红色表示重点词汇
蓝色表示句子主干
带着问题听讲解
Q1: 什么是“联合国千年发展目标”？
Q2: 如何理解“亚撒哈拉”地区？
Q3: “panacea”除了“万能之计”，还有什么意思？
Technology can help solve the problem of bad, absent teachers in poor-country schools
The UN’s Millennium Development Goals included the ambition that by 2015 all the world’s children would complete primary school. This has largely been achieved: nine out of ten children are now enrolled. Alas, the figure is not as impressive as it sounds. Even though most of the world’s children go to school, an awful lot of them learn pretty much nothing there. According to a recent World Bank study of seven sub-Saharan African countries, half of nine-year-olds cannot read a simple word and three-quarters cannot read a simple sentence. The reason is terrible teaching.
Several recent studies suggest ed-tech can help. It seems to bring about bigger improvements in poor countries than in rich ones.
Some of the scarce resources being spent on teachers could therefore be better spent on ed-tech. That does not mean dumping computers on schools in the hope that children will understand how to use them, a folly on which plenty of money has been wasted. Instead, it means providing schools with software that children can use with minimal help from an adult, that gets things right more often than the teachers do, that adjusts itself to the child’s ability, that sends teachers prompts about what they are supposed to be teaching and that allows the authorities to check on whether the teacher is in the classroom.
Technology is no panacea. Good traditional teachers are not obsolete, and are never likely to be. And authorities need to hold teachers to account. But ed-tech can help greatly—by monitoring pupils and teachers alike, assisting the best teachers and, most important, making up for the failings of the worst.
科技可以帮助解决贫穷国家学校师资力量薄弱和教师匮乏的问题
联合国千年发展目标中有一项雄心勃勃的计划：到 2015 年，世界上所有适龄儿童都能够完成小学阶段的学习。这个目标大部分已经实现了：九成适龄儿童如今已经入学。可悲的是，这个数字并不像听上去那样令人印象深刻。 尽管世界上大多数适龄儿童都去了学校，他们之中有很多人在那里几乎什么都没学到。根据世界银行最近针对亚撒哈拉地区七个国家的一份研究，有一半的九岁孩子连一个简单的单词都不会念，四分之三的孩子读不懂简单的句子。造成这个现象的原因在于糟糕的教学质量。
最近的几项研究表明教育科技可以为改善这种情况提供帮助。 相比于富有的国家来讲，教育科技似乎能为贫穷的国家带来更大的进步。
因此，一些原本被用在教师身上的稀缺资源可以被更好地用在教育科技上。这并不意味着将计算机堆放在学校里，并希望孩子们能够明白如何使用它们。这是一个浪费了大量金钱的愚蠢做法。相反，这意味着为学校提供软件，而孩子们可以在成年人尽可能少的帮助下使用它们，这种软件比教师的准确率还高。它能够根据孩子的能力自行调整，能够给教师发送提示信息，告诉教师应该教些什么，并使得有关部门能够监控教师是否在教室里。
技术并非万能之计。 传统的优秀教师并不会过时，也不可能过时。 有关部门需要让教师肩负起责任。 然而，教育科技可以帮大忙——通过监控学生和老师，帮助最优秀的教师，以及，最重要的是，为最差劲的老师填坑。