初中英语写作常用句型（推荐20篇）

Last sunday. I and my father, mother, grandparents, brother went to changbaishan by bus. In the morning we came down the mountain. I saw wooded mountains, wild flowers bloom. We climb up the hill along the mountain path. Come halfway up the mountain, I feel a little tired，it began to rain,My West Lake silk umbrella missed,. Dad said to me,“zhaixiaowei， don’t do anything halfway.”at last，So I insisted reached the top, the top of the scenery so beautiful.We were flying kites, I was thirsty, my mother bought me a bottle of water, .finally we went home.finally，Since then, Ive kept the umbrella。i was very happy。

Everyone has a dream，Everyone‘s dreams are great, happy and distant，My dream is that my family and friends can be happy .Although this is not realistic.We nevitably experience suffering and failure in the real life.But because of this,We become strong and courageous.although some dream is unrealistic,we have dream,we live significative!whether or not the dream come ture,we should hard work,Let this life without any regrets.

谁都有梦想。每一个人的梦想都是伟大的,幸福的,遥远的.我的梦想是身边的每一个人都能够开心幸福的生活。尽管这不太现实。毕竟在现实的生活里难免会经历坎坷与心酸，但正因为这样，我们才变得更加坚强和勇敢。虽然有些梦想是不切实际的，但因为心中有梦想，我们才生活得更有意义！不管梦想能不能够实现，我们都要努力奋斗，让今生无悔！

[写我的梦想初中英语作文

I like playing basketball .It’s very interesting . I often play it with my friends. It’s a team work.. Everyone needs to work together with others. (每个人都需要和别人合作). I can also make many new friends in the game. My favorite basketball player is Yao Ming. He is very tall and plays basketball very well. I want to play in NBA one day like him.

我喜欢打篮球。它非常有趣。我经常玩它与我的朋友们。这是一个团队的工作..每个人都需要与其他人一起工作。 （每个人都需要和别人合作）。我还可以在游戏中交到很多新朋友。我最喜欢的篮球运动员是姚明。他非常高，篮球打得非常好。我想在NBA玩上一天像他一样。

[关于我的爱好初中英语作文

在教我的老师中，有亲切和蔼的语文老师，有严肃认真的数学老师，有活泼开朗的音乐老师，还有幽默诙谐的体育老师……这些老师都无私地教给我们各种知识，让我们在学习的海洋中自由地翱翔。最让我难忘的是教我英语的蒋老师，她不仅让我爱上了英语，更让我成为一个勇于克服缺点的人。

刚上一年级时，由于我在换牙，口齿不清，所以在英语课上根本就不敢进行口语练习，生怕同学们笑话我“大舌头“。当时同学们在老师的带领下，都能流利地用英语谈话，而一句简单的“my name is yuxiaolin”我都说不出来。面对老师的提问，我总是把头低下，心想：别叫我，千万别叫我!开始，同学们都踊跃举手，所以蒋老师也就没有发现胆小的我。

可是随着时间的推移，老师终于在一次口语练习的时候叫到了把身体都快溜到课桌下的我。我在大家的注视下，红着脸站起来了，我感到自己的眼泪快要流出来了。“别着急，说出你的名字。”老师的语气是那么柔和，可是我说不出口。时间就在我的窘迫中渐渐流逝，终于老师打破了沉默，“我知道你的名字，老师们都夸奖你是个学习认真的孩子。同学们，是不是呀?”同学们都不假思索地应和：“是!”听到这些，我的眼泪不由自主地流下来了。蒋老师带领大家一起说出：“my name is yuxiaolin! my name is yuxiaolin!”奇怪，我竟然不害怕了，也跟着同学们一起说连续说了两遍，就在大家都停下时，由于惯性，我又说了“my name is yuxiaolin”。“你真棒!”老师竟然祝贺我，“好孩子，你能再大声说一遍吗?” “my name is yuxiaolin!”我终于敢张开嘴了，心里也仿佛卸下了一块大石头。同学们没有嘲笑我，老师没有批评我，耶!我不怕了!

从那以后，不论什么课，我都勇敢地举手发言了，胆小的毛病终于摆脱了。在英语课上，我的积极性更高，不仅敢发言，而且还愿意和老师、同学们对话，英语的口语交际能力明显提高了。当初那节英语课一直留在我记忆的最深处，蒋老师如春风般的话语时刻在我耳边响起。

Im always working hard for a bright future. I imagine what my life in 20

years will be like.

In 20 years, I will play an important role in my family. I will take care

of my parents. Maybe I will be married and have a lovely child. In my free time,

I will get together with my good friends to talk about the past school life. We

can also do other things such as gardening and doing yoga. Whats more, I will

have a job and face new challenges. I think I will be a doctor and help

patients. Last but not least, maybe I will have a robot. It can help me a lot in

my daily life.

In a word, I hope my life in 20 years will be a better one!

Kung Fu Panda is the lastest project from Dreamworks. It’s a CG-animated comedy about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda named Po Po (Voiced by Jack Black), who must somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to save the Valley of Peace from a villainous snow leopard, Tai Lung. Prophecy said that Po is the “Chosen One” to save the day. But he appears to be the laziest of all the animals in ancient China. A group of martial arts masters are going to need a black belt in patience if they are going to turn this slacker panda into a kung fu fighter before it’s too late.I like the movie because it is very interesting and funny.The monkey is voiced by Jackey Chan who is my favourite star!

