为什么写作需要更多的阅读最新20篇

翻开学生的作文本，许多学生生拉硬拽，无奈无味文字都会干巴巴的挤在眼前。例如：《洗衣服》许多孩子会写：我吧衣服泡在水盆里，放上水，再放一小勺洗衣粉，等十五分钟后开始洗。先使劲搓衣领，然后又在搓板上用力揉衣服。最后，打来清水把衣服投一遍晾在绳子上。三年纪是这样洗，到了五年级还是这样洗。由此就很让人怀疑他是否真的洗过一件衣服。而好多份几乎千篇一律的文字，则大多来自同一本参考书籍。

每每看到这些令人颇觉乏味的文字，都会是那个无奈与心痛：孩子们为什么会写得这样空洞？为什么写得这样难受呢？难倒只是缺乏细致的观察吗？难倒只是缺乏遣词造句、布局谋篇的技巧吗？不，不是的。归根结底学生不愿写，写不出来的一个重要原因是内心缺少了一种感情，一种对生活的点点滴滴的关爱之情。没有了这种情感，面对本来丰富多彩的生活就视而不见，听而不闻，一切都变成了过眼云烟，对生活的感应力、认知力降低。其直接结果就是每次作文总是先为;写什么;而苦恼。

纵观历代名家名篇：屈原满腔悲愤做《天问》；陆游忧国忧民写《示儿》；杜甫欣喜若狂述《闻官军收河南河北》；李白激情洋溢绘庐山瀑布。鲁迅先生笔锋犀利，无所畏惧，一篇篇恰似战斗檄文的作品至今依然是读者的首选。它们哪一篇不是作者情之所致，心之所致，而文之所致呢？因此我认为培养学生丰富的内心情感，提高生活认知力，激发出不吐不快的写作欲望，让一簇簇心灵火花烁烁闪耀是成就学生作品的一大要素。

那么如何培养内在情感，提高生活认知力，激发写作欲望呢？

借用诗人杜甫的两句诗就是：随风潜入夜，润物细无声。即把生活中点点滴滴的小事从学生身边信手拈来，开展朋友式的聊天活动，让学生在&ldqu;感知&rdqu;，（即在生活中的所见所闻）、&ldqu;感觉&rdqu;（即对所见所闻进行的浅显的评议）&ldqu;感悟&rdqu;（即透过现象看本质时所发表的比较深刻的见解）这三步曲中不知不觉地有话可说，有话愿说，有话会说，让一吐为快方觉舒畅地情感逐渐注满身心。

点评他人感悟，体验作者的创作激情，加强身心体验。

1. 以《穷人》一课为例。

《穷人》一课描绘了桑娜与丈夫不顾家境贫寒，生活艰难，依然抱养了邻居家的两个孤儿，与自家五个孩子一并抚养的故事。学生们认真阅读，并着重体会作者对女主人公心理活动的描写，以及对主人公语言的描写，从而明确作者的感悟皆来自于穷人们那些无私，善良的表现。

2. 入文想象，体验作者的创作激情。

在第一步体会的基础上，让学生们变成作者走进桑娜的家去看一看，然后谈谈自己的感想，再和渔夫出海打鱼，说说自己的体会。此举意在使学生深切感受到桑娜一家生活多么艰难，多么危险，最后让学生们想象自己是桑娜，是渔夫，去做一做它们的善举……在想象中，学生们慢慢体会到作者不仅仅是感觉到穷人善良就下笔的，而是在深刻体味到穷人们不顾自身苦难而忘我奉献的伟大精神时迸发出无限创作激情才成就此文的。与此同时，学生们也才会心旌激荡了。

如果说文中作者的创作激情对学生们是一种引领性的培养，那么生活中实践性培养、激发应是帮助学生提高生活认知能力，调动无限创作情感的必经之路。

点评身边琐碎，触动生活认知，调动写作热情。

生活中，每个人由于成长环境、机遇有所不同，生活色彩也就浓淡不一。但它与人心灵情感的充实与否并不成正比。也就是说，在平凡的生活中，依旧可以拥有一颗充实的心，一份洋溢的情。关键是如何拥有。是主动觅寻，还是被动逐波？当然选前者。而我们的任务就是要促动学生在生活的海洋中能够主动地游起来，且勇于追潮头，敢于立潮头，乐于领潮头。即能够树立自己的观点，发表自己的观点，升华自己的观点。这种观点就是学生对生活的认知，就是学生们的创作激情。

