The TED speaker series features “ideas worth spreading”. With over 1,400 to choose from, we've selected a few that are perfect for students.

    Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career

    We humans may have an unfavorable habit of making excuses for ourselves of or being too confident about ourselves. Accordingly, Larry Smith, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, tells us why most of us will fail to have a great career. Luckily, as he puts it, there is a way out-follow your heart, as long as it is good for your career.

    Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

Between dance team, volunteering and –oh, right—lectures, your life's crazy factor（因素）is about to go way up. In this entertaining and informative talk, Mindfulness, expert Andy Puddicombe teaches us how to be “more healthy, more mindful and less distracted” by taking just 10 minutes out of the day to be “more present”.

    Shane Koyczan: To this day…for the bullied（欺凌）and beautiful

    This talk is sure to stay with you. Shane Koyczan's “To This Day” is an affecting spoken-word poem about bullying and being different that gained over 10 million views on YouTube. In this talk, Koyczan gives a live reading of the poem, along with some stories about his background.

    Susan Cain: The power of introverts（性格内向者）

    Does a cup of tea and a good book sound like a perfect Friday night? In this personal talk, Susan Cain argues that introverts have talents and abilities. Our culture may value being outgoing, but the world needs all kinds.

    Earlier this month, the University of Glasgow in Scotland launched a course entitled: The Simpsons Introduce Philosophy（哲学）. The course's aim is to ease students into the typically heavy topic by relating it to the popular cartoon family.

    “The Simpsons is one of the modem world's greatest cultural products, partly because it is so full of philosophy,” John Donaldson, creator of the course, told the BBC. “Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Camus and many other great thinkers' ideas are represented in what is arguably the purest of philosophical forms — the comic cartoon.”

    While this may seem like an unusual way to attract pupils to a traditionally dull topic, this class isn't the first of its kind. In 2009, Liverpool Hope University in the UK began offering a master's degree on the music of world-famous 60's group The Beatles, which still runs today. The following year, the UK's Durham University gave students the chance to enroll on a Harry Potter-themed module, covering contents such as “Gryffindor and Slytherin: prejudice and intolerance in the classroom,” and “muggles and magic”.

    To some, these courses may seem like a waste of a valuable education, but Donaldson believes that packaging certain topics into something more easy to relate to will enhance the learning experience, without distracting（分离）from the main subject. “Firstly, scholars want to be taken seriously by other scholars and ideas like this can be seen as not serious,” he tells iNews. “There are definitely ways to include popular culture into academic subjects that still remains their nature and doesn't take away from the quality of the ideas,”

    Already booked full, Donaldson's Simpsons class isn't meant to be taken as seriously, however. The lecturer says that his one-day course, which will pose philosophical questions around morality, free will, and religion by relating them to scenarios（情节）from The Simpsons, aims to introduce students to his area of expertise greatly while having a bit of fun.

    I grew up poor. We had little money, but plenty of love and attention. I understood that no matter how poor a person was, he could still afford a dream. My dream was athletics.

    By the time I was sixteen, I was good at baseball and football. My high-school coach was Ollie Jarvis. He not only believed in me, but taught me the difference between having a dream and showing conviction(信念).

    One summer a friend recommended me for a summer job. This meant a chance for money in my pocket — cash for dates with girls, certainly, money for a new bike and new clothes, and the start of savings for a house for my mother.

Then I realized I would have to give up summer baseball to handle the work schedule, and that meant I would have to tell Coach Jarvis I wouldn't be playing. I was dreading(害怕) this, but my mother said, "If you make your bed, you have to lie in it."

When I told Coach Jarvis, he was as mad as I expected him to be. "Your playing days are limited. You can't afford to waste them," he said.

    I stood before him with my head hanging, trying to think of the words that would explain to him why I dreamed of buying my mom a house.

"How much are you going to make at this job, son?" he demanded.

"Three twenty-five an hour," I replied.

"Well," he asked, "is $3.25 an hour the price of a dream?"

    That question laid bare for me the difference between wanting something right now and having a goal. I devoted myself to sports that summer, and within the year I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates to play rookie-league ball, and offered a $20,000 contract. I signed with the Denver Broncos in 1984 for $1.7 million, and bought my mother the house of my dream.

    A child who suffers bullying (霸凌) usually has low self-respect and their ability to learn and be successful at school is greatly lessened. Therefore, bullying must be stopped.

