托福閱讀素材：值得同情的留守兒童

　　Pity the children 同情孩子們

　　There are 70m reasons to ease China’s curbs on internal migration

　　IMAGINE you are a young married man or woman in rural China. There are no jobs, so you find work in a big city, perhaps 1,000 miles away. Butgovernment restrictions mean that if you take your children with you they will almost certainly not be able to attend schools where you live, or visit a state doctor. And if your parents come to share the child care, their pension will be too small for them to live on. What do you do?

　　想象你是一位中國(guó)農(nóng)村的已婚男女。在你居住的地方?jīng)]有工作，于是你在離家1000英里外的地方找到一份工作。但是政府的限制意味著，如果你把你的孩子帶在身邊，他們幾乎確定不能在你工作居住的地方上學(xué)，又或者是去公立醫(yī)院。如果你的父母過(guò)來(lái)幫助照看孩子，他們的養(yǎng)老金少的不足以生活。若是這樣，你會(huì)怎么做?

　　For the parents of 61m Chinese children, the answer is to leave them behind in the villages where they were born, to be looked after by grandparents (often illiterate) or other relatives. Another 9m are left in one city by parentsworking in another. The 70m total is almost the number of all the children in the United States.

　　對(duì)于6100萬(wàn)孩子的父母來(lái)說(shuō)，答案是把孩子留在他們出生的村子，由祖輩(通常是文盲)或者其他親屬來(lái)照看，另外900萬(wàn)被父母留在城市。而他們的父母，在另一個(gè)城市工作。這7000萬(wàn)孩子幾乎相當(dāng)于美國(guó)兒童的總和。

　　These so-called “left-behind children” are a dark facet of China’s shining economic development. They make up a disproportionate share of the population in the countryside, where children are four times as likely to be short for their age as urban ones, a measure of malnutrition. A survey this year for a charity called Growing Home found that left-behind children were more likely than their peers to be depressed or emotionally unstable. Researchers inShanghai found that left-behind children underperform at school, and that their emotional and social development lags behind. Stories of abuse and suicide are rife; evidence suggests that left-behind children are more at risk of turning to crime.

　　這些所謂的“留守兒童”是中國(guó)閃亮經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展的陰暗面。他們構(gòu)成了中國(guó)鄉(xiāng)村人口不成比例的那一部分。在那里，由于營(yíng)養(yǎng)不良，孩子們壽命不足的概率是他們城市同齡人的4倍。今年由成長(zhǎng)家庭基金會(huì)的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查顯示，留守兒童比他們的同齡人更容易沮喪，或者是情緒上的不穩(wěn)定。上海的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查表明，留守兒童在學(xué)校的表現(xiàn)平平，情緒和社交上的成長(zhǎng)也相對(duì)落后。發(fā)生在他們身上的虐待和自殺也普遍存在;證據(jù)表明留守兒童有更高犯罪的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。

　　This is a common pattern in other countries where parents move away from their families for work. Studies from the Philippines show that children of mothers working abroad struggle at school. In Sri Lanka left-behind children are almost twice as likely to be underweight as the average. But China’s problem is both much larger—it has more left-behind children than the rest of the world put together—and largely self-inflicted, the result of restrictions on migration within the country.

　　在其他國(guó)家，父母離家外出工作也是普遍存在。研究表明，在菲律賓，母親外出工作的孩子，對(duì)于學(xué)校生活也很吃力。斯里蘭卡的留守兒童體重不足的概率是平均值的兩倍。但是中國(guó)的問(wèn)題更大，中國(guó)的留守兒童比世界剩下國(guó)家兒童的總和還多。而且這種問(wèn)題，很大程度是由自身引起--在這個(gè)國(guó)家內(nèi)，遷徙收到了限制。

　　China could transform the prospects of its left-behind children by abolishing hukou—a kind of internal passport that gives people and their children subsidized schooling and health care, but only in the place where they are registered. There has been a modest easing of restrictions, allowing skilled workers to change hukou and unskilled ones to move to smaller cities. But far more radical reforms are needed so that migrant laborers in the big cities benefit, too. China’s government should also give those living in the countryside the same property rights as urban residents. This would allow them to sell their homes, and thus help more of them to move to cities with enough cash to settle with their families.

　　廢除戶口政策，中國(guó)能夠改善留守兒童狀況的前景。戶口政策，這是一種國(guó)家內(nèi)部的護(hù)照，它給予人們和他們的子女入學(xué)以及醫(yī)療保險(xiǎn)補(bǔ)貼，但只限于這些人出生登記的地方?，F(xiàn)在，這種限制正在減輕，例如能夠使得技術(shù)和無(wú)技術(shù)工人將戶口轉(zhuǎn)移到小城鎮(zhèn)。但是更根本的改革仍然需要，以便讓大城市的勞動(dòng)移民們獲得好處。中國(guó)政府同樣應(yīng)給予鄉(xiāng)鎮(zhèn)居民和城市居民同等的財(cái)產(chǎn)權(quán)利，使前者能夠出售房屋，從而獲得到城市與家人定居的足夠資金。

　　Stop the self-harm 停止傷害自己

　　More could also be done to help the most vulnerable children. Numerous recent cases have come to “light of sexual abuse of left-behind children in rural schools, suggesting that teachers are failing them, or worse.” In a country with almost no child-welfare system, the government is training “barefoot social workers” to find children who have been not so much left behind as abandoned. But this programme is to reach only 250,000 children, which hardly scratches the surface.

　　還可以做更多事情去幫助這些最易受傷害的孩子們。最近，大量的案例曝光了“鄉(xiāng)村留守兒童的性侵犯，他們的老師正在使他們過(guò)的更糟”。在一個(gè)幾乎沒(méi)有兒童福利的國(guó)家，政府正在培訓(xùn)“赤腳社工”來(lái)找到那些與其說(shuō)是留守不如說(shuō)是被遺棄的孩子。然而這個(gè)計(jì)劃只能惠及250000孩子，幾乎微不足道。

　　Companies that employ migrant workers could also contribute by, for example, making it easier for parents to phone their children during workinghours or even setting up schools on site. At a time when many factoriesstruggle to find workers, helping their families makes business sense, too.

　　那些雇傭利民勞工的公司同樣獻(xiàn)出一份力量。例如，那些公司創(chuàng)造便利，使得家長(zhǎng)們?cè)诠ぷ鲿r(shí)間能更方便的和孩子電話聯(lián)系，甚至?xí)谄髽I(yè)內(nèi)部設(shè)立學(xué)校。很多工廠費(fèi)力的尋找工人，幫助他們的家庭同樣能使企業(yè)成功。

　　As China becomes richer it is producing a disturbed, and perhaps disturbing, generation. Some social dislocation may be the cost of wild growth and mass movement from farms to factories. But China should at least stop the self-harm.

　　中國(guó)變的越來(lái)越富有，而它卻產(chǎn)生著不安的下一代人。一些社會(huì)的混亂也許是經(jīng)濟(jì)粗暴生長(zhǎng)和從農(nóng)產(chǎn)到工廠這種巨大運(yùn)動(dòng)的代價(jià)。但是，中國(guó)應(yīng)當(dāng)至少停止自己傷害自己。