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  3. The poorest people in Leicester by a wide margin are the Somalis who live in

The poorest people in Leicester by a wide margin are the Somalis who live in

游客2023-12-21  45
问题    The poorest people in Leicester by a wide margin are the Somalis who live in the St Matthews housing estate. Refugees from civil war, they endure peeling surroundings and appalling joblessness. At the last census the local unemployment rate was three times the national average. But Abdikayf Farah, who runs a local charity, is oddly upbeat. Just look at the children, he says. Close to Mr Farah’s office is Taylor Road Primary School— which, it turns out, trumps almost every school in Leicester in standardised tests. Its headmaster, Chris Hassall, credits the Somali immigrants, who insist that their children turn up for extra lessons at weekends and harry him when they seem to fall behind. Education is their ticket out of poverty. Poor district, wonderful school, well-ordered children: in Britain, the combination is not as unusual as one might suppose.
   Britain has prized the ideal of economically mixed neighbourhoods since the 19th century. Poverty and disadvantage are intensified when poor people cluster, runs the arguments conversely, the rich are unfairly helped when they are surrounded by other rich people. Social mixing ought to help the poor. It sounds self-evident—and colours planning regulations that ensure much social and affordable housing is dotted among more expensive private homes. Yet there is absolutely no serious evidence to support this.    And there is new evidence to suggest it is wrong. Researchers at Duke University in America followed over 1,600 children from age five to 12 in England and Wales. They found that poor boys living in largely well-to-do areas were the most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour. Misbehaviour starts very young and intensifies as they grow older. Poor boys in the poorest neighbourhoods were the least likely to run into trouble. For rich kids, the opposite is true: those living in poor areas are more likely to misbehave.
   The researchers suggest several reasons for this. Poorer areas are often heavily policed, deterring would-be miscreants: it may be that people in wealthy places are less likely to spot misbehaviour, too. Living alongside the rich may also make the poor more keenly aware of their own deprivation. That, in turn, increases the feelings of alienation that are associated with anti-social conduct. Research on England’s schools turns up a slightly different pattern. Children entitled to free school meals—a proxy for poverty—do best in schools containing very few other poor children, perhaps because teachers can give them plenty of attention. But, revealingly, poor children also fare unusually well in schools where there are a huge number of other poor children. That may be because schools have no choice but to focus on them. Thus in Tower Hamlets, a deprived east London borough, 60% of poor pupils got five good GCSEs in 2013: the national average was 38%. Worst served are pupils who fall in between, attending schools where they are insufficiently numerous to merit attention but too many to succeed alone.
   Mr Cheshire reckons that America, too, provides evidence of the limited benefits of social mixing. Look, he says, at the Moving to Opportunity programme, started in the 1990s, through which some poor people received both counselling and vouchers to move to richer areas. Others got financial help to move as they wished, but no counselling. A third group received nothing. Studies after 10-15 years suggested that the incomes and employment prospects of those who moved to richer areas had not improved. Boys who moved showed worse behaviour and were more likely to be arrested for property crime.
   In Britain, this pattern might be partly explained by the existence of poor immigrant neighbourhoods. The people living in ghettos are poor in means, but not poor in aspiration. They channel their ambitions through their children. Another explanation lies in the way that the British government hands out money. Education funding is doled out centrally, and children in the most indigent parts tend to get the most cash. Schools in Tower Hamlets receive ￡7,014 a year for each child, for example, compared with the English average of ￡4,675. Secondary schools also get ￡935 for each poor child thanks to the "pupil premium" introduced by the government. In America, by contrast, much school funding comes from local property taxes, so those in impoverished areas lose out.
   As the Duke University researchers are keen to point out, all this does not in itself prove that economically mixed neighbourhoods are a bad thing. They may be good in other ways. But the research does suggest that the benefits of such districts are far from straightforward. Patterns of social segregation reflect broader social inequality, argues Mr Cheshire. Where mixed neighbourhoods flourish, house prices rise, overwhelmingly benefiting the rich. Spending more money on schools in deprived areas and dispatching the best teachers there would do more to help poor children. Assuming that a life among wealthy neighbours will improve their lot is too complacent. [br] The author introduces the Somali immigrants living in the English Midlands in order to demonstrate that ______.
选项 A、the local unemployment rate there is much higher than the national average
B、the racial discrimination there is fiercer than the other parts of Britain
C、the ideal of economically mixed neighbourhoods is realised in Leicester
D、the education level of poor Somali children is much higher than expected
答案 D
解析
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