The story of The emperor’s new clothes is one of Andersen’s best-known works. Cheaters fool the emperor into believing they have made him a fantastic suit. Courtiers (侍臣) dare not say that the emperor is naked; it takes a child to point out the obvious. How many companies have ploughed ahead with expensive projects that were favoured by the CEO, even when other managers have had doubts? The moral is that people are often too restricted by social practice to state their views.

In his new book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, Matthew Syed argues that the key to dealing with this problem is “cognitive (认知) diversity”, in other words, assembling a team of people with different perspectives and intellectual backgrounds. It is not just about selecting people for teams from both sexes and various races. Hire only Cambridge politics graduates or Stanford software engineers and they will have studied under the same professors and absorbed similar world views regardless of their gender or skin colour.

There is another element to selecting a good team: ensuring that those viewpoints are heard and respected. A study of over 300 projects by the Rotterdam School of Management found that those led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those led by senior managers—maybe because other team members were less scared about pointing out potential dangers to someone of lower rank.

The ability to speak up within an organization, without fear of punishment, is known as “psychological safety”. Mr. Syed cites a study of teams at Google, which found that self-reported psychological safety was by far the most important factor behind successful teamwork at the technology giant.

One way to overcome shyness while brainstorming, for instance, is for everyone to write down their ideas but ensure their names are never known. That way, opinions about thoughts are less closely tied to the status of the thinker and can be tested against each other with less fear or favour.

Every year more people recognize that it is wrong to kill wildlife for “sport”. Progress in this direction is slow because shooting is not a sport for watching, and only those few who take par realize the cruelty and destruction.

The number of gunners, however, grows rapidly. Children too young to develop proper judgments through independent thought are led a long way away by their gunning parents. They are subjected to advertisements of gun producers who describe shooting as good for their health and gun-carrying as a way of putting redder blood in the veins（血管）. They are persuaded by gunner magazines with stories honoring the chase and the kill. In school they view motion pictures which are supposedly meant to teach them how to deal with arms safely but which are actually designed to stimulate（刺激）a desire to own a gun.

Wildlife is disappearing because of shooting and because of the loss of wildland habitat Habitatloss will continue with our increasing population, but can we slow the loss of wildlife caused by shooting? There doesn't seem to be any chance if the serious condition of our birds is not improved. Wildlife belongs to everyone and not to the gunners alone. Although most people do not shoot, they seem to forgive shooting for sport because they know little or nothing about it. The only answer, then, is to bring the truth about sport shooting to the great majority of people.

Now, it is time to realize that animals have the same right to life as we do and that there is nothing fair or right about a person with a gun shooting the harmless and beautiful creatures. The gunners like to describe what they do as character-building, but we know that to wound an animal and watch it go through the agony of mortality can make nobody happy. If, as they would have you believe, gun-carrying and killing improve human character, then perhaps we should encourage war.

America's top education official says many schools are spending too much time teaching the “basics”—reading, math and writing. It might seem opposite to what educators have been promoting. But U.S. Education Secretary John King says children really deserve access to a well-rounded education that includes music and arts because it will help them go into being well-rounded, well-educated persons．

King spoke about his own education when explaining why schools need to teach more than math， reading and writing．

King grew up in New York. Both his parents died when he was quite young. In his house, things were often crazy and frightening. It was his teacher, Mr. Osterwei, who helped him escape his difficult life. Quite often, the teacher took him and his classmates to the theater, the zoo, the ballet and famous Museum of Natural History. “Those were powerful, life-changing experiences, ”King says. King graduated from Harvard University. He received his law degree from Yale University. He took charge of New York State public schools from 2011-2015. The U.S. Senate approved him as Education secretary last month．

Many schools spend almost all funding on the “basics” because they lack money for other subjects, King says. Or they want students to do better on tests used to compare student performance．

Students need to connect their studies and things that matter to them personally, such as music if they are to become “sophisticated(水平高的) thinkers”. A 2013 report by UNESCO says today's world needs people able to solve new and unusual problems. It says arts can help students find those answers. In the report, UNESCO said teaching the arts in China, South Korea and Japan is different．

From that in many Western countries, the emphasis(重点) in those three countries is “on joyful experiences and children's interests. ” In the West, educators are more likely to connect the arts to reading, writing and math. A 2014 report tried to compare how well countries teach children how to solve problems. It found Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China, Canada, Australia and Finland with the highest scores for 15-year-olds. Singapore led the way with a score of 562 out of a possible 1，000. The average score was 500. The United States had a score of 508．