Recently economists looked at the relationship between pupils’ month of birth and their schoolperformance. It was found that among fourth graders, the oldest children scored on math and readingsomewhere between four and twelve percentile points better than the youngest children. That can beexplained as a “huge effect.” It means that if you take two intellectually    21      fourth graders with birthdaysat opposite ends of the cutoff date, the older student could score in the eightieth percentile,    22    theyounger one could score in the sixty-eighth percentile. That’s the difference between    23    for a giftedprogram or not. The economists said, “We do ability grouping early on in childhood. We have advancedreading groups and advanced math groups. So, early on, if we look at young kids, in kindergarten and firstgrade, the teachers are    24    maturity with ability. And they put the old kids in the advanced stream,where they learn better skills; and the next year, because they are in the higher groups, they do even better;and in the next year, the same thing happens, and they do even better again. The only country we don’tsee this going on is Denmark.” Denmark waits to make selection decisions until maturity differences byage have      25   . This is because they have a national policy where they have no ability grouping untilthe age of ten.

The World Health Organization says that depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, affecting 350 million people. The National Institute of Mental Health reports seven percent of Americans   36   depression ina year. Therefore, depression is   37   as we can find depressed people everywhere. A depressed person can ask forextra syrup in their latte without explaining that they need it because they're   38   the infinite darkness of their souland they've lost all hope of escape. Depression doesn't diminish a person's desire to connect with other people, just theirability. In spite of what you might think, talking to friends and family living   39   depression can be really easy andmaybe even fun--the kind of fun   40   people enjoy each other's company effortlessly. Nobody feels awkward, andno one accuses the sad person of ruining the holidays.

       Since the 1990s, a prolific amount of memoirs written and published about the lives of girls and womenin the third world appeared in the market, telling the stories of their wretched girlhood or womanhood.Those stories often depict miserable lives under the dictatorship of strict regimes or by the__  31__  oftraditional cultural practices such as genital cutting. In the narration of these lives, girls and women usuallysuffer from different forms of gender violence. But a clear majority of those stories also__32__a brightside by turning those victims into heroines. They exhibit how those unfortunate girls and womeneventually survive through those terrible ordeals or stand on their own two feet by fighting against all theodds.__ 33__ are especially able to change things for themselves as well as their fellows of the samegender. As the first in the series, Desert Flower is Dirie’s (auto)biography detailing her combat withthe 34 of female genital mutilation (FGM). In her third book,__35__ , Dirie works together withseveral allies to launch an investigation into the practice of FGM and explore the possibility of relatedjuridical protection of girls’/women's rights in several European countries. Dirie’s true story is a livingproof that anyone can succeed in overcoming all the obstacles if they’re brave and determined and havefaith in themselves.