1 . What’s your favorite book? Think of all the books you have ever read. Now imagine if you had not read any of them, how would your life be different?

Out of 7.8 billion people in the world today, 12% are illiterate (文盲的). This means that 1 in 5 adults are incapable of writing their own name, let alone reading a line out of a book. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expressly states under its 26th article the right to a free education “at least in the elementary and fundamental stages”, marginalized (边缘化的) populations are often denied this basic right.

September 8 is International Literacy Day, established by UNESCO in 1966 to raise awareness on the issue by giving rise to support worldwide. In 1965, the World Conference of Ministers of Education (WCME) met in Tehran, Iran to discuss future plans which would involve the eradication (消除) of illiteracy. As a way to honor the opening of this meeting,the conference decided that September 8 would be announced as International Literacy Day.

This year’s theme for the day is “Literacy And Sustainable Societies”. But what exactly does that mean? Literacy has been associated with the reduction of poverty as it offers skills for gaining knowledge, values, and attitudes for expanding societies in a sustainable way. At the same time, the promotion of literacy boosts agriculture, health, and vocational skills, leading societies to become more efficient and environmentally literate.

So how can you raise awareness and promote literacy on this day? Host a reading competition at your school or simply exchange books with friends. You could create a book club or even start a writing competition. Be an active global citizen by commitment to raising awareness so that we can eradicate illiteracy.

3 . Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates complained that writing would harm students. With a way to store ideas permanently and externally, they would no longer need to memorize. However, studies today have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to better understanding complex concepts.

For learning material by repetition, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material. The scribbling (涂鸦) on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page.

One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in note-taking. Students typing on computers wrote down almost twice as many words directly from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. However, handwriting forces note-takers to process and organize ideas into their own words. This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing, resulting in better performance on tests.

Many studies have confirmed handwriting’s benefits, and policymakers have taken note. Though America’s curriculum from 2010 does not require handwriting instruction past first grade (roughly age six), about half the states since then have required more teaching of it. In Sweden there is a push for more handwriting and printed books and fewer devices. England’s national curriculum already includes the teaching of basic cursive writing (连写体) skills by age seven.

However, several school systems in America have gone so far as to ban most laptops. This is too extreme. Some students have disabilities that make handwriting especially hard. Nearly all will eventually need typing skills. Virginia Berninger, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is a longtime advocate of handwriting. But she is not a purist; she says there are research tested benefits for “manuscript” print-style writing but also for typing.

Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing. But no one would remember, much less care, if his student Plato had not noted it down for the benefit of future generations.

5 . For the nearly 18 million high school students entering college this year, their college education will likely be the most consequential investment they make. Sadly, that investment outcome has become increasingly challenging due to the continuous rising tuition cost.

Investing in college has historically provided significant benefits for many Americans, including greater career opportunities and higher earning potential. Studies have also shown that students gain in other ways, including enhanced quality of life, a deeper sense of purpose, and exposure to diverse populations.

But is that still true? As Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has advocated, “We need a system that’s inclusive, that delivers value, and that produces fair outcomes. ... It’s time to focus on what truly matters, delivering value and upward mobility.”

That question whether higher education is equal to achieving this is under intense examination given the fact that more than half of students leave school with debt, resulting in 45 million Americans holding student loan debt totaling approximately $ 1.7 trillion. Besides, calculating the precise value of education is certainly challenging as it depends on many personal factors such as a student’s post-graduation choices and career earnings potential.

It is crucial that our colleges equip students with the necessary skills to earn a living in the rapidly evolving economy of the future. Sadly, this is not always the case. Take Micron Technology for instance, which is building a $100 billion semiconductor production campus in New York. To meet Micron’s needs, officials are seeking to build a new workforce by pushing colleges not only to change their impractical education and training programs and produce more engineers but to also teach the necessary technical skills.

To completely change the trend of declining student registration and push the benefits of a college education, we must prioritize the measurement of relevant data. As former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg often says, “In God we trust. Everyone else, bring the data.”

Liu Qing hasn’t slept well for months. Every day, the 13-year-old middle school student     1     (wake) up with dark circles under her eyes. She has lost interest in everything and doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

    2     (prevent) students’ psychological issues, the Ministry of Education said China would include screening for depression in students’ regular health checks.

