On average, American kids ages 3 to 12 spent 29 hours a week in school, eight hours more that they did in 1981. They also did more household work and participated in more of such organized activities as soccer and ballet (芭蕾舞). Involvement in sports, in particular, rose almost 50% from 1981 to 1997: boys now spend an average of four hours a week playing sports; girls log half that time. All in all, however, children’s leisure time dropped from 40% of the day in 1981 to 25%

“Children are affected by the same time crunch (危机) that affects their parents,” says Sandra Hofferth, who headed the recent study of children’s timetable. A chief reason, she says, is that more mothers are working outside the home. (Nevertheless, children in both double-income and “male breadwinner” households spent comparable amounts of time interacting with their parents 19 hours and 22 hours respectively. In contrast, children spent only 9 hours with their single mothers.)

All work and no play could make for some very messed-up kids. “Play is the most powerful way a child explores the world and learns about himself,” says T. Berry Brazelton, professor at Harvard Medical School Unstructured(unorganized)play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to handle their relationships with their peers, but kids ages 3 to 12 spent only 12 hours a week engaged in it.

The children sampled spent a quarter of their rapidly decreasing “free time” watching television. But that, believe it or not, was one of the findings parents might regard as good news. If they’re spending less time in front of the TV set, however, kids aren’t replacing it with reading. Despite efforts to get kids more interested in books, the children spent just over an hour a week reading. Let’s face it, who’s got the time?

Essential Creativity

In a recent survey in America, 62% of people said that creativity was more important to success in the workplace than they had anticipated it would be when they were in school.

【小题1】 It is of course possible to scan people’s brains and see which parts are firing when an idea is created, but rather more romantically it can be thought of as something that cannot be identified. Creativity is what comes to you when you least expect it. You cannot demand creativity from your mind, nor can you demand that you are creative in a particular way.

One misconception about creativity is that it is reserved for a few special people. This is not true.   【小题2】 Another misconception is that creativity is all about the arts but this simply isn’t true: creativity extends to maths and science in just the way it does to music and literature.

Those who see things differently to others and are confident enough to make their ideas a reality are the ones who make the greatest changes in the world. Consequently, it is incredibly important that schools do not prevent creativity. 【小题3】 Students should be taught to ask questions and investigate when things do not make sense. They need to learn to view mistakes as opportunities for learning rather than something that was unsuccessful.

It is worrying that many schools are less concerned now with nurturing creativity when this is the most important time in history for it. It used to be that people worked hard, went to university, and got a job. That was it. But now, everyone works hard, goes to university — and there aren’t the jobs out there that guarantee a safe future.   【小题4】 We can use it to set ourselves apart, and channel it to face the challenges of the future.

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