么稀奇。

Britain has prized the ideal of economically mixed neighbourhoods since the 19th century.Poverty and disadvantage are intensified when poor people cluster, runs the argument;conversely, the rich are unfairly helped when they are surrounded by other rich people. Socialmixing ought to help the poor. It sounds self-evident—and colours planning regulations thatensure much social and affordable housing is dotted among more expensive private homes.Yet “there is absolutely no serious evidence to support this,” says Paul Cheshire, a professorof economic geography at the London School of Economics (LSE). 自19世纪以来，不列颠的人们就赞同这样一种理念：不同经济水平的人比邻而居。当穷人聚居起来时，贫穷和种种不便的问题也随之集聚，这引发争论；相应的，富人的邻居都是富人的时候，富人也会得到偏袒。不同阶层混居当能帮助穷人。这个想法听上去是自洽的——并且也影响了管理规则的制定。这些规定使得社交更为便利、价格更为合适的公寓布局在更为昂贵的私人住宅中。然而“绝对没有过硬的证据表明这个看法是对的”，伦敦经济学院的经济地理学教授Paul Cheshire如是说。

And there is new evidence to suggest it is wrong. Researchers at Duke University in Americafollowed over 1,600 children from age five to age 12 in England and Wales. They found thatpoor boys living in largely well-to-do neighbourhoods were the most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour, from lying and swearing to such petty misdemeanours as fighting, shopliftingand vandalis

m, according to a commonly used measure of problem behaviour. Misbehaviourstarts very young (see chart 1) and intensifies as they grow older. Poor boys in the poorestneighbourhoods were the least likely to run into trouble. For rich kids, the opposite is true:those living in poor areas are more likely to misbehave.

并且有新的证据表明这个观点是错误的。美国杜克大学的研究者追踪了研究英格兰和威尔士超过1600名儿童，从5岁一直观察到12岁。他们发现穷人家的男孩如果生活在生活裕如的邻居边上，很容易进行反社会行为，从说谎、辱骂这样的小过失到诸如打架、偷窃商品和恣意毁坏公共物品的行为。其行为评定的依据是根据常用的问题行为判断标准。这些孩子的行为不端问题起源很早，而在他们长大之后这些问题出现频繁。生活在周遭最贫困环境的男孩最不可能陷入麻烦。对于富家子弟，结论是反过来的：生活在贫穷区域的那些更容易行为不端。

The researchers suggest several reasons for this. Poorer areas are often heavily policed,deterring would-be miscreants; it may be that people in wealthy places are less likely to spotmisbehaviour, too. Living alongside the rich may also make the poor more keenly aware of theirown deprivation, suggests Tim Newburn, a criminologist who is also at the LSE. That, in turn,increases the feelings of alienation that are associated with anti-social conduct and criminalbehaviour.

研究者们提出了如下的原因解释这一现象。较为贫穷的区域是警方重点布控的地方，这阻止了孩子们成为恶棍；也可能生活在高档区域的人们较少检举不端行为。伦敦经济学院的犯罪学家Tim Newburn认为，生活在富人旁边也可能会让穷人感觉到自己是被剥夺了。于是，穷人们那种被遗弃的感觉越发强烈，最终导致反社会行为和犯罪行为。

Research on England's schools turns up a slightly different pattern. Children entitled to freeschool meals—a proxy for poverty—do best in schools containing very few other poor children,perhaps because teachers can give them plenty of attention. But, revealingly, poor children alsofare unusually well in schools where there are a huge number of other poor children. That maybe because schools have no choice but to focus on them. Thus in Tower Hamlets, a deprivedeast London borough,

60% of poor pupils got five good GCSEs (the exams taken at 16) in2013; the national average was 38%. Worst served are pupils who fall in between, attendingschools where they are insufficiently numerous to merit attention but too many to succeedalone (see chart 2).

