【推荐1】We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place. Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one another and feel each other’s pain. School leaders try to attract a diverse set of students so each can understand what it’s like to walk in the others’ shoes.

It is true that people who are empathetic (共情的) are more sensitive to the perspectives and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make sympathetic moral judgments. The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s sufferings, but it’s not clear whether it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action. For example, in the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they killed Jewish women and children, but they still did it.

Empathy directs you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel painful for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the chances are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar. Studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is slight in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.

Nobody is against empathy. However, it’s not enough. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion (幻觉) of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. Teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem blameless without risking dispute or hurting anybody’s feelings.

People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel it necessary to act by a sense of duty. Empathy is less important. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their moral principles. Accept that principles conflict.

【推荐3】Why did the chicken cross the road? Answer: To get to the other side! That’s an old and not really funny joke, but it came to my mind as I watched people crossing the road at the crossroads of Shaanxi Road and Huaihai Road.

The traffic light was red, so they shouldn’t cross the road, but the traffic passing through the crossroads was heavy and the cars were moving slowly. A group of about twenty pedestrians （行人）had been patiently waiting for the light to change. Then one man, who I guessed was in a hurry, stepped off the curb （马路牙子）and began weaving his way across the road through the slow-moving traffic. Soon others were following him at this dangerous crossing and more continued to cross against the red light even as the speed of the cars increased. They ignored the horns of the drivers and just kept going. These chickens just wanted to get to the other side.

Each year several thousand pedestrians are either killed or injured on Shanghai^ roads and at least one third of these pedestrians were jaywalking （乱穿马 路）: crossing the road illegally. Jaywalking is an all- too-common practice in Shanghai. People cross in the middle of the road or against the red light at crossroads. They seem unaware of the danger to themselves or the possibility that they may cause a traffic accident.

Traffic laws are meant to keep us safe, so we should obey them. When a chicken decides to jaywalk, pray for him or stop him, for the better, and don’t follow him. That way you’ll get lo the oilier side safely.

【推荐2】There have been many problems with our schools today, the biggest of which is closely related to our culture. In general, our culture, as represented in the media, gets excited by famous stars, and constantly stresses that it's what you have, not what you are, that counts. Parents are encouraged to be away from even very small children for most of the day. Too many voters go for politicians who would rather cut school funding (基金）than to get rid of tax cuts for the wealthy. All contribute greatly to the problems of educating our children.

Today's teachers have to deal with a culture that is vastly different than in the past. They report that there is, among more children than ever, a lack of motivation, no drive to succeed or even try. The role models that boys view in the media mostly consist of men in comedies and other shows who are rude and often extremely immature: self-centered overpaid athletes; men in movies, television dramas, video games,   etc. who are preoccupied with violence and power. As Leonard Sax wrote in "Boys Adrift". "Teenage boys are looking for models of mature adulthood. but we no longer make any collective effort to provide such models. "Girls are attacked not only with such annoying images (形象）of males. .but also with women who are preoccupied with appearance and are extremely materialistic.

In such a cultural environment, it is more important than ever to have responsible, loving and caring parents who have enough time and motivation to devote to their children and see to it as their duty to model for them and raise them with high standards of honesty and responsibility along with tending to their physical needs. They need to care enough to see that their children are not attacked with the garbage that comes from movie, television and computer screens. In today s culture, they are basically alone in this effort since, unfortunately, so much is working against them.

Until we, as a culture, face the truth about ourselves-that we are not providing adequately for a great many of our children--the storm will continue to rage (肆虐）over our education system.

【推荐3】Even though one out of three American children live within a mile of their school, almost not half of those students often bike or walk to class, scientists report.

Children who live in the South, in country areas, or who have college-educated parents, are among those least likely to bike or walk to school, notes the report, which is published in July.

Sarah Martin and her workmates at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied materials from more than 7,000 children between 9 and 15 years of age.

They found that almost 35 percent of the children lived within one mile of their schools. Children between 11 and 13 years old were more likely to walk or bike than 9-year-olds. Children whose parents had a high school education were more likely to bike or walk than children with college-educated parents.

“The majority of children are missing an opportunity to increase daily physical activity,” Martin said in a prepared statement.

According to the CDC, nearly one in five (18.8 percent) children between 6 and 11 years old are overweight. Increased daily physical activity is one of the methods the CDC gives to help deal with obesity (肥胖)in children.

Martin said that there are all kinds of reasons why children in city areas might be more likely to bike or walk. They said the fact is that schools may be in mixed-use neighborhoods where it is more possible to bike or walk, compared with other places where there may be fewer safe sidewalks.