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关于夏天的初中英语作文关于夏天的英语作文范文初中英语作文：我眼中的夏天初一英语作文范文：我爱夏天初一英语作文范文：我喜欢的季节初一英语作文范文：第二个季节初一英语作文范文：夏季之雨夏天的初中优秀英语作文：夏天初一英语作文范文：最美的夏天初一英语作文范文：美丽的夏季初一英语作文：How to Learn English Well

[关于夏天的初中英语作文

坚持，是困境牢笼里的钥匙;是绝经低谷中的一线生机;是难过时依然向前奋进的勇气。而有了坚持相伴，我们才能拥有探索远方的信心……

小时候，常常坐在阳台往外看，还动不动调皮地把月季全摘下来，而那天我却在阳台看到了不一样的东西。它在正午阳光的衬托下仿佛闪闪发光，双翅上虎纹一般精致的花纹，在我目不转睛的望着它时，它竟飞到了我的腿上，犹如飞行的花朵，动作轻盈而美丽，我被它深深吸引了，直到它离去，我才依依不舍地走开，还不时地回头看，好像它还在阳台似的。

小学时，在书上看到柑橘凤蝶是吃花椒长大的。于是我在楼下，一片又一片的寻找。果然，我找到了，犹如找到千万宝藏般激动，可它却是鸟屎样子的，看着就是一滩。身上细密的纹路像极了鸟屎，甚至有点恶心。养了几天，它莫名其妙的变绿了，吃得更多，越来越肥，我每天细心地摘叶子洗叶子。绿绿的身子有些肥硕，头上还有两个大眼斑，还有些可爱。终于，它化蛹了，然而就是化蛹，它好像沉睡了过去，像枯枝一样黯淡的颜色僵硬的蛹壳好像都在说明它已经飞向了天堂，我伤心的将它放在阳台的花椒上，难过地走开。

冬天是漫长的，在寒风中期待春的暖阳。第二年，春风拂过大地，万物蓬勃。可惜那只蝶再也不能享受了。在我伤心的望去时，它竟有了花纹，和我小时候见的一样。只是很小，我期待的望着它，过了三个小时，一声清脆的声音传来，它顶开了蛹壳，纤细的腿努力向外抓着，我顺势伸去了手，它抓住了，开始用力往上爬，可那细如银针的腿承受不住，一毫米一毫米，我屏息敛声，目不转睛地盯着它，它肥大的肚子一点一点在它不懈的努力下，终于从蛹中脱离了，没一会儿双翅也舒展开了，有我的手那么大，排了蛹便也变面条了，它变成蝴蝶了，真不容易!它在阳光下张开双翅，它就停驻在我的手上，它精致的花纹，和如天鹅绒般的黑色，让它显得更加美丽，让人窒息!太好看了，太美丽了，我不舍地将手伸出窗外，挥了挥，它双翅一振，便飞向了远方，我看着它在天空翱翔，直到它消失在远方。

回过头，它的美丽仿佛还在眼前，它那轻盈的“舞姿”还在我眼中跳动。而再想，它那美丽何曾容易，又要屈身于鸟屎一样的外表，还要在僵硬的蛹壳中不吃不喝，度过那寒风如刀绞的冬天，还要在最后关头破茧成蝶，可谓九生一死，而如果没有坚持带给它的信念，它又怎能得到重生，而我也被它的坚持所震撼。

蝴蝶，你的美丽仍在我脑海，你的精神仍让我铭记!我也希望，我能像你一样，带着坚持前行，有了坚持相伴，我也会拥有在人生道路上努力前行的勇气!

导语：要学好写英语短文，就必须经常练习写作。记日记是提高书面表达能力的有效方法之一。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文指导，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

一、日记的格式

英文日记通常由书端和正文两个部分组成。日记常以第一人称记下当天生活中的所见、所闻、所做或所想的事情。中、英文的日记三格式大致一样。英语日记的书端是专门写日记的日期、星期和天气的。左上角是日期(年、月、日)、星期。右上角写上当天的天气情况，如：Sunny，Fine，Rainy，Windy，Snowy，Cloudy等。

1、日期表达有多种形式。年、月、日都写时，通常以月、日、年为顺序，月份可以缩写，日和年用逗号隔开。例如：

A)September 1，2004或September 1st，2004也可省略写成Sept. 1，2004或Sept. 1st，2004;the 1st of September in 2004(月份不可以缩写)

B)只有月、日：September 1或September 1st(月份可以缩写)

C)只有年、月：September 2004或the September of 2004(月份不可以缩写)

以上的1或1st都应读作the first.

2、星期也可以省略不写，可将其放在日期前或后，星期和日期之间不用标点，但要空一格，星期也可缩写。如：

Saturday，October 22nd，2004;October 22nd，2004 Saturday

3.天气情况必不可少。天气一般用一个形容词如：Sunny，Fine，Rainy，Snowy 等表示。写在日期之后，用逗号隔开，位于日记的右上角。如：

Saturday，March 4，2004，Windy;1st January，2004，Fine

二、日记的要求

日记的正文是日记的主要部分，写在星期和日期的正下方，可以顶格写，也可以内缩3至5个字母的空间。由于记载的内容通常已经发生，谓语动词多用一般过去时。但也可根据具体情况，用其它时态。如：记叙天气、描写景色，为了描写生动，可以使用现在时，以表现当时的情景。再如文后发表感想或评论可用现在时态或将来时态。记日记力求简单明了，有连贯性。若有文字提示，则应重视提示，把握要点。在句式上尽量使用简单句，以防繁杂，造成语法、句型错误。

三、日记的类型和训练

日记分为记事型、议论型、描写型和抒情型。建议大家在学习写日记的过程中，可按以下步骤进行：

①将一天所经历的主要事情和过程依次简要地记下来，不附加任何感情色彩，这是最简单的记日记的方法;

②阅读别人的日记，并利用所学过的句型来表达个人在一天中观察到的或感受到的事情。

「范文与点评」

March 12th，2003，Tuesday Sunny (Fine)

Today is Tree Planting Day. At 7∶30 in the morning，all the students in our class met at the school gate. We walked to the park. Miss Gao and other teachers went and worked with us. All the students worked very hard，and we planted about 200 trees. Though we were dirty and tired，we still felt very happy.

这是一篇记叙型的日记。结构严谨，中心突出，有选择地记录当天的见闻(人或事)，并加以分析和评论。

This is my study.There is a desk in it.On the desk,there are a lot of books,a walkman and a clock.Behind the desk,there is a window.On the window,there is a beautiful curtain.In front of the desk,there is a chair.Look at the wall!There is a map of China on the wall.Next to the map,there is a photo of my family.

My study is small.But it is nice and clean.I like it very much.

[我的学习初中英语作文

句型1.

It (so) happened(chanced) that +clause. = sb. happened /chanced to do sth. =sb.did sth. by chance. 如：

It happened that he was out when I got there. 当我到那儿时，碰巧他不在。=He happened to be out when I got there.= It chanced that he was out when I got there= He was out by chance when I got there.

句型2.

