When the Chinese government first sent students to America in the late 19^th century, it could not decide whether their goal should be to acquire specific technical knowledge or to _______ new ways of thinking. More than a century later, a third of a million Chinese students are enrolled at American schools and universities. Yet folks back home remain _______ about what an American degree means.

Attending an American university is a good career move. It is also _______ as a soft option for well-off kids, scared of the gaokao, China’s brutal university-entrance exams. Yet many bright Chinese youngsters explain the appeal of an American education in a remarkably _______ fashion. One place to hear such dreams is an English-language debating tournament in the central city of Wuhan. It follows a(n) _______ popular at high schools across America, known as “Public Forum Debate”.

At first sight, the event bears the stamp of _______. It uses the classrooms at a bilingual private boarding school in Wuhan with its own golf course and an ice-hockey team coached by imported Russians. But the debate is not for big-city _______. It is run by the National High School Debate League of China, which _______ contests in dozens of Chinese cities each year. This one has _______ pupils, aged 13-18, from nine cities. Many will never study overseas.

The proposition is: “Countries should give ________ to climate-change adaptation over alleviation.” An early round is won by a pair of 17-year-old girls who attend the international section of a state-run high school in Shenyang. In confident, rapid-fire English the duo argue that climate change should be treated with realism. The pair also had speeches arguing the opposite ready, in case the coin-toss had gone ________.

Unlike America, where debating clubs are ________ by shouty, self-assured boys, most contestants in the Chinese league are girls. Of its 20 highest-ranked debaters, 16 are female. In a society that is still ________-centered, the chance to argue forcefully and be applauded for it has a rare appeal, suggests Liam Mather, the league’s executive director. The winners in Wuhan are Joyce Yi and Erica Chen, from a state school in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen. Their swaggering first-round performance leaves two ________ boys open-mouthed like fish. Ms Chen initially ________ debating in English because “I’m kind of an argumentative person.” Then she realized the subtle effects of having to research both sides of an argument. Chinese education emphasizes one correct answer to a question, she says.

When Chris Ulmer first started teaching children with special needs, he could not have imagined the journey this job would take him on. In the three years he spent with his students, Ulmer discovered that these kids didn’t. ________ have special needs, they were all special people in every other ________ as well.

________ by the dream to show the world what these kids have to offer, Ulmer ________ the Special Books by Special Kids project. The project was ________ planned to be an eight-chapter book featuring eight of his students. However, after his book was ________ by over 50 publishers, he decided to do it all alone. Chris ________ his own Facebook page. Then he began to ________ interviews with his students and post them on social media.

Ulmer also traveled the country to visit children coping with ________ like autism (自闭症) and brain injuries, and interviewed them about life. Not all of the children could ________ themselves with words, but Ulmer treated every single child with ________. He went into each interaction with the ________ that the person could understand him and was capable of communicating.

Through his efforts, the initial 8 video clips have ________ into a massive library of over 500 videos and the Facebook page has nearly 1.5 million fans. “Everyone has the ability to change someone’s life. It can be something as ________ as smiling, saying hello and praising someone. It doesn’t take much to make a ________,” Ulmer says.

Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell, believes that his profession is restricting cooperation and generosity. In the U.S., economics professors give _________money to charity than professors in other fields. Economics students in Germany are more likely than those from other majors to recommend an overpriced plumber (水管工) when they are paid to do it. Economics majors tend to rate _________as “generally good,” “correct,” and “moral” more than their peers.

Does studying economics change people? Maybe not. It could be self-selection: students who already believe in self-interest are drawn to economics. But this doesn’t exclude the possibility that studying economics pushes people further toward the selfish extreme.

“As a business school professor, these effects worry me, as economics, _________every aspect of our lives, is taught widely in business schools, providing a _________for courses in management, finance, and accounting,” says Frank.

If economics can discourage pro-social behavior, which is central to the well-being of people or society, what should we do about it? A change in economics and business education is suggested. Courses in behavioral economics, which considers the role of “social preferences” like _________, fairness and cooperation, are required for students of economics major. In fact, economics courses not involving some behavioral economics are considered both an inadequate education and a poor preparation to be a practicing economist. Also, _________width, economics majors are required to take courses in social sciences like sociology and psychology, which place considerable emphasis on how people are _________about others, not only themselves. _________, within economics courses, we should do a better job _________the principle of self-interest, which involves anything a person values—including helping others.

Not until then may the prophecy (预言) by Nobel Prize-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen be __________. Calling economists “rational fools,” he observed: “The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social fool.”