1. 随即点评身边小事，帮助树立正确认识。

一位同学在作文中提到曾经和他人为了好玩而一起爬墙头的事情，最后告诉大家千万要注意安全，别做危险的游戏。经过大家再三思议，觉得只是为了好玩而去爬墙头，不仅危险，而且是一种不文明的行为，是违反小学生行为规范的。还有的说应该学习创造一些有益的游戏，如果真想勇敢一次，不妨请解放军叔叔帮忙，指导……总之，同学们都认为应该做文明学生，学会对自己的行为负责。在大家的提议下，这位同学除了把爬墙时的危险动作描写更准确外，而且写出了爬墙的一些心理，细节等。如：骑在墙头上，开始还美得高举两手挥舞，忽然往下一看，呀，真高啊！心一下子怦怦跳起来，两手紧紧抓住墙头，腿也一下子夹紧了墙壁，身上热烘烘的……结尾修改后写成：这回不文明的大行动可把我害惨了，同学们可别学我呀！

可见，帮助学生点评身边琐事，自由认知，引导提高，使学生自然而然地感悟生活的积极意义，从而激发出学生高昂的写作热情，使作文更好地水到渠成。

2. 固定跟踪，积累看法。

以校园生活为例。学校是学生们重要的生活空间之一，与老师、同学、教室、校园的相处时间可谓长矣。感觉应是既熟悉又陌生。

说熟悉是因为每天相见，是自己身边的人与物，自然就多了一份亲切，说陌生是因为对人与物的喜爱与信任是需要培养的，所以也就多了一份生疏。然而正是这些熟悉的陌生人、陌生物，会成为激发学生跟踪议论的好题材、兴奋点。让学生去寻找那些人或物固有的特点及变化，然后抓住对人或物的外在感知，记录下自己的感觉乃至感悟。按捺不住之时讲给大家听。同学们边听边议，良好的创作情绪由此逐渐酝酿，慢慢生成……

例如要写《可爱的校园》时，发动学生先列举出校园从内到外的新颖、独特风景。大家看到校园的美，心旷神怡中感悟出这是师生辛勤劳动的结果，并且应该好好爱护。还有的同学能够认识到：人多力量大，人心齐泰山移，努力付出就会有美好的收获，收获是快乐的，更要好好珍惜。有了这些感悟，当学生再提笔时，不再是生搬硬套一份喜爱之情，而是凭着一份激动的心情去夸窗明几净，整齐有序，活泼美丽的校园了。

孔子说：知之者不如好之者，好之者不如乐之者。叶圣陶先生说：识得深切，写出来当然亲切；识得浅薄，写出来不免浅薄。一无所知，硬要写也没法写出。因此培养学生的认知能力，激发学生的写作情感，使学生认识到周围事物的价值，对周围的事物感兴趣应是引领学生们走入作文大门的重要一步。而且通过帮助学生点评生活，可以直接对学生进行潜移默化地进行人与人交往教育，社会道德教育，科学思想方法的启蒙等等，使作文与育人紧密结合，为学生的长远发展打下一定的基础。

下面是小编为大家准备的写作需要三种支撑，欢迎阅读。

一、作文需要人文精神的支撑

作文一味追求语言华美、结构精巧、技巧娴熟，而轻视传统文化的积淀，忽略人文精神的关怀，这种技巧训练作出的文章无疑都缺乏丰厚的底蕴和隽永的思想，单薄而又贫瘠。

如何提高自己的人文素养呢?首先，要关注世界政治、科技、社会动态，让自己的生活中有不竭的源泉。

其次，了解和学习世界各民族的优秀文化，从而使我们的文章既具有中国特色，又具有鲜明的时代特色。

二、作文需要个性思想的支撑

作文要有个性，要表达自己对自然、社会、人生的独特感受和真切体验，要体现创新精神。个性的背后离不开思想，思想是在具体的事件和情境中，明得的理、获得的悟、取得的思考。只有有了思想，作文才能是人生的史记，才会富有生命的质感。作文不能用几条规范标准代替自己丰富的思想活动，应该使自己思想的触角伸向生活的每个角落。只有拥有了自己个性的思想，“文”才能载“道”，这个“道”，才能被人接受。