It seems that sb. do/ be doing/ have done/ had done= Sb. seems to do/ be doing/ have done/to be done/to have been done(还有动词appear等可这样使用)如:

It seemed that he had been to Beijing before.他好象以前去过北京。=He seemed to have been to Beijing before.

句型3.

It is / was+被强调的部分+that(who)+剩余的部分.如：

It wasn’t until he came back that I went to bed.直到他回来我才睡觉。(一定要注意被强调句型中的谓语动词否定的转移)。 It was because he was ill that he didn’t come to school today.只因为他有病了今天没有来上学。(只能用because而不能用for, as 或since)

It is I who am a student. 我确实是个学生。(句中am不能用are来代替。)

句型4.

It is high time (time/ about time)+ (that) 主语+should do / did+其它。(从句中的谓语动词用的是虚拟语气。)如:

It is high time that we should go / went home.我们该回家了。

句型5.

It is / was said ( reported…)+that+从句. 如：

It was said that he had read this novel.据说他读过这篇小说。=He was said to have read this novel.

句型6.

It is impossible / necessary/ strange…that clause.(从句中的谓语用should+do / should have done，其形式是虚拟语气。)如：

It is strange that he should have failed in this exam.真奇怪，他这次考试没有及格。

句型7.

It is + a pity/ a shame…that clause.(注意从句中的谓语动词用should do或should have done的形式，但should可以省略。)如：

He didn’t come back until the film ended. It was a pity that he should have missed this film. 他直到电影结束才回来。他没有看到这部电影真可惜。

句型8.

It is suggested / ordered/ commanded /…that +clause.(从句的谓语动词用should do, 但should可以省略。)如：

It is suggested that the meeting should be put off.有人建议推迟会议。

句型9.

It is/was+表示地点的名词+where+从句。(注意本句不是强调句型，而是以where引导的定语从句。)如：

It was this house where I was born.请比较：It was in this house that I was born.(后一句是强调句型。)

句型10.

It is / was +表示时间的名词+when+从句。(注意本句型也不是强调句型，而是以when引导的定语从句。)如：

It was 1999 when he came back from the United States. 请比较：It was in 1999 that he came back from the United States.

句型11.

It is well-known that+从句。如：

It is well-known that she is a learned woman.众所周知，她是个知识渊博的妇女。

句型12.

It is +段时间+since+主语+did. 请比较：

It was +段时间+since+主语+had done. 如：

It is five years since he left here.他已经离开这儿五年了。

It was five years since he left here.(同上)

注意下列句型的翻译:It is five years since he lived here.他从这儿搬走已经有五年了。

句型13.

It +谓语+段时间+before+主语+谓语.( before引导的是时间状语从句。) 如：

It wasn’t long before the people in that country rose up.没有多久那个国家的人民就起义了。

It will be three hours before he comes back.三个小时之后他才能回来。

句型14.

It is +形容词(possible, impossible, necessary等) +for+ sb.+ to do. 如：

It is impossible for me to finish this work before tomorrow.我明天之前完成此工作是不可能的。

句型15.

It is +(心理品质方面的)形容词+of + sb. +to do.= 主语+ be +形容词+to do.(常用的形容词有：kind, stupid; foolish, good, wise等。)如：

It is kind of you to help me.=You are kind to help me.你真好给我提供了帮助。

I like watching all kinds of sports, especially tennis. Roger Federer is

famous all around the world, who has been popular for many years. Now he is

almost 35, which is the old age for tennis player. Many players choose to quit

playing as they are more than 30 and Roger was once doubted by the public. They

believed that Roger would not play as good as before, but Roger proved that they

were wrong. This year, Roger won two grand slams. He is still the top tennis

player. Federer is the real hero in my heart. He not only keeps on playing

tennis, but also a good husband and father. He never lets his fans down.

I have a white cat. It is a present from my mother on my birthday. It’s very beautiful. I call it Mimi.

Mimi is very naughty. She likes to play with me. She often runs here and there and likes running after something. Mimi’s favourite game is playing with balls, ropes and stones. I love it very much. Sometimes, Mimi is very gentle. She likes to wash her face and doesn’t play with me. After lunch, Mimi often lies on the sofa to sleep. When I go home, Mimi often jumps onto my knees. I like to give a bath to Mimi.

Oh, my baby cat brings me much happiness. We are good friends. I love Mimi.

I had a dog called a gray, because it was a long gray hair, and it was long with a pair of round eyes, and its eyes looked around and seemed to find something. It is always short ears always bowed, I looked like incredibly.

Its temper can be weird, and if it is happy to put the tail up in the barking applause, as if "master owner, today I am very happy, can take me out to play?" This can rely on its mood, if it is Unhappy, no matter how good it is, it is not heard. Remember that once out to play, where the dog will be fast ran over, as if there is very familiar with it, playing a long time, it ran back to me, I took him home.

The dog is very fond of eating meat, it is often the first to eat meat and then eat. He was very cute, once I test it, put the meat under the meal, but it smelled out, in the bark called "master you good or bad ah." I have a dog so that a friend is particularly happy.

Transportation has been greatly changed in the past few years. In ancient

days, people used to travel by horse or carriage. The journey was often tiring

and tedious. Then people had buses, trains and ships, which could shorten the

time of the long-distance trip. Now we have not only more private cars, but also

planes and high-speed rails. All of these modern transports could offer us a

quick and pleasant travel. Thus, more and more people enjoy traveling very much

these days. In conclusion, modern transportation has completely changed our

life. Thanks to modern transportation, our world is becoming smaller and

smaller.

一、简单句的九大基本句型

1. “主语 + 谓语”(即“主谓”句型)

这一句型英汉语言结构形式完全相同，说明“某人或某物如何动作”，或者说“某人或某物自身怎样运动”。

例：They arrived in Harbin yesterday morning.

分析：“他们”(主语)“到了”(谓语动作)。

The earth turns around the sun.地球围绕太阳转。

The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west.太阳东升西落。

2. “主语 + 谓语 + 宾语”(即“主谓宾”句型)

这一句型英汉语言的结构形式完全相同，用以说明“某人或某物做什么事情”，或者说“某人或某物发出了动作，并且其动作涉及到另一个人或物”。

例：I study English.

