From the very beginning of school we make books and reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation. When children are little we make them read aloud, before the teacher and other children, so that we can be sure they “know” all the words they are reading. This means that when they don't know a word, they are going to make a mistake, right in front of everyone. After having taught fifth-grade classes for four years, I decided to try at all costs to rid them of their fear and dislike of books, and to get them to read oftener and more adventurously.

         One day soon after school had started, I said to them, “Now I'm going to say something about reading that you have probably never heard a teacher say before. I would like you to read a lot of  books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that's enough for me. Also I'm not going to ask you what words mean. “

        The children sat stunned and silent. Was this a teacher talking? One girl, who had just come to us from a school where she had had a very hard time, looked at me steadily for a long time after I had finished. Then, still looking at me, she said slowly and seriously, Mr Holt, do you really mean that?” I said just as seriously, “I mean every word of it.

During the spring she really astonished me. One day, she was reading at her desk, From a glimpse of the illustrations I thought I knew what the book was. I said to myself, “It can't be,” and went to take a closer look. Sure enough, she was reading Moby Dick , in edition with woodcuts. I said, “Don't you find parts of it rather heavy going?” She answered, Oh, sure, but I just skip over those parts and go on to the next good part. “

        This is exactly what reading should be and in school so seldom is, an exciting, joyous adventure. Find something, dive into it, take the good parts, skip the bad parts, get what you can out of it, go on to something else. How different is our mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of “understanding” that can be dug out of a book.

    Bill Gates recently predicted that online learning will make place-based colleges less significant, and five years from now, students will be able to find the best lectures in the world online. I applaud Mr. Gates. But what's taking us so long?

    As early as 1997, MIT (麻省理工) decided to post videos of all university lectures online, for free, for all people. But today, how many students have you met who mastered advanced mathematics or nuclear physics from an MIT online video? Unfortunately, the answer is not many.

    The problem is the poor quality of online education websites and the experience they provide to students. Those who go to the MIT website and watch courses online are surely very smart people, but it's not like playing a video game such as World of Warcraft. Only the most ardent students, those who are highly motivated, will devote themselves to studying these boring online videos.

    The real question is why we aren't spending more to develop better online education platforms. Where is the Avatar of education? Think about this. The market for Hollywood films per year is worth around 30 billion USD. Education in the world is a trillion-dollar-a-year market, hundreds of times bigger than Hollywood movies. Yet the most expensive digital learning system ever built cost well under 100 million dollars.

    Bill Gates' prediction is going to happen. There is no doubt about it. But it will only happen when we create high level educational content and experiences that engage and excite more than has ever been possible in the real world.

    Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Nepal, Bangladesh. It is celebrated at the end of the winter season on the last full moon day of the lunar month.Holi originally was a festival to celebrate good harvests. It developed to honor a legend from the Hindu Mythology（神话）. The story focuses on a cruel king, who hated his son,Prahlada. He attempted to kill his son but failed each time. Finally, the king asked his sister Holika, who was said to be safe in fire, to get rid of his son. However, when the aunt tried to burn Prahlada, it was the prince who ended up being safe in fire while the aunt herself was burnt to death. Holi honors this event every year and huge bonfires（篝火）are burnt on the eve of Holi. The festival spreads over 16 days. During these days people often have fun and play with colored powder and water. Holi is also celebrated with exciting parades which are companied by folk songs and dances.

    The festival begins on the night of the full moon. Bonfires are lit on street corners to drive away the air of evil spirits and bad feelings, and to symbolize the destruction of bad Holika, after whom the festival was named. In the morning, the streets are filled with people running, shouting and laughing.

    At noon, the craziness comes to an end and everyone heads to either the river or the bathroom, then relaxes and enjoys candies. A tired and contented silence falls over India.

    Sports can help us a lot. Taking exercises can make us strong. In collective（集体的）sports like basketball, volleyball or football, we will learn the importance of cooperation(合作). And sports can also help us relax after work or study.

    However, as the saying goes, “there are two sides of everything.” Sometimes we may hurt other players or ourselves if we are not careful enough when participating(参加) in sports activities. What's more, too much or hard practice can be bad for our health.

    Sports can make us healthy both physically and psychologically(心理地). It is also a good way for people to know each other and can improve friendship between people. So long as we are careful enough, sports can do us nothing but good.

    A young woman carrying a three-year-old child got on a bus. The conductor hurried to give her a warm welcome and then kindly asked the other passengers to make more room for the woman and her kid. On seeing this, people were surprised and began to talk." You know this conductor used to be very rude. Now suddenly he has changed his bad behavior, "said a middle-aged man.

    "Yes, he should be praised and we must write a letter to the company," said a second passenger." That's right," another lady said, "I wish a newspaper reporter were here so that more people could learn from this conductor."

    Just then a gentleman who looked like a teacher turned to the conductor and said, "Excuse me, but can I know your name, please? Your excellent service must be praised…"

    Before he could open his mouth, the three-year-old kid sitting on the young woman's lap interrupted, "I know his name; I call him Dad."

By 11:00, Gopamma knew something was wrong. Her husband, Hanutha, should have returned from collecting firewood an hour before. Gopamma sent for her son, who gathered a search party and headed to Bandipur Tiger Reserve, a nearby national park in south-western India. Just inside the forest, they discovered Hanutha's half-eaten remains. The tiger that killed him was still sitting next to the body.

In the face of her husband's death, Gopamma struggled not only with grief but economic hardship. Her son had to drop out of university. "My life was much better when my husband was alive," she says. "My older son could have studied, but now both of my sons have to work. I feel insecure and dependent. "

Despite all this, Gopamma feels no hate toward the tiger that killed her husband. Like many Hindus in India, she views humans and creatures, each with an equal right to existence. Her husband's death, she says, has nothing to do with the fact that the government is trying to save tigers: "This was my fate."

Rural Indians are unique in the world for their high tolerance for co-existing with potentially deadly wildlife. "You don't find this in other cultures," says Ullas, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and a leading expert on tigers. "If this kind of thing happened in Montana or Brazil, they'd wipe out everything the next day. "

The country holds just 25% of total tiger habitat, but accounts for 70% of all remaining wild tigers, or around 3, 000 animals today. Success does not come without cost, however. They still have a lot of difficulties with tigers breaking into human-dominated places in certain parts of India, livestock(牲畜) are killed and sometimes so are people.

Some animal activists think that there are too few tigers left in the wild, so even one shouldn't be killed. Tigers are treasures, we'd better live with them together.