4.3 stepping up外国文学名著导读.pdf

Stepping up (excerpted) KARACHIAND LAHORE Pakistan is home to the most frenetic education reforms in the world EVERY three months, Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, Punjab:( 巴基斯坦)旁遮 gathers education officials around a large rectangular table. The biggest 普省 of Pakistan’s four provinces, larger in terms of population (110m) than all but 11 countries, Punjab is reforming its schools at a pace rarely seen anywhere in the world. In April 2016, as part of its latest scheme, private providers took over the running of 1,000 of the government’s primary schools. Today the number is 4,300. By the end of this year, Mr Sharif has decreed, it will be 10,000. The quarterly “stocktakes” are his decree:发布命令 chance to hear what progress is being made towards this and other stocktake:盘点; 估计 targets—and whether the radical overhaul is having any effect. radical:激进的; 彻底的 overhaul:对…进行彻底 For officials it can be a tough ride. Leaders of struggling districts are 革新 called to Lahore for what Allah Bakhsh Malik, Punjab’s education Lahore: 拉合尔( 巴基斯 secretary, calls a “pep talk”. Asked what that entails, he responds: “Four 坦城市) words: F-I-R-E. It is survival of the fittest.” About 30% of district heads have been sacked for poor results in the past nine months, says Mr sack:解雇 Malik. “We are working at Punjabi speed.” Pakistani education has long been atrocious. A government-run school atrocious:糟透的 on the outskirts of Karachi, in the province of Sindh, is perhaps the bleakest your correspondent has ever seen. A little more than a dozen bleak: 暗淡的，昏暗的 children aged six or seven sit behind desks in a cobwebbed classroom. cobwebbed:布满蛛网的 Not one is wearing a uniform; most have no schoolbags; some have no shoes.There is not a teacher in sight