分析：“我”(主语)“学习”(谓语动作)“英语”(宾语即动作涉及的对象)。

I like swimming.我喜欢游泳。

3. “主语 + 谓语 + 间接宾语 + 直接宾语”(即“主谓双宾”句型)

这一句型英汉语序结构相同，说明“某人为谁(间接宾语为人)做某事”，或者说“某人或物的运动涉及到两个对象，其中一个间接对象为人，另一个为物”。

例：Our teacher taught us English.

分析：“我们的老师”(主语)“教”(谓语动作)“我们”(间接宾语)“英语”(直接宾语)。

4. “主语 + 谓语 + 宾语 + 宾语补足语”(即“主谓宾补”句型)

这一句型说明“某人或某物要求(使、让)某人做什么”或“某人感觉某人或物怎么样”。

例： He asked her to go there.

分析：“他”(主语)“要求”(谓语动作)“她”(宾语即动作涉及的对象)“去那里”(补语—补充说明宾语应做什么)。

5. “主语 + have + 宾语”(即“拥有”句型)

这一句型主要用于说明“某人或某物拥有什么(宾语，即有形或无形的资源)”。

例： You have a nice watch. 你有一块漂亮的手表

分析：“你”拥有一块漂亮的手表，即你拥有一个可以及时且漂亮的器具。

6. “There + be + 主语+ …”(即“存在”句型)

这一句型用以说明“在某地或某时存在某人或物”。

例：There is a bird in the tree. 在树上有一只鸟。

分析：“在树上”(地点)“有一只鸟”(存在物)。

7. “主语 + 系动词+ 表语”(即“主系表”句型)

这一句型用以说明“某人(某物、某事、某种概念)具有什么特征或处于什么状态”。汉语的“是”字结构属于这一英语句型的形式之一。常用的联系动词有be, keep，lie, remain, stand, become, fall, get, go, grow, turn, look, feel, seem, smell, sound, taste, 等。

例： I am a teacher. 我是一名老师

分析：“我”(主语)“是”(系动词)“一名老师”(表语—即表明主语的身份)。

She felt very tired. 她感觉到很累。

He became an engineer.他成为了一名工程师。

You look pale today, are you ill? 你今天脸色看起来苍白，病了吗?

8. 比较句型

这一句型用以比较物质甲与乙之间的异同。

1) 相等比较: …as + 形容词/副词原级 + as…;

…as + 形容词+名词 + as…

例：He is as rich as John.他和约翰一样富有。

例：He has as much money as she does.他和她的钱一样多

2) 劣等比较： …less + 形容词/副词原级 + than …

例：He is less careful than she. 他没她细心。

3) 优等比较：…+ 形容词/副词比较级 + than… ;

…the + 形容词/副词比较级 + of the two…

例：She is more careful than he.她比他细心多了。

例： He is the cleverer of the two boys.两个男孩中他更聪明些。

4)最高级：the + 形容词/副词最高级(单数名词或one)+ {of(among) + 人或物｝

{in + 场所｝

例： He is the tallest in the class.他是班上最高的。

9. “it + is/was + 形容词 + to do/从句”(即评价句型)

这一句型用于说明“某一动作或事情属于什么性质或具有什么特征”。即对某一动作或事情进行评价。(这里it 是形式主语，真正的主语是 to do 结构或 that 从句)

例：It is important to learn a foreign language.学习一门外语很重要。

分析：本句重在说明“学习一门外语”(to learn a foreign language)这一动作的性质是“重要的”。

下面的材料旨在丰富学生在是非问题写作方面的思想和语言，考生在复习时可以先分类阅读这些篇章，然后尝试写相关方面的作文题。

对于素材中用黑体字的部分，特别建议你熟读，背诵，因为它们在语言和观点上都值得吸收。学习语言的人应该明白，表达能力和思想深度都靠日积月累，潜移默化。从某种意义上说，提高英语写作能力无捷径可走，你必须大段背诵英语文章才能逐渐形成语感和用英语进行表达的能力。这一关，没有任何人能代替你过。

因此，建议你下点苦功夫，把背单词的精神拿出来背诵文章。何况，并不是要求你背了之后永远牢记在心：你可以这个星期背，下个星期忘。这没有关系，相信你的大脑具有神奇的能力。背了工具箱里的文章后，你会惊讶的发现：I can think in English now！

1.?????? Proverbs

1. A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success.

2. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.

3. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

4. The classroom--not the trench--is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.

5. Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

6. It is the purpose of education to help us become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny.

7. You see, real ongoing, lifelong education doesn’t answer questions; it provokes them.

8. People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

9.the most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.

10. The essence of our efforts to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each as equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.

11. A great teacher never strives to explain his vision-he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

12. If you can read and don’, you are an illiterate by choice.

2. Damaging Research

A study by National Parent-Teacher Organization revealed that in the average American school, eighteen negatives are identified for every positive that is pointed out. The Wisconsin study revealed that when children enter the first grade, 80 percent of them feel pretty good themselves, but by the time they get to the sixth grade, only 10 percent of them have good self-images.

3. Education and Citizenship

An important aspect of education in the United States is the relationship between education and citizenship. Throughout its history this nation has emphasized public education as a means of transmitting democratic values, creating equality of opportunity, and preparing new generations of citizens to function in society. In addition, the schools have been expected to help shape society itself. During the 1950s, for example, efforts to combat racial segregation focused on the schools. Later, when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite, American schools and colleges came under intense pressure and were offered many incentives to improve their science and mathematics programs so that the nations would not fall behind the Soviet Union in scientific and technological capabilities.

Education is often viewed as a tool for solving social problems, especially social inequality. The schools, t is thought, can transform young people from vastly different backgrounds into competent, upwardly mobile adults. Yet these goals seem almost impossible to attain. In recent years, in fact, public education has been at the center of numerous controversies arising from the gap between the ideal and the reality. Part of the problem is that different groups in society have different have different expectations. Some feel that children should be taught basic job-related skills; still others believe education should not only prepare children to compete in society but also help them maintain their cultural identity (and, in the case of Hispanic children, their language). On the other hand, policymakers concerned with education emphasize the need to increase the level of student achievement and to improve parents in their children’s education.