三、作文需要主体意识的支撑

目前我们写作往往处于一种模仿和被动接受的状态，不是“情郁于中而必发乎外”，而是具有很强的应对性。其原因有二：一是命题中的“无我”现象——很多老师布置的作文题学生十分反感，最后不是“我不愿写”就是“我写的不是我”;其二是受“文以载道”的影响，过分强调作文要带有强烈的社会责任感，把“利他”放在第一位，使得文章“无我”，个性得不到张扬，自我得不到宣泄。

树立作文的主体意识，要把写作当成是人生体验，是一种独立、积极、自主、自由的创造性活动，而不应该在某些方面进行条条框框的限制。

总有许多学生跟语文老师抱怨作文没有什么可写的，每当这个时候，我总是很替他们惋惜，便想告诉他们：其实不是的！再平常的日子也有说不完的喜怒哀乐，怎么会无事可写呢？

就算你的生活本身单调了点，你还可以抬头看看周围，看看外面的世界。就算你周围的人和事都不值一提（其实这是不可能的），以一个中学生为例，你还应该读过书，看过电影和电视，这些经历以及由此得来的间接知识，又何尝不是写作的源泉呢？

说到这里，我觉得这一代中学生的误区大概正出此间：你们读了很多书，但绝大多数是教科书、参考书、习题集、练习册之类；你们看了不少电视，但大半聚焦在《浪漫满屋》、《大长今》、NBA和卡通动画，还有一些并没有多少营养的的爱情剧、肥皂剧；至于电影嘛，非美国大片、香港片不看——这就造成了营养不良。与之相反的便是爱国主义影片没人看了，文学名著没人读了，不但不读原著甚至也不了解故事梗概。初中生答不上中国古典四大名著的大有人在；除了课本涉及到的作家之外，你跟他说舒婷、张贤亮、陆文夫，都是说天书，甚至连巴金、路遥、冯骥才，学生们也有闻所未闻的。

读书就像饮食一样，营养不良不可能健壮。文学和文化的贫瘠会导致一个人思想肤浅、见识鄙陋，提笔写文章自然气短心虚，即使勉强可以写得出来，也多半是苍白之作。

如此看来，读书当是想入写作之门的中学生的必修课。这种读书是区别于课堂的读书的，书也绝非教科书一种；这种读书是一种自发的阅读，是广泛地涉猎各类精神的营养品。这门课无需老师，不用课堂，可以随时开课，却永不发结业证书。从这个意义上看，读书是每个人人生的必修课；即使你不打算成为以文为生的作家，你也需要靠不断的读书来充盈自己的头脑。

古人有云：“读书如销铜，聚铜入炉，大鞲扇之，不销不止，极用费力；作文如铸器，铜既销矣，随模铸器，一冶即成，只要识模，全不费力。所谓劳于读书，逸于作文者，此也。”（选自《程氏家塾读书分年日程》）“劳于读书，逸于作文”，这正是古人总结出来的作文技巧。不肯在读书上下功夫的人是无法写好作文的。

“读书破万卷，下笔如有神。”诗圣杜甫用自己的毕生体验凝成了千古名句，也道破了阅读与写作息息相关的天机。读书就如在精神食粮方面的储蓄，写作便是从中支取利息。只有不断地投入，才能不断地产出；投入得越多越好，产出才能越多越精。世上有许多大文豪没有上过几天学，却留下了不朽之作，但少有人没有读过几页书就成了作家的。

多读书，读好书。唯有这样，写作才有取之不尽的源泉。写作请从阅读始，你每翻开一卷书，就等于向写作之门迈进了一步。

[写作请从阅读始教学作文1100字

一、帮助你的孩子提高写作技能

1.鼓励你的孩子培养他们的精细运动技能。需要用到手和手指的力度的肌肉活动能够帮助你的孩子在今后有一个良好的写作技能。你可以让你的孩子玩彩泥、撕纸或者是用塑料镊子夹东西。

2.找出你孩子的学校里面老师的书写方式。一些学校教给孩子们的是传统的书写方式，而另外的一些则不是。用合适的书写风格教你的孩子书写他们自己的名字和其他的家庭成员的名字。

3.为了提高孩子们的写作技能，父母应该鼓励孩子们每天都进行写作练习。为了避免孩子们遇到过多的挫折，你可以将这个练习限制在几分钟之内，除非孩子们自己要求进行更长时间的写作。通过这样的方法，孩子们的写作技能在一定时间之后就会有一定会的进步了。

