【推荐2】Too many people want others to be their friends, but they don’t give friendship back.That is why some friendships don’t last very long. To have a friend, you must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you. Learning to be a good friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous (宽宏大量的); be understanding.

Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you don’t tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven’t been honest, you may lose your friend’s trust. Good friends always count on one another to speak and act honestly.

Generosity (大度) means sharing and sharing makes a friendship grow. You don’t have to give your lunch money or your clothes, of course. Instead you have to learn how to share things you enjoy, like your hobbies and your interests. Naturally you will want to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to a friend. They tell your friend what is important to you. By sharing them you help your friend know you better.

Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and help with a problem. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend can be a first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend’s place so you can understand the problem better.

No two friendships are ever exactly alike. But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friendships, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.

【推荐3】With oil prices rising sharply this year, it seems remarkable to argue that water might one day be more expensive than oil. Jean-Louis Chaussade,the chief executive of the French utility company Suez, argues that water scarcity(不足）is now one of the most pressing challenges facing many industries. He told the Financial Times last year that he foresaw one day water would be more precious than oil.

It isn't only a growing world population that places demands on water - industries such as energy and agriculture are also consuming more and more. The 2030 Water Resources Group, believes that by 2030 global demand will be 40 percent higher than it is today.

The threat is now so acute that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US warned that disputes over water may lead to armed conflicts, particularly in areas such as Africa and the Middle Fast. A three-year drought in South Africa caused a water crisis earlier this year, with officials warning they may have to shut off most of Cape Town's taps.

The most valuable water in the world is what we actually consume. With petrol at roughly £1.29 a liter in the UK today, a bottle of water from some of big-name branded companies can already be about three times more. And it is not going to get any cheaper. The days of relying on water flowing through our taps are coming to an end. Around the world. 2.1 billion people do not have immediate access to clean drinking water. And this isn't only a developing-world problem. In almost every country people have water stress.

Over the next ten years, if we do not come together to find answers to our water shortage. we will face major supply-related issues around the globe, not just with drinking water - our industries will be affected as well.

According to the World Bank’s education specialist, Harry Patrinos, this include: improving the quality of teachers and making sure that teachers are highly regarded; providing information to make schools accountable and giving autonomy to schools and head teachers.

This matters not only for individual pupils but also for the well-being of countries, he says, because improving educational performance has a direct impact on improving economic performance.

China’s education performance — at least in cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong — seems to be as spectacular as the country’s fast growing economy.

Certainly both these open and outward-looking cities consider education to be important and are willing to adopt the best educational practices from around the world to ensure success. In Hong Kong, education accounts for more than one-fifth of entire government spending every year.

“Shanghai and Hong Kong are small education systems, with a concentration of ideas, manpower and resources for education,” says Prof Cheng.

Under the banner “First class city, first class education”, Shanghai set about systematically re-equipping classroom, upgrading schools and improving the curriculum in the last decade.

It got rid of the “key schools” system which concentrated resources only on top students and top schools. Instead staff were trained in more interactive teaching methods and computers were brought in. About 80% of Shanghai school leavers go to university compared to an overall average of 24% in China.

Meanwhile, dynamic Hong Kong was forced into educational improvements as its industries moved to cheaper mainland Chinese areas in the 1990s.Its survival as a service and management hub depends on upgrading knowledge and skills.

In the last decade Hong Kong has concentrated on closing the gap for all students, says a report by McKinsey management consultants.

The report, How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, rated Hong Kong’s education system among the best in the world.

In her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World,” Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students’ test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored(超过……分数) American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Warsaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind.

That American high schools waste more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. This is not a matter of how any given student who plays sports does in school, but of the culture and its priorities. This December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) results are announced, it’s safe to predict that American high-school students will once again display their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers.

Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D.C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader—a mother with three children in the school—was asked about the school’s flaws(瑕疵). When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. “Really?” one of them asked worriedly, “What do you mean?”

One of the ironies(讽刺) of the situation is that sports reveal what is possible. American kids’ performance on the field shows just how well they can do when expectations are high. It’s too bad that their test scores show the same thing.