Being sad or in a low mood is a normal part of life. For example, when people face challenging events in their lives — including financial hardship — it’s common to feel down. But in most cases, the negative emotions     3     (gradual) disappear.

Depression, however, is not the same thing.     4     the World Health Organization pointed out, depression is a mood disorder that has several symptoms, including     5     (lose) of interest in normal activities and feelings of low self-worth. This state often lasts for a long time, largely     6     (weaken) a person’s ability to function at work or school.

According to a 2022 report about Chinese people’s mental health, students with great academic burdens, those dealing     7     peer pressure and those who are experiencing a great change in their life or entering a new environment require special attention.

Experts suggested high school students and freshmen at universities should undergo     8     annual psychological evaluation. Their mental status will be recorded. Schools should     9     (strength) cooperation with hospitals and help students with serious mental health problems get     10     (profession) help.

7 . The latest bad but unsurprising news on education is that reading and writing scores on the SAT have once again declined. The language competence of our high schoolers fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered. This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal(语言的) score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to secure a job. It also predicts future income.

The most credible analyses have shown that the chief causes are vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades. In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach. Cognitive psychologists agree that early childhood language learning (ages 2 to 10) is critical to later verbal competence, not just because of the remarkable linguistic plasticity of young minds, but also because of the so-called Matthew Effect.

The name comes from a passage in the Bible: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Those who are language-poor in early childhood get relatively poorer, and fall further behind, while the verbally rich get richer.

The origin of this cruel truth lies in the nature of word learning. The more words you already know, the faster you acquire new words. This sounds like an invitation to vocabulary study for babies, but that’s been tried and it’s not effective. Most of the word meanings we know are acquired indirectly, by intuitively(凭直觉的) guessing new meanings as we understand the main idea of what we are hearing or reading. The Matthew Effect in language can be restated this way: “To those who understand the main idea shall be given new word meanings, but to those who do not there shall follow boredom and frustration.”

Clearly the key is to make sure that from kindergarten on, every student, from the start, understands the main idea of what is heard or read. If preschoolers and kindergartners are offered substantial and coherent lessons concerning the human and natural worlds, then the results show up five years or so later in significantly improved verbal scores. By staying on a subject long enough to make all young children familiar with it (say, two weeks or so), the main idea becomes understood by all and word learning speeds up. This is especially important for low-income children, who come to school with smaller vocabularies and rely on school to pass on the knowledge base children from rich families take for granted.

Current reform strategies focus on testing, improving teacher quality, and other changes. Attention to these structural issues has led to improvements in the best public schools. But it is not enough.

10 . I’ve always disliked the term homework. Surely home is where we rest, refresh, recreate — in the truest sense, it’s where we don’t work. What sort of message have we sent our young people all these years by requiring them to work not only at school but at home? No wonder they don’t prefer homework.

At my school, we have kept the older name for homework: prep (or to use the full name and highlight its true purpose: preparation). Prep is designed to help children prepare for the next lesson. A number of short tasks can be part of prep these days: a YouTube clip, a short film made by a teacher, a map or picture to look at. Something visual often suits the child who, by the end of a busy school day, is mentally tired.

Prep can still consist of consolidation exercises but based on past experience, a practical method should be that these are not as many as to be demanding and should be adjusted to suit the child’s needs. Some written work maybe requested but I would hope that it would be a short piece or even a sample paragraph. “Write an essay...” comes with strings attached and usually takes rather longer than the prep time needed.

Ensure that a child’s workspace at home is tidy, quiet and uninterrupted by devices that are not being used for study. On tablets or PCs in use for homework, turn off the notifications or remove any apps you feel are a distraction. Keep an eye on, but not a physical presence in, the workspace until you know your child is truly self-sufficient in terms of focus and pace of work.

Finally, I advise parents to coach children in the Nike approach: “Just do it.” In truth this is generally more favoured by boys than girls, who love wasting time arranging the many coloured pens and crisp stationery. Help your daughter release her inner boy, grab a pen, get the work done, cross out errors with one straight line so that the teacher can see the thought process, finish, pack the bag for tomorrow, and go out to play!