Some reformers and critics have called attention to the need to link formal schooling with programs designed to address social problems. Sociologist Charles Moscos, for example, is a leader in the movement to expand programs like the Peace Corps, Vista, and Outward Bound into a system of voluntary national service. National service, as Moscos defines it, would entail “the full-time undertaking of public duties by young people whether as citizen soldiers or civilian servers-who are paid subsistence wages” and serve for at least one year. In return for this period of service, the volunteers would receive assistance in paying for college or other educational expenses.

Advocates of national service and school-to-work programs believe that education does not have to be confined to formal schooling. In devising strategies to provide opportunities for young people to serve their society, they emphasize the educational value of citizenship experiences gained outside the classroom. At this writing there is little indication that national service will become a new educational institution in the United States, although the concept is steadily gaining support among educators and social critics.

4. The Teacher’s Role

Given the undeniable importance of classroom experience, sociologists have done a considerable amount of research on what goes on in the classroom. Often they start from the premise that, along with the influence of peers, students’ experiences in the classroom are of central importance to their later development. One study examined the impact of a single first-grade teacher on her students’ subsequent adult status. The surprising results of this study have important implications. It is evident that good teachers can make a big difference in children’s lives, a fact that gives increased urgency to the need to improve the quality of primary-school teaching. The reforms carried out by educational leaders like James Comer suggest that when good teaching is combined with high levels of parental involvement the results can be even more dramatic.

Because the role of the teacher is to change the learner in some way, the teacher-student relationship is an important part of education. Sociologists have pointed out that this relationship is asymmetrical or unbalanced, with the teacher being in a position of authority and the student having little choice but to passively absorb the information provided by the teacher. In other words, in conventional classrooms there is little opportunity for the students to become actively involved in the learning process. On the other hand, students often develop strategies for undercutting the teacher’s authority: mentally withdrawing, interrupting, and the like. Hence, much current research assumes that students and teachers influence each other instead of assuming that the influence is always in a single direction.

5. Education Philosophy

For the past fifty years our schools have operated on the theories of John Dewey (1859-1953), an American educator and writer. Dewey believed hat the school’s job was to enhance the natural development of the growing child, rather than to pour information, for which the child had no context, into him or her. In the Dewey system, the child becomes the active agent in his own education, rather than a passive receptacle for facts.

Consequently, American schools are very enthusiastic about teaching “life skills” –logical thinking, analysis, creative problem--solving. The actual content of the lessons is secondary to the process, which is supposed to train the child to be able to handle whatever life may present, including all the unknowns of the future. Students and teachers both regard pure memorization as an uncreative and somewhat vulgar.

In addition to “life skills”, schools are assigned to solve the ever growing stoke of social problems. Racism, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, reckless driving, and are just a few of the modern problems that have appeared on the school curriculum.

This all contributes to a high degree of social awareness in American youngsters.

6. Student Life

To the students, the most notable difference between elementary school and the higher levels is that in junior high they start “changing classes”. This means that rather than spending the day in one classroom, they switch classrooms to meet their different teachers. This gives them three or four minutes between classes in the hallways, where a great deal of the important social action of high school traditionally takes place. Students have lockers in these hallways, around which thy congregate.

Society in general does not take the business of studying very seriously. Schoolchildren have a great deal of free time, which they are encouraged to fill with extracurricular activities—sports, clubs, cheerleading, scouts—supposed to inculcate such qualities as leadership, sportsmanship, ability to organize, etc. those who don’t become engaged in such activities or have afterschool jobs have plenty of opportunity to “hang out”, listen to teenager music, and watch television.

Compared to other nations, American students do not have much homework. Studies also show that American parents have lower expectations for their children’s success in school than other nationalities do. (Historically, there has not been much correlation between American school success and success in later life.) “He’s just not a scholar”, the American parents might say, content that their son is on the swim team and doesn’t take drugs. (Some of the young do choose to study hard, for reason of their own, such as determining that the road to riches lies through Harvard Business School.)

What American schools do effectively teach is the competitive method. In innumerable ways children are pitted against each other—whether in classroom discussion, spelling bees, reading groups, or tests. Every classroom is expected to produce a scattering of A’s and F’s (teachers often grade A=excellent; B=good; C=average; D=poor; and F=failed). A teacher who gives all A’s looks too soft—so students are aware that they are competing for the limited number of top marks.

Foreign students sometimes don’t understand that copying from other people’s papers or from books is considered wrong and taken seriously. Here, it is important to show that you have done your own work and are displaying your own knowledge. It is more important than helping your friends to pass, whom we think do not deserve to pass unless they can provide their own answers. Group effort goes against the competitive grain, and American students do not study together as many Asians do. Many Asians in this country consider their group study habits a large contributor to their school success.

7. Adult Education

After complaining about many aspects of American life, a 40-year-old woman from Hong Kong concluded, “But where else could someone my age go back to school and get a degree in social work? Here you can change your whole life, start a new business, do what you really want to do.”

So at least to this person, school requirements weren’t inhibiting. And to millions of others, adult education is the path to a new career, or if not to a new career, to a new outlook. Schools generally encourage the older person who wants to start anew, and besides regular classes, schedule evening classes in special programs. Today there are so many people of retirement age in college that it is no longer remarkable.

8. Moral Relativism in American

Improving American education requires not doing new things but doing (and remembering) some good old things. At the time of our nation’s founding, Thomas Jefferson listed the requirements for a sound education in the Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia. In this landmark statement on American education, Jefferson wrote of the importance of education and writing, and of reading history, and geography. But he also emphasized the need “to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens.” Jefferson believed education should aim at the improvement of both one’s “morals” and “faculties”. That has been the dominant view of the aims of American education for over two centuries. But a number of changes, most of them unsound, have diverted schools from these great pursuits. And the story of the loss of the school’s original moral mission explains a great deal.

Starting in the early seventies, “values clarification” programs started turning up in schools all over America. According to this philosophy, the schools were not to take part in their time-honored task of transmitting sound moral values; rather, they were to allow the child to “clarify” his own values (which adults, including parents, had no “rights” to criticize). The “values clarification” movement didn’t clarify values; it clarified wants and desires. This form of moral relativism said, in effect, that no set of values was right or wrong; everybody had an equal right to his own values; and all values were subjective, relative, and personal. This destructive view took hold with a vengeance.

