Proper questioning has become a lost art. The curious four-year-old asks a lot of questions-incessant streams of “Why?” and “Why not?“ might sound familiar-but as we grow older, our questioning decreases. In a recent survey of more than 200 of our clients, we found that those with children estimated that 70-80% of their kids’ dialogues with others were comprised of questions. But those same clients said that only 15-25% of their own interactions consisted of questions. Why the drop of?

Think back to your time growing up and in school. Chances are you received the most recognition or reward when you got the correct answers. Later in life, that motivator continues. At work, we often reward those who answer questions, not those who ask them. Questioning conventional wisdom can even lead to being distanced, or considered a threat.

Because expectations for decision-making have gone from ”get it done soon“ to ”get it done now“ to ”it should have been done yesterday, “ we tend to jump to conclusions instead of asking more questions. And the unfortunate side effect of not asking enough questions is poor decision-making. That’s why it’s vital that we slow down and take the time to ask more and better questions. At best, we’ll arrive at better conclusions. At worst we’ll avoid a lot of rework later on.

Aside from not speaking up enough, many professionals don’t think about how different types of questions can lead to different outcomes. We should lead a conversation by asking the right kinds of questions, based on the problem we’re trying to solve. In some cases, we’ll want to expand our view of the problem rather than keeping it narrowly focused. In others, we may want to challenge basic assumptions or confirm our understanding in order to feel more confident in our conclusions. Therefore, asking the right kinds of questions is what counts in achieving a goal.

Everybody says that youth is the best time for our lives. Being young means romance, love and new discoveries, but it is also the most difficult time, because you have to make some very important decisions, which will influence your future life.

Things are not easy nowadays even for adults, but for teenagers, Who have to find their own place in society, it’s even difficult. It is necessary not only to adapt to society, but also to be confident of your position in five, ten or even twenty year’s time.

For the future it is important to have a good job. In order to get a really good job, you have to be well educated.   

Emotional problems for young people can be very important, too. The first teenager problem is that “nobody understands me”. Some parents often continue to treat their children as little children when they are starting to consider themselves to be adults.   

There are also some global problems. Young people in all countries are facing these problems. Let’s start with smoking. According to studies, at the age of 16, almost 72% of all boys and 37% of all girls in Russia have already tried smoking. Smoking is not a natural need.It’s just that teens try it when they want to appear to be more like adults.   

Drugs are also a serious problem. Students know the names of drugs well enough. 32% say they have tried drugs at least once, mainly because they were having fun, their friends influenced them to, they wanted to relax or they wanted to seem “cool”. That’s too bad.   

So, you see, problems do happen and they can’ t be ignored. We should pay much attention to them.

“Don't delete your browser (浏览器) history,” Lin Kai warns his 11-year-old son, who is supposed to be having lectures delivered by his schoolteachers. Mr. Lin has reason to be anxious.

To contain the spread of Covid-19, the authorities have closed schools and universities. “But study must not stop,” says the education ministry. Under its orders, the country's biggest exercise in remote learning is under way, watched over by parents. Mr. Lin, who lives in the eastern city of Hangzhou, has caught his son being distracted by online games. He wants his son to know that he will inspect the browser for evidence of such naughtiness.

There are other ways to enforce discipline. Liu Weihua, who teaches at Wuhan University of Technology, places more emphasis on how students perform in classroom discussions, which are conducted using video-conferencing platforms such as Ding talk by Alibaba and Ketang by Tencent.

The interruption is felt most keenly by pupils in the final year of secondary school. That is the year leading up to the Gaokao, the university-entrance exam. Many parents feared that online learning is a poor substitute for classroom instruction. Hou Kaixuan, who will sit the Gaokao in the northern city of Zhangjiakou this summer, eagerly waits for the re-opening of his school. “I'm simply more productive in a physical classroom,” he says.

When schools and universities eventually re-open, classrooms may be different, says Yue Qiu, a secondary-school teacher in Beijing. The teacher-student relationship will become “less hierarchical (等级分明的)”, he predicts. That is because China's extended experiment' with online learning is reducing the typical reserve (矜持) between instructor and pupil. Teachers who were previously reluctant to give out their contact details on WeChat, a messaging app, now rely on it to respond to students' questions. At Mr. Yue's school, students may even call their teachers to ask for feedback. If he is right, such a breaking-down of barriers could be one of the few happy by products of Covid-19.