People learn in three different ways: knowledge building, observation, and reflection.

First, learning comes through knowledge building. Typically, this happens at school, or from reading books or doing research on your own. We need to remember that information is different from knowledge. Information comes and goes, and it never stays in your mind. You need to think about information to make it part of your knowledge.

Second, you learn from observation. Young children are good at this type of learning. They learn what is good and what is bad by observing when their mothers and fathers get angry or when their older brothers or sisters are punished.

Third, we learn from our own experience. However, experience does not automatically lead to learning. If you want to learn something from your experience, you have to reflect on it and think about the meaning of that experience in your life.

Wheelchair tennis is one of the major wheelchair sports in the world. It is also an official sport in the Paralympics. Shingo Kunieda is one of the top wheelchair tennis players and has ranked first for many years. He has been in a wheelchair since he was nine years old and started playing wheelchair tennis at 11 years old. Shingo won the doubles title in the Athens Paralympics in 2004 but was not mentally strong enough to win other games. A mental trainer advised him to shout “I’m the strongest!” every day. Following the advice, Shingo had been winning singles titles. But he had no one to defeat anymore so he lost motivation to continue playing tennis. So Shingo challenged himself to get better every day. Shingo announced in 2009 that he would turn professional. He plays to win titles and encourage children to have hopes and dreams like he once did as a boy.

Oxford University professor Robin Dunbar stated in a study that people whose ancestors lived within the Arctic Circle have 20% larger eyeballs compared to those who lived near the equator. Previous studies have shown that the size of one’s eyeballs is associated with the size of the visual part of the brain. The larger the eyeballs, the higher the brain volume. It increases with latitude: people who live in higher places north and south of the equator have larger brain sizes.

Studies published in Biology Letters showed that the biggest brains (about 1,484 millimeters in size) were from Scandinavia whereas the smallest brains (about 1,200 millimeters in size) were in Micronesia. The eye size was also notably larger in Scandinavia, with 27 millimeters and 22 millimeters in Micronesia. Professor Dunbar said, “It’s only within the last 10,000 years or so that modern humans have occupied all latitudes right up to the Arctic Circle.” He concluded that the development may have happened within the last 10,000 years.

Rainforests are jungles that grow near the equator. The equator is the line between the north half and the south half of the earth.

Rainforests cover less than 3% of the Earth’s area, yet rainforests are home to more than half of our planet’s land animals. You may wonder why this is possible. Here is the reason.

In areas around the equator, temperatures are high, and it rains almost every day. These conditions are the best for wild animals. The climate there may be too hot and humid for humans, but it is a good place to live for wild animals. This is true for plants as well. In fact, about half the world’s plants are found in tropical rainforests.

Unfortunately, rainforests are disappearing quickly: an area about the size of 40 football fields disappears every minute. We should do something about it before it’s too late.

There are two purposes of education. One is building up knowledge; the other is maintaining social order.

First, you are educated to build up knowledge for yourself. In order to grow up as a person, you need to gain enough knowledge in various areas of study. You need to know enough about the world, humanity, science, and technology to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the world.

Second, you are educated to maintain social order. Through education, you’ll learn how to work together with other people. We call this “collaboration.” If you learn that collaboration is more efficient than working individually, our society as a whole will develop peacefully.

Researchers have discovered that wild animals and even birds feel grief at the loss of loved ones. Elephants mourn by staying close to the body of a group member that passed away and keep touching it for hours and even days. These animals shed tears and cover the body with tree branches. Many years after their death, elephants stand still when they walk past the place of their loved one’s death. This shows that elephants are aware of the concept of death and pay respect to those who passed away.

Aside from grief, animals also express gratitude. A scientist and his friend once came across a humpback whale caught in a fishnet off the coast in California. At first, they thought that the whale is already dead but they freed it by cutting the net when it moved a little. Instead of swimming away, the humpback whale started jumping on the surface of the ocean over and over with its fins. They felt it was the whale’s way to say “Thank you!” to them.

Animals probably have a lot in common us humans than we initially thought. It is important that we acknowledge them. Our recognition of animal emotions will help us get along with them better.

For thousands of years, people believed that the earth was flat and didn’t move. They thought that the sun was moving around the earth. In 1522, a Portuguese man, Ferdinand Magellan, completed a long sea journey. His ship named Trinidad sailed all the way around the world, and this showed that the earth is round.

In 1543, Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, produced a new theory that surprised the world of his day. He claimed that the earth moved around the sun! The church didn’t like this idea because they taught people that the earth was the center of the universe. Now, we are taught at school that Copernicus was right.