【2013年12月6级】阅读材料.docxVIP

The burden on students　学生的压力　Must not try harder　不能更努力了　The education ministry tries to ban homework　教育部尝试禁止家庭作业。　Sep 7th 2013 | BEIJING |From the print editionPURGES may be what political junkies are talking about, but for Chinese families the big issue recently has been homework. Children across the country have returned to their classrooms this week just as the education ministry has put forward plans to decrease the amount of homework pupils must do each day.　清洗行动可能会用在政治犯身上，但是对中国家庭来说，最近的大事儿是家庭作业。中国的孩子本周回到学校，同时教育部计划减少小学生每天必做作业的量。　The ministry’s proposed guidelines, issued on August 22nd, would ban written homework for any child up to the age of 12, and ban exams for children up to the age of nine. It also said that primary schools should organise more extra-curricular activities, such as visits to museums and places of cultural interest, and “cultivate pupils’ hands-on capabilities through handicrafts or farm work”.　教育部在8月22日发布了拟定规定，规定禁止向12岁以下的儿童布置任何书面作业，禁止9岁以下儿童参加考试。同时规定中学应该组织更多的课外活动，比如参观博物馆，文化景点以及通过手工活动和农业活动培养小学生的动手能力。　Amid intense competition for university places and jobs, Chinese schoolchildren spend hours on homework each night. Pressure from an early age is the cause of constant hand-wringing in the press. Yet the very notion of lightening the burden has met opposition from the people who complain most: parents. Last spring Beijing attempted its own homework restrictions, but workloads crept back up as insistent parents worried about their children falling behind.　在对大学名额和工作的激烈竞争中，中国学生每晚花费数小时完成家庭作业。少年儿童的压力是各媒体持续劝说政府的原因。然而，减负的观念遭到了对压力抱怨最多的家长的反对。上个春天，北京尝试出台了自己的家庭作业规范，但是由于固执的家长担心自己的孩子会落后，使得作业又回到之前状态。　The new proposals have drawn tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with older children saying they heard similar ideas of reform when they were at school ten years ago, but nothing changed. On his microblog Wang Xiaodong, co-author of a book called “Unhappy China”, suggested that the ministry stop micro-managing every element of basic