对于英格兰学校的研究却有一些不同的情形。有资格接受学校免费午餐—贫困的标志之一 的学生在学校里（没有其他贫困学生）表现最好。这是因为老师可以给予他们足够的关注。不过，也有发现表明，在全是贫困学生的学校里，穷人家孩子的表现也是出奇得好。这也许

是因为学校别无他法，只能把关注点都集中在他们身上。在东伦敦一个贫瘠的自治区，Tower Hamlets，60%的穷学生在2013年的GCSE测验（16岁开始测验）中得到5的好等级，全国平均水平是38%。表现最差的是不算很贫穷但又不是很富裕人家的孩子，在所就读的学校，他们的人数没有多到可以得到关注，但想要出人头地他们的人数又太多了。 Mr Cheshire reckons that America, too, provides evidence of the limited benefits of socialmixing. Look, he says, at the Moving to Opportunity programme, started in the 1990s, throughwhich some poor people received both counselling and vouchers to move to richerneighbourhoods. Others got financial help to move as they wished, but no counselling. A thirdgroup received nothing. Studies after 10-15 years suggested that the incomes and employmentprospects of those who moved to richer areas had not improved. Boys who moved showedworse behaviour and were more likely to be arrested for property crime.

Cheshire认为，美国也有证据表明混合社会的局限性。他认为，在始于20世纪90年代的“奔向机遇”的项目中，通过这个项目，一些穷人在搬去与富人为邻之前接受了咨询和金融券。一些人正如期待的那样得到了金融帮助，但是没有接受咨询。第三组什么也没获得。经过10年到15年之后，研究表明，收益和就业都得以保障的那些人并没有任何提升。搬过去的男孩子表现出更严重的行为问题，并且更可能因为金钱犯罪而被逮捕。

In Britain, this pattern might be partly explained by the existence of poor immigrantneighbourhoods such as St Matthews in Leicester. The people who live in such ghettos are poorin means, because they cannot speak English and lack the kind of social networks that lead tojobs, but not poor in aspiration. They channel their ambitions through their children.

在不列颠，这种现象可以得到部分证实。诸如住在Leicester St Matthews区的贫困移民的存在就可以证实这点。生活在这些地区的人们平均生活水平属于贫困状态，因为他们不会说英语，也缺乏那些可以提供工作的社会关系网络，不过他们不乏进取的勇气。他们把自己的进取之心传递给了自己的孩子。

Another probable explanation lies in the way that the British government hands out money.Education funding is doled out centrally, and children in the most indigent parts tend to get themost cash. Schools in Tower Hamlets receive 7,014

($10,610) a year for each child, forexample, compared with the English average of 4,675. Secondary schools also get 935 for eachpoor child thanks to the “pupil premium” introduced by the coalition government. MeanwhileTeach First sends top graduates into poor schools. In America, by contrast, much schoolfunding comes from local property taxes, so those in impoverished areas lose out.

另外一个可能的解释跟不列颠政府的资金流向有关。教育基金的支出是集约式的，最需要援助的孩子会得到最多的资金。Tower Hamlets的学校每个孩子每年可以获得7014英镑。而英格兰平均水平是4675英镑。由于联合政府的“小学生奖金”，中学的贫困学生每位也会得到935英镑。与此同时，“优先教学”项目将优秀毕业生送入贫困地区的中学。与此相比较的是，在美国，多数学校基金来自当地财政，这样的话那些欠发达地区的学校就被忽视了。 As the Duke University researchers are keen to point out, all this does not in itself prove thateconomically mixed neighbourhoods are a bad thing. They may be good in other ways—makingpoliticians more moderate, for example. But the research does suggest that the benefits ofsuch districts are far from straightforward. Patterns of social segregation reflect broadersocial inequality, argues Mr Cheshire, who has written a book about urban economics andpolicy. Where mixed neighbourhoods flourish, house prices rise, overwhelmingly benefitingthe rich. Spending more money on schools in deprived areas and dispatching the best teachersthere would do more to help poor children. Assuming that a life among wealthy neighbours willimprove their lot is too complacent.

杜克大学研究者尖锐地指出，所有这些并不能证明，经济混合社区就是个坏东西。他们也许会在其他方面有益—比如让政客们更为中和。不过这些发现这些区域的益处表现得并不明朗。社会分离的模式反映了更严重的社会不平等，Cheshire争论道（他写过一本关于城市的经济与政策的书）。当混合社区繁荣起来后，房价上涨，获益的毫无疑问是富人。在贫瘠地区投入更多资金，并将最好的教师分配过去会更好的帮助孩子们。生活在富人中能极大改善穷人家孩子们状况的想法，显然是过于想当然了。