二、帮助你的孩子提高阅读技巧

1.经常读书给你的孩子听。这样能够帮助你的孩子了解单词的读音和意思。阅读包括了解单词的拼写，同时还包括理解单词的含义。当你大声的朗读给你的孩子听的时候，你可以问他们对这个情节的理解和他们对这个单词的理解。

2.保持事物的新鲜。家长在带孩子们去图书馆的时候，可以让孩子们自己选择他们想要阅读的书籍。这时候，父母要注意孩子们感兴趣的书籍是什么，并且给孩子们找一些他们可能会感兴趣的书籍。同时，你也可以偶尔给孩子们买一些新书作为礼物。

3.和孩子们玩文字游戏。在冰箱上用磁铁拼出孩子们知道的单词。让孩子们用手指在沙子里面将看到的单词拼写出来。父母还可以和孩子们玩押韵游戏，并且将单词的尾字母指出来。给孩子们说一些绕口令，并且将开始的单词的发音指出来。

4.让你的孩子试着读书给你听，即使你的孩子可能还不能读的很流利。如果整个页面的单词都非常的复杂的话，那么就让他们读那些他们知道的单词。

通过记人的言行和事情的经过来表达一定的中心思想的文章就是记叙文。下面是小编为大家收集整理的记叙文写作需要注意哪些方面，欢迎大家阅读参考!

有的记叙文只简单地写一人一事，但更多的记叙文，所写的人物之间的关系比较复杂，事情的变化发展比较曲折，时间的迁移和场地的变换也比较频繁，就是比较复杂的记叙文了。

写记叙文，无论是简单的，或是复杂的都要注意下列几点:——记叙文写作指导

第一，交代清楚。

写记叙文必须交代清楚时间、地点、人物、事件、原因、结果，使读者对发生的事件有全面而清楚的了解。这就是记叙文的“六要素”。凡是记叙性体裁的文章，如通讯、特写、报告文学、记叙散文，包括小说，都要具备这六要素。

《祝福》这篇小说，其故事发生的时间，是旧中国年终祝福的时候。地点是鲁镇。故事中涉及的人物，有“我”、“鲁四老爷”、“祥林嫂”等。事情的经过是祥林嫂两次到鲁家佣工，不但受到严重剥削，而且精神上也受到摧残，最后沦为乞丐。故事发生的原因，是祥林嫂寡居之后，被迫到鲁家佣工，故事的结果是当样林嫂被鲁家撵出之后，年终祝福的时候，默默地死去了。由于小说的六要素交代得清清楚楚，所以，读者看了这篇文章之后，会对内容有清楚的理解。从而产生对祥林嫂的同情和对旧社会的僧恨。

第二，级索分明。

要把复杂的内容记叙得条理清楚，确定线索是非常重要的。它能把纷繁的材料贯穿起来，组成一个有机的整体。《结婚现场会》这篇文章涉及“我”、王拴牛、郑谷雨、武艾英等众多人物，故事情节波澜起伏，矛盾冲突尖锐复杂，但是由于作者紧紧抓住了王拴牛要不要彩礼这条线索，因此故事的情节紧凑条理，中心十分突出。一般的记叙文只有一条线索，但有的却有几条线索。《药》这篇脍炙人口的小说，就有一明一暗两条线索。随着这两条线索的连接、交织、融会，使故事的情节由开端、发展、高潮到结局，众多人物形象逐步地鲜明地出现在读者面前，主题思想也步步深化。

第三，记叙其体。

所谓具体，不是不分巨细、胡子眉毛一把抓，把文章记成“流水账”，而要用事实说话，要善于选择最能反映人物精神面貌的典型事例来表达主题。例如《汉堡港的变奏》这篇散文，在刻画吉亚特这个人物时，就用了极为精练的笔墨，勾勒了这个自视是行家，看不起中国人的小工头的。文章写道:“一号工头吉亚特是一个有几十年工龄的行家，两撇小胡子，矮小而精明，极有本事，就是看不起中国人。汉川号的大副根本指挥不动他。”容寥数语，.就把自视为行家、傲视中国人的小胡子写活了。可是，当他不按配载图执行，“卡了壳”之后，那个原来“满不在乎地拍着胸脯”，“翘着小胡子说”，“我有把握”，“我从来没被动过”的吉亚特，这时却狼狈万状，“满头大汗地来找贝汉廷”请教了。事实教育了他，使他转变了，‘小胡子吉亚特摊开双手，耸了耸肩说:‘太奇妙了，这些货简直是按你们船舱的尺码定做的!”这里刻画吉亚特，着里不多，但人物栩栩如生，呼之欲出。这不仅绘声绘色地写出这个工头对中国人的看法的转变，也从反面衬托了船长贝汉廷的才干和胆识。

