Boys’ schools are the perfect place to teach young men to express their emotions and involve them in activities such as art, dance and music. Far from the traditional image of a culture of aggressive masculinity (阳刚), the absence of girls gives boys the chance to develop without pressure of following that tradition, a US study says.

Boys at single-sex schools are said to be more likely to get involved in cultural and artistic activities that help develop their emotional expressiveness, rather than feeling they have to follow the “boy code” of hiding their emotions to be a “real man”.

The findings of the study are so against received wisdom that boys do better when taught alongside girls.

Tony Little, headmaster of Eton, warns that boys are being faded by the British education system because it has become too focused on girls. He criticizes teachers for failing to recognize that boys are actually more emotional than girls.

The research argues that boys often perform badly in mixed schools because they become discouraged when their female schoolmates do better earlier in speaking and reading skills. But in single-sex schools teachers can tailor lessons to boys’ learning style, letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom, writes the study’s author, Abigail James, from the University of Virginia.

Teachers can encourage boys to enjoy reading and writing with “boy-focused” approaches such as themes and characters that appeal to them. Because boys generally have sharper vision to learn best through touch, and are physically more active, they need to be given “hands-on” lessons where they are allowed to walk around. “Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine (女性的) and prefer what centers on violence and sexism, ” James writes.

Single-sex education also makes it less likely that boys would feel they have to follow the tradition that men should be “masterful and in charge” in relationships. “In mixed schools boys find themselves pushed to act like men before they understand themselves well enough to know what that means,” the study reports.

With these increased pressures and difficulty in ensuring a graduate job, more people are turning to recruitment (招聘) agencies for help. Luke Harper wrote for the Independent warning students to be cautious when using graduate recruitment agencies in their job hunt. The article’s main argument against graduate recruitment agencies is that they are looking to sign people up to the agency and harvest data, without having any real intention to personally find them a job.

The fundamental problem with this approach is a basic misunderstanding of how the recruitment sector works. One of the more common ways is that recruitment agencies aim to find you a job to secure a fee from their clients. Recruitment agencies operate as a business, not a careers service and are not expected to find you a job while you wait around.

There is no denying that amongst the recruitment agencies, there are some CV(简历) hungry, cut and shut agencies that are uninterested in the candidates they have on their books. However, nowadays these are in the minority and don’t tend to last very long.

Paul Farrer, Chief Executive of a leading recruitment agency is worried that a few bad apples are ruining the reputation of what is an excellent sector. Farrer said “The trouble with such an imbalanced and misleading article is that some graduates may now be put off approaching recruitment agencies who may well be able to help them.”

Professionals in the industry are cautious of how some of the less respectable agencies operate. Earnest recruiters believe that graduates should be aware that some of these agencies will take on graduates for all their details rather than helping them find a job, like Harper mentioned. To fight this, Farrar advises that “Graduates should have a simple checklist before approaching any agency. Has the agency taken the time to talk to me? Have they invited me to a face-to-face meeting? Have they guaranteed not to forward my CV to any employer without my permission? These three steps will safeguard every application.”

Farrer also pointed out that that is not the only safety net that graduates can rely on. He said “Graduates can also check to see if the agencies are members of either APSCo or the REC, the two trade bodies they can make an official complaint to. The vast majority of recruitment agencies are professional organizations that help place thousands of graduates every year and poorly researched articles help no one.”

The human body is designed to move. But modern lifestyles and office jobs rarely give us the chance to move around. As we know, we’re while we’re eating; we sit in the car and we sit while we watch TV. And many of us sit for many hours at work.

New research shows that sitting less than three hours a day might extend your life by two years. Peter Smith, a scientist at the University of Louisiana in the southern United States, says that sitting is ubiquitous in our lives, meaning it is something we do all the time, everywhere.

However, Mr. Smith says that does not mean you can sit for the rest of your waking hours. He also says you may exercise often, “We can’t throw away physical activity. It’s extremely important. We have 60 years of research showing us that.”

Mr. Smith and his colleagues are part of a new generation of researchers studying how sitting all day affects length of life. “Studies that have assessed the relationship between sitting and mortality(死亡率)or television viewing and mortality are very rare. There’s only been a few of them, actually five or six now, in the last four or five years.” They found that cutting television time to less than two hours a day could add one－point four years to life.

Luckily, change is already coming to some offices, especially in the design of desks. A “standing desk” lets people stand while they work. Another new design is called the “treadmill desk”. A treadmill is an exercise machine that lets you walk in one place. Even some U.S. schools are beginning to experiment with desks that are part bicycle to keep children moving. That’s one of the strategies that many companies are using now.

Mr. Smith also says studying this problem has inspired his team to make a few changes in their own lives.