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.

    The Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of North Georgia seeks to hire a part-time instructor of Chinese for the Fall Term 2017. Depending on enrollments(登记人数）, the opportunity could continue in the spring and be ongoing.

    Located in the fastest-growing area of the state, the University of North Georgia is a multi-campus(多校园） university with an enrollment of over 18,000 students, making it one of the largest institutions in the University System og Georgia. Through a variety of educational pathways that provide access and range from certificates and associate degrees to a professional doctoral program, the UNG is responsive to local education and economic development needs.

    Job Duties & Responsibilities:

    Teaching schedules may include evening or online classes.

Certifications/ Licenses & Minimum Requirements:

    The candidate should have a Master's degree in Chinese or related field.

    Native or near-native fluency in Chinese.

    Expected Hire Date: 08/01/2017

    Special instructions to applicants:

    If you received any graduate degrees from an institution outside the United States, you must provide a foreign course-by-course evaluation by an independent evaluation service that is a member of the National Association of Credential Evaluation Service, Inc.

    Employer Information:

    All employment offers are dependent upon successful completion of a background investigation(调查), as determined by the University of North Georgia. The University of North Georgia, a unit of the University System of Georgia, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex or national origin, age, disability or religion. We provide equal employment opportunities to minorities, females, and disabled individuals, as well as other protected groups.

    The New York Vegas Hotel has some of the most beautiful and luxurious (豪华的) rooms. Here are four kinds of them.

    Park Avenue

    This kind of room has about 350 square feet of space. It comes with either a king-size or queen-size bed. The room has the following: a 40-inch television and a good bathroom. The Park Avenue room costs about $65 to $85 per night during weekdays and has a weekend rate of $100 to $110 per night.

    Marquis

    This Marquis room is up-grade. It provides guests with 700 square feet of space. This up-grade room has a good bathroom, two separate dining areas, and Internet access. There is also a small refrigerator in the room. Guests can stay in this kind of room for about $125 per night.

    Players

    The Players room comes with two queen-size beds. This room is almost 800 square feet and has a sitting area. The Player room has the following: two 40-inch televisions, a good bathroom, dining and entertainment areas and Internet access. One can stay in the Players room for $155 per night.

    Penthouses

    This kind of room has about 1,100 square feet of space with a DVD and CD player, coffee pots, and a separate master bedroom. Penthouses rooms have more up-grade amenities (设施). Guests can stay in this room comfortably for $415 per night, and it has a different price in the busy season.

    Las Vegas travelers have their choice of one of these hotel rooms. It doesn't matter which room one chooses because all of them are wonderful!

    I waited half an hour, set the board, and sat in the studio, reviewing my questions until the telephone lines flashed.

    "Hello?"

    "This is Connie Chung. I'm so sorry I'm late."

    Connie Chung was one of the only four women anchors（主播）to make it into the club of major evening network television news. For almost an hour we talked about the industry. When I asked if she ever had an instructor throughout her trials, she turned around and offered to instruct me. When I asked why she decided to do it, she simply replied, "Because you're good."

    That afternoon I rushed home and told my mother what had happened. Without looking up, she just said "Good for you." Hearing this, I felt a sense of loss.  Her consistent response always made me feel under-appreciated.

    Until then I had been searching for something that I would never get—that sense of love and acceptance in a house full of negativity（消极）.

    I knew I needed to get rid of all the negativity in my life first, so I packed my bags and walked out of the house, thinking a risk would allow me to open myself to the world again and receive all the positive energy that I needed.

    Then radio became my way of connecting with others. My ability to book high-level guests and celebrities（名人）was gradually recognized and eventually all the words of encouragement from past guests and colleagues helped me to re-build my confidence levels. "I can do this," I kept telling myself, and pushed even harder to find my next aim.

    People had faith in me, so I developed faith in myself. Their positive attitudes towards themselves and towards me helped me develop my own positive attitude, leading to productive interactions with celebrities and adding to my list of instructors.

    I may not have started life surrounded by positivity but I surely feel that I am surrounded by it now. It's amazing how positivity builds on itself.

    In 2013, Gabby Frost founded Buddy Project when she was 15. At that time her best friend had been diagnosed(诊断)with a mental health condition, and that was the first time she was made aware of what mental illness was. She wanted to learn more and develop a good support system for her.

    Mental illness affects tens of millions of people in the United States each year, yet only half receive treatment, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. Buddy Project's website says the service is not a substitute for therapy( 治疗)or other types of mental health care, and it directs people to resources for further help.

    Since founding the organization as a high school student, Frost has helped more than 200, 000 participants find a new friend. On the day when Buddy Project was launched, she used her powerful social media presence to attract nearly 3, 000 participants. "This was around the time when teens really began talking about mental health and found a supportive community online to talk about it,"she said.

    One of the biggest social barriers she had to jump over was that people didn't view her seriously because she was a 15-year-old girl, and even now, she's still a young woman. "Sometimes it's frustrating because people don't think what I do is needed or they don't think I'm professional" she said. "Most people are blown away that a 20-year-old girl is running this and that it's one person doing this but not a whole team. I'm just lucky that I've found a support system that has been able to help my mom and me with the project.

Albert Einstein's 1915 masterpiece "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" is the first and still the best introduction to the subject, and I recommend it as such to students. But it probably wouldn't be publishable in a scientific journal today.

Why not? After all, it would pass with flying colours the tests of correctness and significance. And while popular belief holds that the paper was incomprehensible to its first readers, in fact many papers in theoretical physics are much more difficult.

As the physicist Richard Feynman wrote, "There was a time when the newspapers said that only 12 men understood the theory of relativity. I do believe there might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than 12."

No, the problem is its style. It starts with a leisurely philosophical discussion of space and time and then continues with an exposition of known mathematics. Those two sections, which would be considered extraneous today, take up half the paper. Worse, there are zero citations of previous scientists' work, nor are there any graphics. Those features might make a paper not even get past the first editors.

A similar process of professionalization has transformed other parts of the scientific landscape. Requests for research time at major observatories or national laboratories are more rigidly structured. And anything involving work with human subjects, or putting instruments in space, involves piles of paperwork.

We see it also in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Nobel Prize of high school science competitions. In the early decades of its 78-year history, the winning projects were usually the sort of clever but naive, amateurish efforts one might expect of talented beginners working on their own. Today, polished work coming out of internships(实习) at established laboratories is the norm.

These professionalizing tendencies are a natural consequence of the explosive growth of modern science. Standardization and system make it easier to manage the rapid flow of papers, applications and people. But there are serious downsides. A lot of unproductive effort goes into jumping through bureaucratic hoops(繁文缛节), and outsiders face entry barriers at every turn.

Of course, Einstein would have found his way to meeting modern standards and publishing his results. Its scientific core wouldn't have changed, but the paper might not be the same taste to read.