“I hate Tuesdays,” said Finn. “Tuesdays are the worst days now.”

“Wait and see,” said his mother. “You haven’t even met Miss Bea.”

Finn was starting piano lessons at 3:30 every Tuesday, right after school. That’s when his hands wanted to build his new Star-Blaster, a toy like Lego (乐高). Finn’s mother rang the doorbell. “Maybe she went shopping,” said Finn hopefully. But when the door opened, and there was Miss Bea, at home, with a warm smile.

“Hello there, Finn,” she said. “Come in.”

Miss Bea’s piano was black and shiny. Finn sat on the bench (长凳). His feet sure couldn’t run now. They couldn’t even touch the floor. He held on his Star-Blaster box. “That looks like a special box,” said Miss Bea. “Is it something new?”

“It’s going to be a Star-Blaster,” said Finn, “but I have to wait till I get home.” He tried not to look impolite when he said it.

“Ah, so you are a builder,” said Miss Bea. “That’s very good. I bet you can find out how this piano works. Why don’t you start by pressing (按) some keys?”

Finn pressed some white keys and then black keys. Then he pressed a white and black one at the same time. It didn’t really make a song, but Miss Bea said she liked it.

Then Miss Bea had a question. “If you were going to build a piano, how many pieces would you need?” Finn guessed all the way up to nine hundred fifty-seven, but it was “More-more-more.”

He tried sixty-eight zillion. “Not exactly,” laughed Miss Bea. “But it’s still a big number: ten thousand pieces.” “Whoa,” said Finn. “My Star-Blaster only has sixty-two. But it’s still going to be hard to put it together.” “But it will be worth (值得) it,” said Miss Bea, “Piano lessons are like that, too. You work and work to build a song. Your songs can be fast or slow, high or low, soft or loud.”

“I want to build a fast loud one,” said Finn. “You will,” said Miss Bea, “when your fingers learn to run and jump. But for now, our time is up.”

On the way home, Finn asked his mother how many songs there were to learn.

“There must be thousands,” she said, “especially (尤其) you practice.”

“Then I’d better start soon,” said Finn. He looked at all his fingers. “How many days,” he asked, “until Tuesday?”

Around the world, girls do better than boys at school. After looking at the test results of 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 74 areas around the world, these are the findings of a recent study.

Gender equality (性别平等) in those areas made no difference to the results. Other factors (因素), such as the income (收入) of the area also had little influence (影响) on the findings. In only three areas Colombia, Costa Rica and the Indian state Himachal Pradesh—boys do better.

So why do girls do much better? In the UK, girls do better than boys in GCSEs. GCSEs are exams taken at the age of 15 or 16. According to education expert Jan Toone, this is because of the way girls and boys grow up at home. “Parents encourage boys to be more active from an early age, while they don’t encourage the baby girls to be active... So girls got the skill of sitting still for longer time. That is useful to study for exams, like GCSEs.”

He goes on to say that boys often stay together in larger groups than girls. Because of this they are more easily to be influenced by friends and got gang minds. He says that GCSEs need a lot of one-person work and boys don’t think it’s ‘cool’.

So what is the answer? Should girls and boys go to school separately (分离地)? Or do we need to change exams to better influence boys’ skills? These are the questions to many countries.