江苏省2014届高三英语(牛津版)一轮复习攻略训练阅读理解.docVIP

C On a wet Wednesday evening in Seoul, six government employees gathered at the office to prepare for a late-night patrol(巡逻). The mission is to find children who are studying after 10 p.m. and stop them. In South Korea, it has come to this. To reduce the countrys addiction to private, after-hours tutoring academies (called hagwons), the authorities have begun enforcing a curfew (宵禁令)— even rewarding citizens for turning in violators. But cramming(临时死记硬背) is deeply anchored in Asia, where top grades have long been prized as essential for professional success. Before toothbrushes or printing presses, there were civil service exams that could make or break you. Chinese families have been hiring test preparation tutors since the 7th century. Nowadays South Korea has taken this competition to new extremes. In 2010, 74% of all students engaged in some kind of private after-school instruction, sometimes called shadow education, at an average cost of $2,600 per student for the year. There are more private instructors in South Korea than schoolteachers, and the most popular of them make millions of dollars a year from online and in-person classes. When Singapore’s Education Minister was asked last year about his nation’s reliance on private tutoring, he found one reason for hope: “We are not as bad as the Koreas.” In Seoul, legions of students who failed to get into top universities spend the entire year after high school attending hagwons to improve their scores on university admissions tests. And they must compete even to do this. At the prestigious Daesung Institute, admission is based on students’ test scores. Only 14% of applicants are accepted. After a year of 14-hour days, about 70% gain entry to one of the nation’s top three universities. South Koreans are not alone in their discontent. Across Asia, reformers are pushing to make schools more “American”—even as some U.S. reformers make their own schools more “Asian”. In China, universities have begun fashi