    The best and most obvious way to stop bullying in schools is for parents to change the way they treat their children at home. Of course, this is much easier said than done and everyone treats their children differently. Bullies, however, come from homes where physical punishment is used and children have been taught that physical violence is the way to handle problems and “get their way”. Bullies usually also come from homes where the parents fight a lot, so they have been modeled on such violence. Parental involvement is often lacking in bullies' lives and there seems to be little warmth.

    Early intervention (干预) is truly the best way to stop bullying, but parents of the victims or therapists (治疗师) cannot alter the bully's home environment. Some things can be done at the school level, however.

    Most school programs that address bullying use a multi-faceted (多方面的) method to the problem. This usually involves the advice of some sort, either by peers, a school adviser, teachers, or the principal.

    Hand out questionnaires to all students and teachers and discuss if bullying is occurring. Define exactly what constitutes (构成) bullying at school. The questionnaire is a wonderful tool that allows the school to see how widespread bullying is and what forms it is taking. It is a good way to start to solve the problem.

    Get the children's parents involved in a bullying program. If parents of the bullies and the victims are not aware of what is going on at school, then the whole bullying program will not be effective. Stopping bullying in school takes teamwork and concentrated effort on everyone's part. Bullying also should be discussed during parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings. Parental awareness is the key.

    In the classroom setting, all teachers should work with the students on bullying. Oftentimes even the teacher is being bullied in the classroom and a program should be set up to teach about bullying. Children understand modeling behaviors and role-play and acting out bullying situations is a very effective tool. Have students role-play a bullying situation.

    Tenzing left his home when he was ten to work and help his mother, who was looking after their 2-acre ancestral farm after his father's death. He did temporary jobs for the first few years and then joined a Malaysian construction firm, where he learnt to drive, repair machines, work on the Internet and even speak English fluently.

    “In those 13 years, I learnt everything—driving, mechanic work, and how to set up a small factory. This made me gain much confidence to do almost all jobs,” says Tenzing.

    However, as his mother was getting older, on December 12, 2006, Tenzing returned to his hometown in Assam. Having visited several farms, he came to know that tea could be easily exported and many tea companies were buying tea; so he also decided to grow tea on his farm. But as his family had never grown tea, he had no idea how to do it.

    Being a green hand in this field, Tenzing went to meet with many tea experts and followed their instructions. But whenever he sprayed pesticide (农药)on his farm, he'd get a headache and feel indisposed. So he started looking for alternatives. Tenzing did his research online and finally in 2007, he connected with people from a Canadian non-governmental organization and invited them to his farm, where they trained him. Thus, Tenzing started growing tea organically.

    Today Tenzing has 25 acres of land, of which 7.5 acres is used for tea planting, and he grows almost all types of fruits and vegetables. His success inspired many, and farmers from other parts of the country also started coming to his farm to learn organic farming. He has trained about 30,000 farmers so far. Every year almost 100 tourists visit his farm from various parts of the world like the UK, Australia, Germany, etc.

    It all started in 2007 when James Bowen, a thirty­something drug addict who survived by playing guitar on the street, found an orange cat sitting in front of the door of his apartment.

    Bowen noticed the cat was wounded. Without hesitation, the young man took him to the Humane Society and spent the little money he had on medicine to heal him.

    Shortly thereafter, the cat, who was healing and feeling much better, began to follow the musician when he left the house. Then one day the cat got on the bus that Bowen took to the place where he worked.

    That's how the cat, who had recently been named Bob, began to accompany his human friend to his musical performances. Bob's mere presence attracted the attention of passers­by. He and Bowen would finish off each song with a high five. Pretty soon, the images of Bob wearing a scarf while sitting on the musician's shoulder, or keeping him company while he played the guitar, began to go viral all over the world.

    Eventually, the news found out about the pair and did a story for the magazine Islington Tribune. It was not long after that when a book agent appeared in their lives and gave them a chance to tell their story.

    By then, Bowen, who had managed to get away from drugs, wrote a novel called A Street Cat Named Bob. He related in great detail how meeting the cat changed him.

    The book soon sold more than six million copies and even spread beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. In fact, it was translated into thirty languages.

    Through all of these changing circumstances, Bob has always been with Bowen—on his shoulder.

    You can't make up a story like this. But life always gives opportunities to those who know how to get hold of them. So if you are ever in a position where a cat has chosen you, don't ignore it. You can't imagine all the good that life may have in store if you decide to accept the proposal.