1.在桂花飘香的八月，熊熊的奥运圣火将要在北京上空燃烧，北京迎来了世界各地为奥运呐喊助威的人们，我们更为了2008北京奥运而自豪、兴奋、骄傲、欢呼……一起为北京奥运喝彩加油。请以“动人的瞬间”为话题，记四个中国选手夺冠瞬间(每篇不少于500字，要有精彩的场面描写)

2.2008年是我国的奥运年,是全国、全民族的盛事，它牵动着10亿中国人民的心，也给中国4亿青少年五彩缤纷的童年渡上了金色的光环。奥运火炬熊熊燃烧，奥运精神熠熠生辉，“奥运”赛的不仅仅是人的体能，更是人的精神，以“与奥运同行”为话题，写一篇观看奥运的感受，字数不少于800字。

3.“暑假我在成长”书信交流活动。暑假期间，同班同学之间互相通信，交流假期中的见闻感受，并向小组长汇报自己的作业情况。开学以后，每个同学上交所收到的信，根据同学们的通信情况将评选班级“人气之星”(收信最多的同学)，“博闻之星”(见闻最广的同学)，“交流之星”(写信最多的同学)，每个同学至少写两封信。

阅读《钢铁是怎样炼成的》

1、 结合《钢铁是怎样炼成的》中保尔对生命的理解，谈谈你对生命价值的认识。

2、 看《钢铁是怎样炼成的》，做新时代的保尔。

3、 选择书中的精彩片段，修改创作为话剧。

4、 从书中你得到了什么启示?如何看待生活中的挫折与磨难?

5、 选一个你喜欢的人物形象进行分析(保尔、冬妮亚、朱赫莱等)

阅读完本书，积累5张读书笔记，从以上题目中选择一个专题进行研究，完成1500字以上的学术报告。

阅读《三国演义》

1、读“三国”，说“义”

2、选一个你喜欢的人物形象进行分析(刘备、孙权、曹操、诸葛亮、关羽、张飞等)

3、读《三国演义》说“智”

4、读《三国演义》谈战争谋略

5、选择一个战争场面，改写成话剧

阅读完本书，积累5张读书笔记，从以上题目中选择一个专题进行研究，完成1500字以上的学术报告。

根据要求，将作业按顺序整理在规定的本子上，要求书写认真规范。

记得温家宝总理说过这样一句话：“书籍不能改变世界，但是读书可以改变人生，人可以改变世界。”我爱书，更爱看书。它让我的写作水平有了很大的提升，让我更加热爱写作！

读一本好书，就像交了一个知心的朋友。书是烈日下的习习凉风，带来款款凉意；书是严寒中的团团火焰，带来阵阵暖流。正如高尔基所说的：“我扑在书上，就如饥饿的人扑在面包上。”书就是如此的有魅力！

在这里分享一下我的阅读方法：首先我会先粗略地看一遍，再选重点的看，最后认真地看一遍。遇到好词好句，我会将其摘录进采蜜集，写出自己的感想。以前我写作文就跟挤牙膏一样，很久才写出几个字来。可是随着我阅读量和采蜜量的增加，我学会了许多优美词语，精彩片段，我的写作开始语言风趣，生动形象，内心世界也开始丰富起来，这都离不开阅读的功劳呀！我书架上的书越来越多，我一日不看书，总觉得少了些什么？我很享受在阅读中的快乐。

书如一缕缕明媚的阳光，深入了我的心，丰富了我的知识，提升了我的写作水平，让我懂得了许多道理。同学们，让我们与书为友吧！

蓝天是雄鹰的知音，江海是大川的知音，而阅读是我们心灵深处的知音……

人类进步的阶梯、人生的良师益友——书籍，让我们尽情地沐浴在书香中，让阅读成为习惯。人生之路漫漫，当我们上下求索时；生活之路艰难，当我们寻求不解而迷茫时，请不要苦恼，挽起书籍有力的手臂，投入到书籍温暖的怀抱，让阅读给我们的心灵洗澡，让阅读涂鸦我们童年七彩的梦想。