In 1985 The York Times published an article quoting New York area educators, in slavish devotion to this new view, proclaiming, “They deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong.” The article told of one counseling session involving fifteen high school juniors and seniors. In the course of that session a student concluded that a fellow student had been foolish to return one thousand dollars she found in a purse at school. According to the article, when the youngsters asked the counselor’s opinion, “He told them he believed the girl had done the right thing, but that, of course, he would not try to force his values on them. ‘If I come from the position of what is wrong,’ he explained, ‘then I’m not their counselor.’”

Once upon a time, a counselor offered counselor, and he knew that an adult does not form character in the young by taking a stance of neutrality toward questions of right and wrong or by merely offering “choices” or “options”.

In response to the belief that adults and educators should teach children sound morals, one can expect from some quarters indignant objections (I’ve heard one version of it expressed countless times over the years): “Who are you to say what’s important?” or “Whose standards and judgments do we use?”

The correct response, it seems to me, is, is we ready to do away with standards and judgments? Is anyone going to argue seriously that a life of cheating and swindling is as worthy as a life of honest, hard work? Is anyone (with the exception of some literature professors at our elite universities) going to argue seriously the intellectual corollary, that a Marvel comic book is as good as Macbeth? Unless we are willing to embrace some pretty silly position, we’ve got to admit the need for moral and intellectual standards. The problem is that some people tend to regard anyone who would pronounce a definitive judgment as an unsophisticated Philistine or a closed-minded “elitist” trying to impose his view on everybody else.

The truth of the real world is that without standards and judgments, there can be no progress. Unless we are prepared to say irrational things—that nothing can be proven more valuable than anything else or that everything is equally worthless—we must ask the normative question. It may come, as a surprise to those who fell that to be “progressive” is to be value-neutral. But as Matthew Amold said, “the world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things” and if the world can’t decide what the best things are, at least to some degree, then it follows that progress, and character, is in trouble. We shouldn’t be reluctant to declare that some things, some lives, books, ideas, and values are better than others. It is the responsibility of the schools to teach these better things.

At one time, we weren’t so reluctant to teach them. In the mid-nineteenth century, a diverse, widespread group of crusaders began to work for the public support of what was then called the “common school”, the forerunner of the public school. They were to be charged with the mission of school felt that the nation could fulfill its destiny only if every new generation was taught these values together in a common institution.

The leaders of the common school movement were mainly citizens who were prominent in their communities—businessmen, ministers, local civic and government officials. These people saw the schools as upholders of standards of individual morality and small incubators of civic and personal virtue; the founders of the public schools had faith that public education could teach good moral and civic character from a common ground of American values.

But in the past quarter century or so, some of the so-called experts became experts of value neutrality, and moral education was increasingly left in their hands. The commonsense view of parents and the publicthat schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values of home, family, and country, was increasingly rejected.

There are those today still that claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we consist of too many competing convictions and interests to instill common values. They are wrong. Of course we are a diverse people. We have always been a diverse people. And as Madison wrote in FederalistNo.10, the competing, balancing interests of a diverse people can help ensure the survival of liberty. But there are values that all American citizens share and that we should want all American students to know and to make their own: honesty, fairness, self-discipline, fidelity to task, friends, and family, personal responsibility, love of country, and belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and the freedom to practice one’s faith. The explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of the common schools, and it is a legacy to which we must return.

9. Schools Should Teach Values

People often said, “Yes, we should teach these values, but how do we teach them?” this question deserves a candid response, one that isn’t given often enough. It is by exposing our children to good character and inviting its imitation that we will transmit to them a moral foundation. This happens when teachers and principals, by their words and actions, embody sound convictions. As Oxford’s Mary Warnock has written, “You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself; and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong.” The theologian Martin Buber wrote that the educator is distinguished from all other influences “by his will to take part in the stamping of character and by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of the growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of what is ‘right’, of what should be.” It is in this will, Buber says, in this clear standing for something, that the “vocation as an educator finds its fundamental expression.”

There is no escaping the fact that young people need as example principals and teachers who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and who themselves exemplify high moral purpose.

As Education Secretary, I visited a class at Waterbury Elementary School in Waterbury, Vermont, and asked the students, “Is this a good school?” They answered, “Yes, this is a good school.” I asked them, “Why?” Among other things, one eight-year-old said, “The principal Mr. Riegel, makes good rules and everybody obeys them.” So I said, “Give me an example.” And another answered, “You can’t climb on the pipes in the bathroom. We don’t climb on the pipes and the principal doesn’t either.”

This example is probably too simple to please a lot of people who want to make the topic of moral education difficult, but there is something profound in the answer of those children, something education should pay more attention to. You can’t expect children to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults taking those rules seriously in their day-to-day affairs. Certain must be said, certain limits lay down, and certain examples set. There is no other way.

We should also do a better job at curriculum selection. The research shows that most “values education” exercises and separate courses in “moral reasoning” tend not to affect children’s behavior; if anything, they may leave children morally adrift. Where to turn? I believe our literature and our history are a rich quarry of moral literacy. We should mine that quarry. Children should have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we believe to be right and wrong, good and bad—examples illustrating what are morally right and wrong can indeed be known and that there is a difference.

What kind of stories, historical events, and famous lives am I talking about? If we want our children to know about honesty, we should teach them about Abe Lincoln walking three miles to return six cents and conversely, about Aesop’s shepherd boy who cried wolf if we want them to know about courage, we should teach them about Joan of Arc, Horatius at the bridge, and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. If we want them to know about persistence in the face of adversity, they should know about the voyages of Columbus and the character of Washington during the Civil War. And our youngest should be told about the Little Engine That Could. If we want them to know about respect for the law, they should understand why Socrates told Crito: “No, I must submit to the decree of Athens.” If we want our children to respect the rights of others, they should read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’ “Letter from Birmingham jail.” From the Bible they should know about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers, Jonathan’s friendship with David, the Good Samaritan’s kindness toward a stranger, and David’s cleverness and courage in facing Goliath.

