「hard-up」到底是什麼意思？hangover 是不是只有宿醉的意思？

最新 08-14

Summer holidays

School』s out

BARRY

Most countries』 schools have lengthy summer holidays. But experts say they have problematic, and unequal, effects

THE summer holidays have just begun, but it is a busy morning at Cadoxton Primary School, in Barry, an industrial town in Wales. It runs a summer programme forhard-upchildren, providing meals and activities over the holidays. As youngsters run laughing and screaming into the school cafeteria for breakfast, their parents saunter out, some visibly relieved. Just three days into the six-week school holidays one beleaguered mother says her nine-year-old daughter has already asked five times to go bowling. Without the school』s help, she says, 「it would be a long and expensive six weeks」.

Hard-up (adj.) 缺錢，手頭緊

The vast majority of the world』s school calendars include summer holidays. Their length ranges from three weeks in South Korea to three months in America, Italy and Latvia. The holidays』 19th-century origins are hazy. It is popularly believed that they are ahangoverfrom the West』s agrarian past, when families needed their children』s help in the fields during the summer; but many historians think the evidence for this is thin.

Hangover (n) 遺留的感覺，風俗，習慣

Experts suggest three types of solutions to the problems posed by the long summer holidays: extending school years; spreading holidays to other times of the year; and more state-provided summer-holiday activities. South Korea is an extreme test-case for the first approach. It has the world』s longest school year and shortest summer break. For many students, even the short holidays offer little respite, since most are enrolled in private tuition, often in a hagwon(crammer).Three in ten parents surveyed last month said they planned to increase the number of hagwon classes their children will have to attend this summer.

crammer (n) 填鴨式的學習，教學