1 . One of Britain’s few typical contributions to world culture may come to an end, according to a survey that suggests holiday postcards are being emailed and texted into extinction (消亡). More than half of the 1,000 holiday-makers interviewed said they had decided to send fewer cards, turning instead to their electronic competitors.

A quarter of the respondents (受访者) dismissed postcards as old-fashioned and slow to arrive. A further 14% admitted that thinking of something to fill the space was too challenging, compared with a call home. Although officially invented by a Hungarian, Emanuel Herrmann, in 1869, the idea of illustrated cards was taken up with most enthusiasm in Victorian Britain, joining Gothic architecture and landscape gardening as fields in which the country excelled.

“If the British postcard did become extinct, we would lose for ever something of great importance to the nation,” said Chris Mottershead of Thomson Holidays, which charged with the survey. He was backed by Marie Angelou of Sussex University, who has studied the importance of sending and receiving postcards. “Postcards are nothing like phone calls, instant texting and direct photo shots via the mobile,” she said. “All these are useful, practical devices, but postcards offer something else, something additional that is not mundane (世俗的) and simply functional, but imaginative and personal. They can produce the real atmosphere of your holiday in a way that nothing else can do. They’re also for more than a moment — with some people adding them to collections built up over years and years.”

Postcard-collecting, is third only to coins and stamps in Britain’s related tradition of collecting things. The country’s uniquely postcard-related achievements include the invention in 1902 of the“divided back”. With the address taking up half of the writing area, brief postcard scribbles (潦草的书写) became the forerunner to today’s text messages.

3 . The long expected regulations governing off-campus tutoring programs were recently made public. The severity of the regulations exceeds (超过) the worse expectations of those engaged in the once thriving (繁荣的) training sector. Then related businesses listed in domestic and overseas markets experienced sharp declines. These training agencies have experienced explosive growths in recent years by cashing in on increasing anxiety among Chinese parents over the education of their children.

For parents, the common means of gaining competitive edge for their children is to get them into better schools, by paying more for extracurricular training. It came as no surprise that when Indian movie Hindi Medium was shown a few years ago, it became a huge box office success, likely because the parental anxiety described in the film resonates with many Chinese viewers struggling with their children’s education. Like their Indian counterparts, parents here would do anything to get their children into the right school.

While most children like me would undoubtedly welcome the government regulation of the training sector, parental responses are more mixed. Asked to comment on this, a mother whose son is taking four training courses was less than enthusiastic. The training is going on as scheduled, and she insisted that she would terminate the training only on condition that all other parents have done the same, and that there was still significant difference between professional instruction and learning on one's own. Her attitude is not atypical (非典型的，反常的), and probably well justified by past experience.

According to Yang Dongping, professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, Chinese parental anxiety stands out in two aspects. First, the anxiety affects all social levels no matter how their financial circumstances are. Second, for the children the competition gets started steadily earlier, from primary schools a few years ago to kindergartens now.

Thus, a fundamental change to the situation involves a change in attitude on the part of the whole society. It would mean a change to the narrow-minded perception of education as a good school and a profitable job. Hopefully the current policies would go on to address growing superstition (迷信，迷信思想) in diplomas and “elite” schools.

Only when education goes beyond simple scores and standards and evolves into a lifelong pursuit of sweetness and light could it hope to be truly self-motivating and sustainable. The guidelines might be effective in tackling (应对、处理) off-campus tutoring, but addressing the pervasive (弥漫的，充斥的) anxiety will involve coordinated, lasting effort.

4 . People love the “comeback kid”, the “down and out guy”, and any variety of defeated people whom we’ve seen fail, then manage to dust off their bootstraps (独自所作的努力) and take on life again. Everyone should get this chance in life, and they should get it over and over and over again. Everyone, that is, except our teenagers, right?

At least that is how parents, teachers, college admission officers, coaches, and others who spend time with adolescents have led all of us to believe. We have all bought the great lie that there is not only zero room for today’s teenagers to fail academically, but any form of failure is a great embarrassment to everyone involved. And I do mean everyone.

Ever notice how quick parents are to share college acceptance letters, scholarships, SAT scores, and pretty much all the perfect resumes (简历) of their high schoolers for everyone to see on social media? Surely it makes moms and dads extremely proud. We all want to take credit for our teenager’s great accomplishments, and while that is all well and good, it also means that when failure happens, we scatter like sheep when a wolf arrives, because failure on their part means failure on our part.

Adolescent brains do not have the bandwidth to process that failure is temporary, and that high school is but a small spot on their life map. Unfortunately, while we may talk that talk, our actions do not bolster it. Anyone who has been through the competitive college application and scholarship process knows this all too well, because there is no room for any form of failure. But this is wrong.

Tell your kids that failure doesn’t define them. Tell them it’s normal, natural, and expected. Tell them failure creates comeback stories, and the opportunity to rise even higher and better than before. And finally, tell them you don’t worry that they will fail; you worry that they won’t.

A 25-year-old American with a university degree can expect to live longer than those who dropped out of high school.    1    the average American's expected span has been flat in recent years, and    2    surprising） even fell between 2015 and 2017, that of the one- third with a bachelor's degree has continued to lengthen.

This difference is growing, according to the new research    3     （publish） in the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists found that the life spans （寿命）of those with and without a bachelor's degree started to    4    （different） in the 1990s and 2000s. This gap grew even     5     （wide） in the 2010s.

What is the link    6     schooling and longevity? Some argue that better-educated people develop various healthier    7    （lifestyle） ： each additional year of study reduces the chances of being a smoker and of being overweight. The better-educated earn more,     8    in turn is associated with greater health.

Researchers argue that changes in labour markets     9     （reduce） the supply of well- paid jobs for    10    （that） without a degree in the past few years. This may be contributing to higher rates of alcohol and drug use, suicide and other "deaths of despair" .