Progress Test 6

So, I'd suggest that a good way to start is by talking to your neighbours and exchanging contact details with them. This'll allow you to get in touch immediately if there's anything suspicious happening next door.

Then, make sure you have a good discussion about the best course of action to take in case of emergency – make sure everyone is clear about what to do and who to call. If you plan ahead, this'll prevent uncertainty and even panic should anything happen later.

Another thing that I would advise you to do is always leave your radio playing – even when you go out. And if you keep your curtains closed, burglars are less likely to try and break in because they can't be sure whether someone's home or not.

Now, none of us want to be in the situation where we can't get into our own home, but do take time to think where the best and safest place is to leave your spare keys.

However, if you are going to spend some money, what I'd recommend more than anything else is that you invest in some well-made window locks for your house. This will give you peace of mind.

First of all, the skate park. One possible solution here is to get rid of some of the trees and bushes around the park – making it more visible to passersby and vehicles.

A couple of local primary schools have also been vandalised recently despite the presence of security guards. The schools don't have the funds for video surveillance – so we need people in the neighbourhood to call their nearest police station and report any suspicious activity immediately.

I expect most of you are familiar with the problems facing Abbotsford Street. It seems that no amount of warning signs or speed cameras will slow speeding drivers down. I'm happy to say, however, that the council have agreed to begin work over the next few months to put in a new roundabout.

The newsagent and the gift shop on Victoria Street were both broken into last week. So, we've been advising shop owners along there about what kind of video recording equipment they can have put in – we'll then be able to get evidence of any criminal activity on film.

The supermarket car park is also on our list of problem areas. We've advised them to get graffiti cleaned off immediately and get the smashed lights replaced.

1 His research showed that weak-ties had a significant effect on the behaviour and choices of populations – and this influence was something highly important in the fields of information science and politics, and as you can imagine, marketing also.

2 So, these friends-of-friends, people we might spend time with at social or work gatherings, might not be like us but they can still have a positive influence because we share the same sort of interests.

3 An example of this, an example of how the connection can influence us, is when our weak-ties get in touch and pass on details about jobs they think might be suitable for us.

4 Some of these studies have looked at how weak-tie networks are useful to us in other ways, and one thing that seems to improve as a result of weak-tie influence is our health.

5 Without question, online social networking allows us to pass on the latest news to be up-to-date with local and global events – and for many, this information comes from sources more trustworthy than local media.

6 Meanwhile, people are developing friendships and professional networks in a way that wasn't possible before – the process is faster.

7 One real concern, however, is the increase in the amount of fraud, where for example, people are using the personal data of others, which they've put online, for criminal purposes.

8 And then, certainly, for employers, online social networking sites have provided a great time wasting opportunity – reducing productivity like never before.

9 The poor grades of school children are also frequently linked to the time spent on social networking sites, but it would be naive to believe there are no other contributing factors.

10 There are any number of articles connecting online activity to falling levels of physical fitness – but it's too easy to blame the Internet for our social problems.

11 Dunbar is not against online relationships, but he maintains that face-to-face interaction is essential for the initial creation of true friendship and connections.

12 He's concerned that for young people – if their only experience of forming relationships is online – this doesn't allow them to form the ability or acquire the strategies for maintaining relationships.

13 Dunbar has found that the human brain has evolved in a way that means we can only give real attention to a particular number of people. 150, apparently.

A At Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a suburb west of Helsinki, Kari Louhivuori, the school's principal, decided to try something extreme by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a recent immigrant, was falling behind, resisting his teacher's best efforts. So he decided to hold the boy back a year. Standards in the country have vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade, in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. 'I took Besart on that year as my private student,' explains Louhivuori. When he was not studying science, geography and math, Besart was seated next to Louhivuori's desk, taking books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, he had conquered his adopted country's vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, learn.

B This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for Finland's amazing record of education success. The transformation of its education system began some 40 years ago but teachers had little idea it had been so successful until 2000. In this year, the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best at reading in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of the 57 nations that participate in science. In the latest PISA scores, the nation came second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide.

C In the United States, government officials have attempted to improve standards by introducing marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, apparently thought competition was the answer. One policy invited states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not be welcome in Finland. 'I think, in fact, teachers would tear off their shirts,' said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience. 'If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.'

D There are no compulsory standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students' senior year in high school. There is no competition between students, schools or regions. Finland's schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators rather than business people or politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a Finnish child has a good chance of getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.

E It's almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry to school. Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all five-year-olds, where the emphasis is on socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns 17. Schools provide food, counseling and taxi service if needed. Health care is even free for students taking degree courses.

