Holidays are really important. Many of us will have childhood memories of summer holidays where we were taken away from home to experience new environments and learn in different ways.

    But holidays are expensive and, for those on low wages or living on benefits, they are often unobtainable. Even the cheapest holidays require travel and other additional costs that are difficult for many families to meet.

    For working parents, the long summer break can be a very difficult problem for childcare. When an annual leave allowance amounts to only five weeks, there is a need to spread this across the year. Couples can find themselves taking leave in turn in order to care for children who are on holiday. For some ' this makes even an affordable family holiday difficult.

    The schools that I visit in Nottingham are full of experienced staff committed to giving our children a caring and inspiring learning environment. The number of children receiving free school meals is quite large in Nottingham and many schools have breakfast clubs to make sure that children get a healthy start to the day. Most schools undertake programs of group or individual educational support. Schools also have an important role in sofeguaiding children's welfare through the ongoing touch and support with their pupils. During the long summer holidays, much of this is missed.

    While teachers are holidaying in the UK, many of their pupils spend the whole six weeks on the street where they live. The lack of free school meals for six weeks can result in pressure on a family budget and an inability to afford the inspiring experiences that help children to continue their learning.

    In setting out its plans for a five-term year, Nottingham City Council (委员会)is seeking to reduce the summer holiday down lo four and a half weeks, with a more balanced five terms of roughly eight weeks, each followed by a two-week break. We believe this will give real “down time" for school staff and pupils alike but will be short enough not to cause a real break in learning.

    We acknowledge that this change may be difficult for some school staff, particularly whose own children are educated in other authorities. However, this must be weighed against the benefits for city children for whom we all have the greatest duty of care.

    Mark Twain left school when he was twelve. He had little school education. In spite of (尽管) this, he became the most famous writer of his time. He made millions of dollars by writing. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but he is better known all over the world as Mark Twain, his pen-name.

    Mark Twain was born in 1835 and he was not a healthy baby. In fact, he was not expected to live through the first winter. But with his mother's tender care, he managed to survive. As a boy, he caused much trouble for his parents. He used to play jokes on all of his friends and neighbors. He didn't like to go to school, and he constantly ran away from home. He always went in the direction of the nearby Mississippi (密西西比河). He was nearly drowned (淹死) nine times.

    After his father's death in 1847, Mark twain began to work for a printer, who only provided him with food and clothing. Then, he worked as a printer, a river-boat pilot and later joined the army. But shortly after that he became a miner. During this period, he started to write short stories. Afterwards he became a full-time writer.

    In 1870, Mark Twain got married. In the years that followed he wrote many books including Tom Sawyer in 1876, and Huckleberry Finn in 1884, which made him famous, and brought him a great fortune (财富).

    Unfortunately, Mark Twain got into debts in bad investments (投资) and he had to write large numbers of stories to pay these debts. In 1904, his wife died, and then three of their children passed away.

    At the age of 70, his hair was completely white. He bought many white suits and neckties. He wore nothing but white from head to foot until his death on April 21, 1910.

    Most of us will be familiar with the traditional talent show set-up: thousands of hopefuls line up outside the audition（试音）room, wait for hours to go in and perform for a group of judges. Then these potential pop stars could be lucky and get through to the next round, or they might hear the command, "Sorry, it's a no from me. But what do the judges actually bring to a talent show?

    Music talent show judges attract millions of viewers each week to their programs. As public figures, they play an important part in advertising campaigns for these programs. They often receive high salaries and can be moody. Are they really worth the expenses and difficulties that they cause? One solution might be to replace them with computers.

    Can computers really match human judges? Scientist Dr Nick Collins and his team at the University of Sussex think they can. Dr Collins has been working on a project that involves programming three computerized judges that he says would be far more consistent in their judgment of musical performances. Employing a special programming language, Dr Collins's digital judges can be trained up by "listening" to particular musical styles. After they have been listening for a while, the programming language allows these judges to spot the specific features of the music, including the voice quality, the rhythm etc. Collins says, “The judges' listening capacity is not yet as good as a human ear, but they won't be as moody as some human reality TV show judges.”

    Maybe that is the problem with this electronic musical innovation. Real human judges on talent shows interest us with their personality, decisions and catchy phrases. Will a computer program be able to do the same?