These are only a few of the hundreds of examples we can call on. And we need not get into issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some people, but the fact is that the formation of character in young people is educationally a task different from, and prior to, the discussion of the great, difficult controversies of the day. First things come first. We should teach values the same way we teach other things: one step at a time. We should not use the fact that there are many difficult and controversial moral questions as an argument against basic instruction in the subject.

After all, we do not argue against teaching physics because laser physics is difficult, against teaching American history because there are heated disputes about the Founders’ intent. Every field has its complexities and its controversies. And every field has its basics, its fundamentals. So they are too with forming character and achieving moral literacy. As any parent knows, teaching character is a difficult task. But it is a crucial task, because we want our children to be healthy, happy, and successful but decent, strong, and good. None of this happens automatically; there is no genetic transmission of virtue. It takes the conscious, committed efforts of adults. It takes careful attention.

10. College Pressures

Mainly I try to remind that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don not want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now – that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, Social Security and, presumably, a prepaid grave.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na?ve. One of the national gods venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains: only victims.

“In the late 1960s.” one dean told me. “The typical question that I got from students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world’ or ‘how I can make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?’” many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: “They are trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.”

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means “excellent” and B means “very good.” Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are ready reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with As that they regard a B as positively shameful.

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentleman’s C.” when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses-music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I do not know if they are getting As or Cs, and I do not care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They cannot.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now come to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what college receives in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now, the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs—higher every year—of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in American the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used “he,” incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society has not yet caught up with this fact.

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know tem in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

“Do you want to medical school?” I asked them.

“I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They are paying all this money and …”

Poor students, poor parents, they are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean will; they are trying to steer their sons and draughts toward a secure future. But the sons and daughter want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no “practical” value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities? It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do indeed pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or, as I sometimes heard it put, “pre-rich.”

But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obliged to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one—she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-round person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the “dumb” courses her father wants her to take—at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students—no small achievement in it—and she deserves to follow her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.

“I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one dean told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I could not tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.”

The story is almost funny—except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the pressure put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything done?”

Probably they won’t. They will get blocked. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out.

Part of the problem is that they are expected to do. A professor will assign five page papers. Several students will start writing ten page papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.

“Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “It’s bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic work, psychologically.”

Why cannot the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can, and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their figure nails onto a shrinking profession.

If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments—as departmental chairmen or members of committees—that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students’ own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing into themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

“Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos Hortas. “College should be open-ended: at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along. It’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist-that they’ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best paying slot.”

“They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing.”

I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story; if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extracurricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ‘60s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions—as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians—with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also cannot afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper—who’s past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.—much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that “newsies” routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s students will one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead—that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell neither them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway products, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians—a mixed bag of achievers.

I asked them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

11. To Err Is Wrong

In the summer of 1979, Boston Red Sox first baseman Carl Yastrzemski became the fifteenth player in baseball history to reach the three thousand hit plateaus. This event drew a lot of media attention, and for about a week prior to the attainment of this goal, hundreds of reports covered Yaz’s every more. Finally, one reporter asked, “Hey Yaz, aren’t you afraid all of this attention will go to your head?” Yastrzemski replied, “I look at this way: in my career I’ve been up to bat over ten thousand times. That means I’ve been unsuccessful at the plate over seven thousand times. That fact alone keeps me from getting a swollen head.”?

Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both products of the same process. As Yaz suggest, an activity that produces a hit may also produce a miss. It is the same with creative thinking; the same energy that generates good creative ideas also produces errors.

Many people, however, are not comfortable with errors. Our educational system, based on “the right answer” belief, cultivates our thinking in another, more conservative way. From an early age, we are taught that right answers are good and incorrect answers are bad. This value is deeply embedded in the incentive system used in most schools:

Right over 90% of the time = “A”

Right over 80% of the time = “B~”

Right over 70% of the time = “C~” Right over 60% of the time = “D~” Less than 60% correct, you fail.

From this we learn to be right as often as possible and to keep our mistakes to a minimum. We learn, in other words, that “to err is wrong.

Playing It Safe

With this kind of attitude, you aren’t going to be taking too many chances. If you learn that failing even a litter penalizes you (e.g., being wrong only 15% of the time garners you only a “B” performance), you learn not to make mistakes. And more important, you learn not to put yourself to situation where you might fall. This leads to conservative thought pattern designed to avoid the stigma our society puts on “failure”.

I have a friend who recently graduated from college with a Master’s degree in Journalism. For the last six month, she has been trying to find a job, but to no avail. I talked with her about situation, and realized that her problem is that she doesn’t know how to fail. She went through eighteen years of schooling to try any approaches where she might fail. She has been conditioned to believe that failure is bad in and of itself, rather than a potential stepping-stone to new ideas.

Look around. How many middle managers, housewives, administrators, teachers, and other people do you see who are to try anything new because of this failure? Most of us have learned not to make mistakes in public. As a result, we remove ourselves from many learning experience except for those occurring in the most private of circumstances.

Different Logic

From a practical point of view, “to err is wrong” makes sense. Our survival in the everyday world requires us to perform thousand of small tasks without failure. Think about it: you wouldn’t last very long if you were to step out in front of traffic or stick your hand a pot of boiling water. In addition, engineers whose bridges collapse, stock brokers who lose money for their clients, and copywriters whose ad campaigns decrease sales won’t keep their jobs very long.

Nevertheless, too great an adherence to the belief “to err is wrong” can greatly undermine your attempts to generate new ideas. If you are more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you’ll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you’ll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend litter time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what-if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking. As Yaz would put it, “if you want the hits, be prepared for the misses.” That’s the way the game of life goes.

Errors as Stepping Stones

Whenever an error pops up, the usual response is “Jeez, another screw up, what went wrong this time?” the creative thinker, on the other hand, will realize the potential value of errors, and perhaps say something like, “Would you look at that! Where can it lead our thinking?” and then he or she will go on to use the error as a stepping stone to a new idea. As a matter of fact, the whole history of discovery is filed with people who used erroneous assumptions and failed ideas as stepping-stones to new ideas. Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to India. Johannes Kepler stumbled on to the idea of interplanetary gravity because of assumptions that were right for the wrong reasons. And, Thomas Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb.

