1 . “From one day to the next, our profession was wiped out. We woke up and discovered our skills were unnecessary.” This is what two successful graphic designers told me about the impact of AI. The old promise—creative workers would be better protected than others from mechanization (机械化) —ruined overnight. If visual artists can be replaced by machines, who is safe?

While there’s plenty of talk about how education might change, little has been done to equip students for a world whose conditions shift so fast. It’s not just at work that young people will confront sudden changes of state. They are also likely to witness more environmental breakdown and the collapse of certain human-made systems.

Why are we so unprepared? Why do we manage our lives so badly? Why are we so expert at material innovation, but so unskilled at creating a society in which everyone can succeed? Why do obvious lies spread like wildfire? What is lacking in our education that leaves such gap s in our lives?

The word education partly comes from Latin, meaning “to lead out”. Too often it leads us in: into old ways of thinking, into dying professions. Too seldom does it lead us out of our cognitive and emotional circles, out of a political and economic system that’s killing us.

I don’t claim to have definitive answers. But I believe the extreme demands, throughout our schooling, of tests and exams reduce the range of our thinking. The exam system creates artificial borders. The intense combined demands of the testing system leave almost no time to respond to opportunities and events, or for children to develop their own interests.

Education should be joyful and delightful, not only because joy and delight are essential to our health and happiness, but also because we are more likely to survive major changes. Schooling alone will not be enough to lead us out of the many crises and disasters we now face. But it should at least lend us a torch.

Once kids hit the teenage years, parenting becomes more difficult than ever. Establishing(建立) effective house rules is one of the best ways to educate teenagers. House rules must respect teenagers’ desire to be independent and make sure they behave responsibly.

How can effective house rules be established?

First of all, get your teenager to take part in making the rules, which can help keep them motivated to follow them. Ask their opinion about what sorts of things they think are important when creating the rules and try to include some of their ideas.

When creating the list of rules, don’t list every single rule imaginable. Instead, try to limit it to the ten most important rules. I’ve seen some parents come up with several pages of rules which turn out to be more like a rule book rather than a list. Remember, it is important to make the list easy to remember and to be a basic guide.

Then, it is important that you write out the list of rules and hang them in a prominent (显眼的) location. Keeping the rules on the refrigerator or displayed somewhere where everyone can see them is a good reminder. Revise the rules whenever there’s a need, not very frequently though.

Explain clearly in advance what negative consequences(后果) will be in store when a rule gets broken. But ensure(保证) that none of your consequences are equal to abusive parenting. For example, take off the rule that says — “if you don’t get home by 11 at night, make arrangements to stay elsewhere until morning”. Let helping with small household chores like cleaning up their own rooms serve as consequences for disobeying rules.

Following these tips on establishing effective house rules accompanied by constant positive reinforcement (执行) will help improve your teenager’s behavior. Hope you can direct your teenager to become a responsible and independent person with the help of house rules!

3 . Many significant international projects have considered how schooling might change to better match the changes that have taken place in the 21st century.     1     One is a shift in the meaning of knowledge, and the other is the need to build education systems based around what we now know about learning.

The term “knowledge age” or “knowledge economy” refers to a reorganization away from an Industrial Age economy, where exploitation (开采) of natural resources, primary production and mass production were the standard models for economic development.     2     This is achieved through the rapid creation of new knowledge and has become the basis for economic development. It is argued that education for the knowledge age must focus on the development of learners’ competences to deal with new situations and environments.

    3     Nor does it deny the need for obvious goals for students’ knowledge development. Rather, the future-focused education literature suggests we need to adopt a much more complex view of knowledge, one that incorporates knowing, doing and being. Alongside this we need to rethink our ideas about how our learning systems are organized, resourced and supported. Research clearly shows that people do not learn well as passive recipients (接受者) of pre-packaged, bite-sized pieces of knowledge.     4    

Although some of these principles are understood by many teachers, our education systems and practices are often set up in ways that do not support these principles to operate in practice. Teachers and school leaders are attempting paradigm (范式) shifts.     5    

4 . When it comes to entrepreneurship (企业家), it seems like a lot of us are fond of the idea of NOT getting more education. Sure, we’ve all heard how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped out of college to found Microsoft and Apple, respectively. A lot of would-be solopreneurs (独立创业者) think this means they should take the same course, putting education by the wayside to chase their business goals.