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    Last fall, I happened to overhear a student telling the others he had decided not to sign up for an introductory philosophy course. The demands of his major, he said seriously, meant he needed to take "practical" courses, and "enlightenment" would simply have to wait. For now, employability was the most important.

    The students' conversation fits into a larger alarming narrative about the role of the humanities in higher education. In a time of dizzying technological achievement and of rapid scientific innovation, sceptics of the humanities may question the usefulness of studying Aristotle, the Italian Renaissance or Chinese fiction.

    Actually, I regret not interrupting that student to argue for taking that introductory philosophy course. I would have started by reminding him that, for much of America's history, college graduates were not considered truly educated unless they had mastered philosophy, literature, political theory and history. The key role of higher education was to invite students into the conversations about matters like what it means to be alive and the definition of justice. Fostering engagement with these subjects is still an essential part of the university's function in society.

    I would have also mentioned to the student that he was misinformed about the job market. It is true that many employers are looking for graduates with specialized technical skills, but they also look for other capabilities. As the world is transformed by artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation, the unique human qualities of creativity, imagination and moral reasoning will be the ultimate coin of the realm. All these skills are developed in humanities courses.

    Further, I would have argued that while a degree anchored in the sciences is an important precondition for many jobs, it is not the only route. Look no further than the founders of companies such as LinkedIn, Slack and Flickr, who are among the many tech businesspersons with degrees in the humanities, and who credit that training for their success.

    Contrary to the widely held belief that humanities majors have a hard time getting jobs, recent studies show that those with humanities degrees are successful in the workplace, experiencing low rates of unemployment and reporting high levels of job satisfaction. The ratio between average median(中位数) incomes for humanities degree holders and those with business, engineering, and health and medical sciences degrees has been shown to narrow over the course of a career.

    The case for the humanities can also be understood in less transactional terms and more as a foundational preparation for a life well lived. A humanities education plays a vital role in encouraging citizens to lead an examined life. It fosters critical thinking, self-reflection, empathy and tolerance, the usefulness of which only becomes more apparent as one navigates life's challenges.

    By all means, students should take courses they think practical and follow their interests, but if they also make a point of studying the literature of the Renaissance, or researching into modern poetry, or even taking introductory philosophy, we will all benefit.

    GOING TO UNIVERSITY is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience. That statement is probably made in comparison to training for work straight after school, which might not be so encouraging. But is it actually true? Jessika Golle of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, thought she would try to find out. Her result, however, is not quite what might be expected. As she reports in Psychological Science this week, she found that those who have been to university do indeed seem to leave with broader and more inquiring minds than those who have spent their immediate post-school years in vocational (职业的) training for work. However, it was not the case that university broadened minds. Rather, work seemed to narrow them.

    Dr. Golle came to this conclusion after she and a team of colleagues studied the early careers of 2,095 German youngsters. The team used two standardized tests to assess their volunteers. One was of personality traits, including openness, conscientiousness（认真）and so on. The other was of attitudes, such as realistic, investigative and enterprising. They administered both tests twice—once towards the end of each volunteer's time at school, and then again six years later. Of the original group, 382 were on the intermediate track, from which there was a choice between the academic and vocational routes, and it was on these that the researchers focused. University beckoned for 212 of them. The remaining 170 chose vocational training and a job.

    When it came to the second round of tests, Dr. Golle found that the personalities of those who had gone to university had not changed significantly. Those who had undergone vocational training and then got jobs were not that much changed in personality, either—except in one crucial respect. They had become more conscientious.

    That sounds like a good thing, certainly compared with the common public image of undergraduates as a bunch of lazybones. But changes in attitude that the researchers recorded were rather worrying. In the university group, again, none were detectable. But those who had chosen the vocational route showed marked drops in interest in tasks that are investigative and enterprising in nature. And that might restrict their choice of careers.

    Some investigative and enterprising jobs, such as scientific research, are, indeed beyond the degreeless. But many, particularly in Germany, with its tradition of vocational training, are not. The researchers mention, for example, computer programmers and finance-sector workers as careers requiring these traits. If Dr. Golle is correct, and changes in attitude brought about by the very training Germany prides itself on are narrowing people's choices, that is indeed a matter worthy of serious consideration.