A public elementary school in New York Cityhas stopped giving its students homework.
紐約一所公立小學(xué)日前宣布，停止給學(xué)生布置家庭作業(yè)。

P.S. 116 Principal Jane Hsu wrote a letter to parents last month detailing the decision, explaining that after more than a year of analyzing studies, the school had concluded that students’ after-school time would be better spent on activities like reading at their own pace and playing rather than working on class assignments.
公立116小學(xué)（P.S.116）華裔校長(zhǎng)許簡(jiǎn)上個(gè)月在給家長(zhǎng)們的信中闡述了這一決定，并解釋稱，學(xué)校在經(jīng)過一年多的研究分析后得出如下結(jié)論：學(xué)生的課余時(shí)間應(yīng)該用來玩耍，或是按照自己的節(jié)奏閱讀，而不該是做作業(yè)。

Hsu’s letter says that many studies indicate that there is no connection between homework and academic success. Indeed, there are some studies that show that the link between homework and success is dubious at the primary school level.
許簡(jiǎn)在信中寫道，不少研究表明，家庭作業(yè)與學(xué)業(yè)表現(xiàn)并無關(guān)聯(lián)。事實(shí)上，有一些研究表明，在小學(xué)階段，家庭作業(yè)與學(xué)科成績(jī)之間的相關(guān)性并不明顯。

A seminal 1989 study on homework by Harris Cooper, a social psychologist who researches education, found that doing homework led students to perform better in school as they grew older. In later grades, students who did homework performed increasingly better than students who did not. In 2006, Cooper published a study that analyzed 15 years' worth of data on the effectiveness of homework. He found that homework had a more positive impact on students as they aged, and identified stronger correlations between homework and achievement for students in grades seven through 12 than for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
1989年，專門研究教育的社會(huì)心理學(xué)家哈里斯·庫(kù)珀進(jìn)行了一項(xiàng)影響深遠(yuǎn)的研究。他的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，隨著年齡的增長(zhǎng)，做家庭作業(yè)能讓學(xué)生在學(xué)業(yè)上表現(xiàn)更好。與不做家庭作業(yè)的學(xué)生相比，完成家庭作業(yè)的高年級(jí)學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)表現(xiàn)越來越好。2006年，庫(kù)珀發(fā)表了另一項(xiàng)研究，依據(jù)15年的有效數(shù)據(jù)分析了家庭作業(yè)的作用。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，隨著學(xué)生年齡的增長(zhǎng)，家庭作業(yè)的積極作用會(huì)不斷顯現(xiàn)。此外，研究還發(fā)現(xiàn)，對(duì)于7年級(jí)到12年級(jí)的學(xué)生來說，家庭作業(yè)與學(xué)科成績(jī)之間的相關(guān)性要比幼兒園到6年級(jí)的學(xué)生更加明顯。

A 2012 study from the Indiana University School of Education on 10th-graders found little correlation between time spent on homework and better course grades, although it did find a positive correlation between homework time and standardized test performance.
2012年，印第安納大學(xué)教育學(xué)院針對(duì)10年級(jí)學(xué)生進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，家庭作業(yè)時(shí)長(zhǎng)與課業(yè)成績(jī)之間并無關(guān)聯(lián)。但研究的確發(fā)現(xiàn)，家庭作業(yè)時(shí)長(zhǎng)對(duì)學(xué)生的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化考試成績(jī)有積極影響。

Some parents of P.S. 116 students are not happy with the decision to eliminate homework.
公立116小學(xué)的一些學(xué)生家長(zhǎng)對(duì)學(xué)校取消家庭作業(yè)的做法表示不滿。

“I think they should have homework -- some of it is about discipline. I want [my daughter] to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal,” Daniel Tasman, the father of a second-grader at the school, told DNAinfo.
二年級(jí)學(xué)生家長(zhǎng)丹尼爾·塔斯曼在接受DNAinfo網(wǎng)站采訪時(shí)表示：“我覺得學(xué)校應(yīng)該布置家庭作業(yè)——做作業(yè)是一種紀(jì)律的體現(xiàn)，我希望我的女兒可以玩得開心，但同時(shí)也希望她有努力的目標(biāo)?！?/p>

“You have to do homework in order to gain; you have to do homework because they may not be able to comprehend everything in school,” Sharon Blake, a grandmother of a P.S. 116 student, told ABC news.
另一位學(xué)生的奶奶向ABC新聞表示：“要想有收獲，就必須做家庭作業(yè)。孩子必須做家庭作業(yè)，因?yàn)樗麄冊(cè)趯W(xué)校時(shí)未必能完全理解學(xué)到的東西?！?/p>

Vocabulary

dubious：不確定的

seminal：有重大意義的

comprehend：理解

（翻譯：清歡君 編輯：Helen）