What will the schools be like in the future? Smart schools will be the schools of our century. These future schools are different from those in the past. They use high technology（科技）to help students learn more quickly and safely, as well as bring convenience（便利）to teachers.

The University of British Columbia has built Canada’s first 5G smart school. The school worked with a high-tech company（高科技公司）to build a 5G network across the school.

At Staffordshire University in the UK, many students enjoy talking to Beacon and asking it questions. Beacon is an AI robot that was made by the university. It is like a personal helper for students. They can ask it questions, and it can answer as a real teacher.

Amazon also has smart school things. Alexa, the company’s voice-activated（声控的）smart robot, can be used to help teachers with their classes. For example, it can remember what the teacher’s classroom is like, such as how bright（明亮的）the lights should be, and change（改变）them right away.

“Cities are so big, and there are so many stakeholders（利益相关者）, so it can be difficult to change. But universities have their own buildings... so they can become a living lab.” said Gemmy Ginty, a teacher who is working on smart schools for the University of Glasgow.

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Recently, China’s Ministry of Education has announced the Life Skills Curriculum Standards (课程标准) for Compulsory Education (义务教育) will be carried out in the fall semester of 2022. The classes will become part of the course in primary and middle schools from September. What the students have to learn in class includes many kinds of housework, such as “household cleaning and cooking”.

According to the standards, primary school students will be required to understand and learn the skills of home cooking, from preparing vegetables to finally being able to complete the whole process of home cooking by themselves.

News that primary and middle school students will learn cooking from September became one of the top hot topics on Sina Weibo, receiving more than 300 million views.

“This reminds me of my life skills class in primary school. I learned to make dumplings and do simple needlework (针线活), ” one Weibo user said. “It’s a super-good memory of my childhood.”

“These will be lifelong skills for these kids, helping them develop into better men, not just students who are able to take exams,” said another netizen.

As a part of the “double reduction” policy (双减政策) aiming to reduce homework and time spent on after-school classes, life skills education has become a new highlight of education development. An educational expert said that education should pay attention to “the progress of each student” and we should our opinions from “the result are more important” to “the process is important as well”.

“We should use different assessment to care about each student’s growth and progress, instead of just focusing on examinations.” said the expert.

①Have you ever paid attention to your school’s security guards or dining ball staff（员工）? Would you say “good morning” to your school’s cleaners? For high school student Ding Jiacheng, it’s a problem that many students don’t pay attention to the important jobs done by these non-teaching workers. He wanted to make a change.

②The boy from Hangzhou Entel Foreign Language School, together with several other students, worked on a project called “The Invisible（隐身的）are Significant”. They hoped more students would see and respect（尊重）the “invisible” but important staff on campus. The project won a prize at China Thinks Big, a competition held by Harvard University and Tsinghua University to advise teenagers to study social issues.

③“My team members and I sent questionnaires to 158 students,” said Ding. “In one question, 56 percent of the students said they would greet those non-teaching workers, while only 17 percent strongly believe that every student should do so.” The team also observed communication between students and workers. “When most students follow the rules of their teachers, one-third of the students go against the rules of the dormitory attendants（宿舍管理员）,” said Ding. “Our research shows that students treat non-teaching staff differently from teaching staff.”

④The main reason, according to Ding, is that students know little about the work done by non-teaching staff. They also have few chances to communicate with them. Therefore, Ding’s team shot videos to show staff working around campus. They also held a basketball match between students and non-teaching staff to increase their interaction. “We’ve also made some notes,” said Ding. “We hope these cute notes will help young people like the non-teaching staff more.”

⑤“The activity helped me understand that we can all make a good influence through our creative ideas,” Ding said.