F Finland's schools were not always a wonder. For the first half of the twentieth century, only the privileged got a quality education. But in 1963, the Finnish Parliament made the bold decision to choose public education as the best means of driving the economy forward and out of recession. Public schools were organized into one system of comprehensive schools for ages 7 through 16. Teachers from all over the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not prescriptions, for them to refer to. Besides Finnish and Swedish (the country's second official language), children started learning a third language (English is a favorite) usually beginning at age nine. The equal distribution of equipment was next, meaning that all teachers had their fair share of teaching resources to aid learning. As the comprehensive schools improved, so did the upper secondary schools (grades 10 through 12). The second critical decision came in 1979, when it was required that every teacher gain a fifth-year Master's degree in theory and practice, paid for by the state. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomous decision-making and respect made the job desirable. And as Louhivuori explains, 'We have our own motivation to succeed because we love the work.'

1 For a fascinating tale about creativity, look at a cleaning product called the Swiffer and how it came about, urges writer Jonah Lehrer. In the story of the Swiffer, he argues, we have the key elements in producing breakthrough ideas: frustration, moments of insight and sheer hard work. The story starts with a multinational company which had invented products for keeping homes spotless, and couldn't come up with better ways to clean floors, so it hired designers to watch how people cleaned. Frustrated after hundreds of hours of observation, they one day noticed a woman do with a paper towel what people do all the time: wipe something up and throw it away. An idea popped into lead designer Harry West's head: the solution to their problem was a floor mop with a disposable cleaning surface. Mountains of prototypes and years of teamwork later, they unveiled the Swiffer, which quickly became a commercial success.

2 Lehrer, the author of Imagine, a new book that seeks to explain how creativity works, says this study of the imagination started from a desire to understand what happens in the brain at the moment of sudden insight. 'But the book definitely spiraled out of control,' Lehrer says. 'When you talk to creative people, they'll tell you about the 'eureka' moment, but when you press them they also talk about the hard work that comes afterwards, so I realised I needed to write about that, too. And then I realised I couldn't just look at creativity from the perspective of the brain, because it's also about the culture and context, about the group and the team and the way we collaborate.'

3 When it comes to the mysterious process by which inspiration comes into your head as if from nowhere, Lehrer says modern neuroscience has produced a 'first draft' explanation of what is happening in the brain. He writes of how burnt-out American singer Bob Dylan decided to walk away from his musical career in 1965 and escape to a cabin in the woods, only to be overcome by a desire to write. Apparently 'Like a Rolling Stone' suddenly flowed from his pen. 'It's like a ghost is writing a song,' Dylan has reportedly said. 'It gives you the song and it goes away.' But it's no ghost, according to Lehrer.

4 Instead, the right hemisphere of the brain is assembling connections between past influences and making something entirely new. Neuroscientists have roughly charted this process by mapping the brains of people doing word puzzles solved by making sense of remotely connecting information. For instance, subjects are given three words -such as 'age', 'mile' and 'sand'- and asked to come up with a single word that can precede or follow each of them to form a compound word. (It happens to be 'stone'.) Using brain-imaging equipment, researchers discovered that when people get the answer in an apparent flash of insight, a small fold of tissue called the anterior superior temporal gyrus suddenly lights up just beforehand. This stays silent when the word puzzle is solved through careful analysis. Lehrer says that this area of the brain lights up only after we've hit the wall on a problem. Then the brain starts hunting through the 'filing cabinets of the right hemisphere' to make the connections that produce the right answer.

5 Studies have demonstrated it's possible to predict a moment of insight up to eight seconds before it arrives. The predictive signal is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the brain's right hemisphere, which are closely associated with relaxing activities. 'When our minds are at ease - when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain - we're more likely to direct the spotlight of attention towards that stream of remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere,' Lehrer writes. 'In contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be towards the details of the problems we are trying to solve.' In other words, then we are less likely to make those vital associations. So, heading out for a walk or lying down are important phases of the creative process, and smart companies know this. Some now have a policy of encouraging staff to take time out during the day and spend time on things that at first glance are unproductive (like playing a PC game), but day-dreaming has been shown to be positively correlated with problem-solving. However, to be more imaginative, says Lehrer, it's also crucial to collaborate with people from a wide range of backgrounds because if colleagues are too socially intimate, creativity is stifled.

6 Creativity, it seems, thrives on serendipity. American entrepreneur Steve Jobs believed so. Lehrer describes how at Pixar Animation, Jobs designed the entire workplace to maximise the chance of strangers bumping into each other, striking up conversation and learning from one another. He also points to a study of 766 business graduates who had gone on to own their own companies. Those with the greatest diversity of acquaintances enjoyed far more success. Lehrer says he has taken all this on board, and despite his inherent shyness, when he's sitting next to strangers on a plane or at a conference, forces himself to initiate conversations. As for predictions that the rise of the Internet would make the need for shared working space obsolete, Lehrer says research shows the opposite has occurred; when people meet face-to-face, the level of creativity increases. This is why the kind of place we live in is so important to innovation. According to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, when corporate institutions get bigger, they often become less receptive to change. Cities, however, allow our ingenuity to grow by pulling huge numbers of different people together, who then exchange ideas. Working from the comfort of our homes may be convenient, therefore, but it seems we need the company of others to achieve our finest 'eureka' moments.