Now, I’m not saying that you need a college degree to be a successful entrepreneur. But all too often, people take these famous examples a step too far and decide they don’t need to further their education in any way.

The thing is, college isn’t the only place you can get an education. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs learned a lot outside their classroom settings to turn their companies into the global successes they are today. When it comes to entrepreneurship, the most successful people are generally the ones who develop a lifelong love of learning. It’s an feature worth imitating.

When we think of “exercise,” most of us think of sweaty people at the gym running on treadmills and lifting weights. We don’t think of hitting the books. But the brain is actually a muscle too. And just like you need those physical workouts so you don’t start getting saggy (松驰的) around the middle, you need to give your brain regular “workouts” that keep it active and healthy.

Contrary to popular belief, your brain doesn’t stop growing after adolescence. One recent study found that the brain continues to produce new neurons associated with learning, emotion and memory throughout adulthood. Of course, the outcomes of this ongoing development depend in part on your own efforts.

If you’re not feeling motivated to work out your brain, it might be helpful to consider the costs of not continuing to learn. Quite simply, the problems you have now-whether in business or other areas of your life—are going to continue to exist if you don’t find new ways to approach them. The things you learn will help you discover new solutions and think more creatively. When done right, training your brain can become a lifelong habit—just like going for a morning run or hitting the gym at the end of the work day.

7 . To encourage all students to get an education, even if their parents can’t afford it, a primary school in the Indian state of Chahattisgarh is asking parents to simply plant saplings (树苗) instead of paying school fees. The parents have to take care of the sapling and plant a new one if it dies. Compared with the cost of traditional school fees, it’s a small price to pay. And it comes with the added bonus of helping improve local air quality.

The school is Shiksha Kuteer in the city of Ambikapur in the east of the country. It is reported that at least 35 students between the ages of five and six are studying there. The initiative was set up by a group of local professionals and business owners in response to India’s rapidly increasing education fees. “Shiksha Kuteer has opened in the village for students who have no money to pay fees,” local villager Sevak Das said.

The government now spends just 3.9 percent of its budget on education, which means parents are left to pay for high school fees, as well as paying for books and other school things. A national survey made last year showed that between 2011 and 2017, private expenditure (支出) increased by 175 percent to $100 per student each year. That might not sound like a lot, but for many families, particularly in poor areas, it’s not affordable, especially at the primary school level. The lack of government spending is damaging the education system, too. The 2017 Annual Status of Education report found that nearly 20 percent of Grade 2 students, aged seven to eight, didn’t recognize the numbers between one and nine.

But by offering such a way to get students into schools, Shiksha Kuteer is encouraging education in everyone. 700 saplings have been planted across the village over the last year and more and more people in other areas would like to adopt such an approach.

8 . Educational authorities have asked schools to make sure students have 10-minute breaks between classes after hearing complaints that some school students are not allowed to leave classrooms during breaks-unless they need to go to the toilet-- to ensure their safety.

Some students said teachers often overrun by a few minutes, and that some start their classes a few minutes before the breaks are scheduled to end. In these cases students do not even have time to go to the toilet.

A mother of a primary school student in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province said her child’s school does not allow students to leave the classroom building during breaks. They are also forbidden to jump, run around or speak loudly.

The issue has caused a heated discussion on social media platforms.

“Teachers do not want to supervise students during class breaks. However, if students have accidents, some parents will still hold schools accountable,” said one netizen in a comment that received more than 10,000 likes. Another said, “Teachers are also tired, but the school makes such a requirement, and they have to follow.”

An official from the Ministry of Education said that it is important for schools to ensure students have time to rest during class breaks, which can help students relax, be healthy and avoid myopia (近视).

The ministry attaches great importance to class breaks, the official said. Apart from breaks between classes, schools should also make sure students have a 30-minute break each day for exercise. The ministry will urge local authorities and schools to implement the policies and prevent the practice of restricting class breaks in the name of “ensuring students safety”, the official said.

9 . 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.