The following story about the automotive genius Charles Kettering exemplifies the spirit of working through erroneous assumptions to good ideas. In 1912, when the automobile industry was just beginning to grow, Kettering was interested in improving gasoline engine efficiency. The problem he faced was“knockthe phenomenon in which gasoline takes too long to burn in the cylinder-thereby reducing efficiency.

Kettering began searching for ways to eliminate the “knock.” He thought to him, “How can I get the gasoline to combust in the cylinder at an earlier time?” the key concept here is “early”. Searching for analogous situations, he looked around for models of “things that happen early.” He thought of historical models, physical models, and biological models. Finally, he remembered a particular plant, the trailing arbutus, which “happens early,” i.e., it blooms in the snow (“earlier” than other plants). One of this plant’s chief characteristics is its’ red leaves, which help the plant retain light at certain wavelengths. Kettering figured that it must be the red color, which made the trailing arbutus bloom earlier.

Now came the critical step in Kettering’s chain of thought. He asked himself, “How can I make the gasoline red?” perhaps I’ll put red dye in the gasoline—maybe that’ll make it combust earlier.” He looked around his workshop, and found that he didn’t have any red dye. But he did happen to have some iodine—perhaps that would do. He added the iodine to the gasoline and, lo and behold, the engine didn’t “knock”.

[英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

cross your heart 你发誓

gate - crasher 不请自来的不速之客;

take it easy 凡事看开些, 不要太冲动, 不要看得那么重

make yourself comfortable 不用约束 (招待客人时说的话)

you are all wet 你完全误会了

she is hangover 她昨夜喝醉了

it’s a matter of time 这是迟早的问题

she pulls out 她退出了

I have my limit 我的忍耐度有限

don’t brush me off 不要敷衍我

let’s get it straight 我们打开天窗说亮话吧

what you call this 你这算什么

how about a bite 随便吃些什么吧

you can count on me 你可以信得过我

he see things not people他论事不论人

we sang the same songs 我们志同道合

I hope you in the roll 我希望你也能来

let’s go Dutch 我们各付各的吧

speak of the devil 说曹操, 曹操就到

keep in touch 保持联络

don’t turn me down 不要拒绝我

don’t let me down 别叫我失望

man proposes and god disposes 谋事在人成事在天 .

the weakest goes to the wall.优胜劣败

to look one way and row another声东击西 .

in everyone’s mouth.脍炙人口

to kick against the pricks 螳臂挡车 .

to give the last measure of devotion 鞠躬尽瘁 .

to suffer for one’s wisdom. 聪明反被聪明误

to harp on the same string. 旧调重弹

what’s done cannot be undone 覆水难收 .

to convert defeat into victory. 转败为胜

beyond one’s grasp. 鞭长莫及

to be severe with oneself and lenient with others.

严以责己宽以待人

a heart of steel. 铁石心肠

to be guided by destiny.听天由命

pride goes before a fall 骄者必败 .

the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy

without 不战而屈人之兵

what is bugging you 什么事使你心烦

sworn brother 干兄弟, 盟兄弟

it’s dying art 这是已失传的手艺

gentlemen agreement 君子协定

Im trying to make ends meet 我尽力要使收支平衡

prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

富贵结朋友, 患难见真情

if you wish to be the best man, you must suffer the

bitterest of the bitter.

吃得苦中苦, 方为人上人

it is better to fight for good than to fail at the ill.

宁为善而斗, 毋屈服于恶

he who has hope has everything.

怀有希望者, 便拥有一切

self-trust is the first secret of success.

自信心是成功的首要关键

the secret of success is constancy of purpose.

成功的秘绝在于目标坚定有恒

success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties.

成功源于努力去克服困难

experience is the extract of suffering.

经验是受苦的结晶

Before I entered the middle school, I felt so worried about the life in middle school, because my cousin told me that I would have to compete with so many excellent students.

Now I get used to the life, I learn many subjects from Monday to Friday.

Though I always meet the difficulties in learning the new knowledge, I get help from my teachers and classmates.

I am not afraid of the middle school life again, I am so excited to learn new things every day.

In the future days, I will meet many challenges, I believe I can get over them. Life in middle school has happiness and sorrow, they fulfill my life.

在我进入初中以前，我很担忧初中的生活，因为我的表姐告诉我我将要和很多优秀的学生进行竞争。如今我适应了初中生活，我从周一到周五学习很多科目。虽然我总是在学习新知识时遇到困难，但是我得到了老师和同学的帮助。我不再害怕初中生活了，我对于每天学到新知识感到兴奋。在将来的日子里，我将会遇到很多困难，我相信我能克服他们。初中的生活有快乐也有忧伤，它们充实了我的生活。

[初中英语作文：初中生活

在忙碌紧张的考试过后，同学们终于迎来了期盼已久的暑假生活，同学们在这个暑假里都去了那些名胜古迹游玩呢，下面这篇暑假英语日记，供大家参考，希望同学们能够把自己游玩的感受用英语写下来与同学们共同分享.

A new term began. Students all returned to school met again. They were talking about what they had done in the holidays. I was happier. I couldnt wait to tell my story. Now its my turn. I told them I got a job in a restaurant. I worked as a waitress.

They didnt believe at first.

Yes, its true. I said, I really had a hard time at the beginning. But several days later, I could do a good job. I earned six hundred yuan this holiday. They all looked at me with their mouths open.

新学期开始了，同学们都返回学校重新见面。他们正在谈论自己的暑假生活。我更高兴，迫不及待地想告诉他们我是怎么过的。终于轮到我，了，我告诉他们我暑假期间在一家餐馆当服务员。他们起初并不相信。是真的。我说，刚开始时可惨了，但几天我就做得很好了。暑假我挣了600元钱呢。他们都目瞪口呆地看着我。

[暑假英语日记：初中

Once, I talked to the foreign people, he was staring at me all the time,

which made me feel not comfortable, so I chose to avoid his eyes and kept a

little distance from him. When I talked about this problem to my foreign

teacher, she told me that it was natural for them to look at you during

communication, which meant respect. While in China, people do the opposite

thing. They try to avoid eye-contact, because it is not eased to look at each

other. The different culture sometimes creates distance. The foreigners always

feel strange when they look at Chinese people’s eyes and every time when they

want to come closer to hear more clearly, Chinese people will walk away. So the

more we learn about the culture, the more we know about the world.