我阅读《木偶奇遇记》，深深地体会到一个孩子成长要经历的磨难和过程；读《三毛流浪记》，感受到贫苦人们的生活有多么的悲惨；我读《汤姆叔叔的小屋》，让我认识了善良、正直、勇敢的汤姆叔叔；读那趣味洋溢的《西游记》又使我迈入另一个美妙的世界……是书籍，是阅读，让我见识了这一切，小学三年级作文《让阅读成为习惯》。

从我入学的那个时刻起，是阅读用缕缕书香给了我坚定的信念，给了我多姿多彩的童年梦想，更给了我希望和力量，书籍永远都是我真诚的朋友，阅读也必将伴我成长。漫漫人生，书籍会见证着我成长的点点滴滴，书籍会带给我更多的智慧和快乐，书籍会指引着我人生前进的方向，指引着我实现美丽的人生梦！

学习需要阅读，生活需要阅读。“书中自有黄金屋，书中自有颜如玉”，让健康阅读成为一种习惯，让阅读走进我们的心灵深处，与书籍作伴，让书香萦绕你我心……

[生活中处处需要阅读作文

一、明确考前最后冲刺的基本要求：

1.求准。考前最后冲刺中，教师应指导学生采取求准的策略，克服虚浮和自以为是的心态，回过头来一点一点地记清、记准重要的知识和自己疏漏的知识。

2.求牢。尤其是基础知识的选择题和名句默写部分。主要办法就是反复，通过反复练习来求牢。

3.求精。考前最后冲刺中的专项练习、综合练习中的题目必须精心挑选，有选择性地精练精讲，查漏补缺，修复知识体系，并训练正确的解题思路和技巧。

二、突出重点难点，强化得分意识。

(一)加强阅读理解的训练。

1.重视文本的理解。各类文本阅读，重中之重是阅读文本，切忌只重题目而轻文本的做法，应养成正确的阅读习惯：在文本上勾划、圈点，分析、概括，较好地把握文章的结构思路和思想内容，然后再读题、做题。这样才能真正地抓住重心，把握关键，回答问题才能切中肯綮。

2.要有考点意识、题型意识和分点答题的得分意识。对于每一个考点，通常有哪些题型，每种题型通常有哪些设问方式，要做到心中有数。

(二)加强写作训练。

1.深入了解本省高考作文的评分细则，做到有的放矢。特别可以就发展等级的要求有针对性地进行文章的升格训练。

2.关注生活，关注社会。只有学会两个关注，考生才能积累大量新鲜而丰富的写作素材；只有学会两个关注，考生的记叙文才能更加真切细腻，情感才能更加感人，立意才能更加深刻，防止以看代写，以想代写，要把会做、做透作为考前最后冲刺的原则，力求在难度低的试题中少失分，在难度高的试题中多得分，以期全面提高得分率。

导语：其实，摩拜单车自入市以来，曾多次被人为破坏，破坏方式五花八门，有的被扔河道，有的二维码遭喷漆，有的被从楼上直接扔下，有的车胎被割开。下面是yuwenmi小编为备考的同学准备的作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

近日，摩拜单车官方公众号曝光了一起摩拜单车遭人为破坏的事件：一男子将多辆摩拜单车扔进黄浦江，之后又砸坏了6辆。所以该公众号发出“摩拜单车已身负重伤，需要你们的救援”，向社会寻求目击证人。其实，摩拜单车自入市以来，曾多次被人为破坏，破坏方式五花八门，有的被扔河道，有的二维码遭喷漆，有的被从楼上直接扔下，有的车胎被割开。而据报道显示，在“共享单车”成为绿色出行工具，广受群众欢迎的情况下，恶意毁坏车辆所造成的损失，也成了企业难以承受的成本负担和共享单车健康可持续发展的瓶颈与障碍。

尽管网约单车的出现还很“稚嫩”，存在一些弊端甚至影响用户体验，但其具有的发展优势是显而易见的，单车租赁不仅利民便民、绿色环保，是时下最便捷健康的短途出行方式，与互联网的完美对接，更打破了传统固有的存取车方式，使得在一座城市的任何一处，都能借助手机的APP终端实现存取车和埋单缴费，同时，出行是高频应用，其分享经济模式也颇被资本看好，除了摩拜单车和ofo，这个领域还有小鸣单车和优拜单车等。小鸣单车10月份宣布已完成1亿元人民币的A轮融资;优拜单车计划11月份正式上线。由此可见，不用太长时间，网约单车就会在“占领”京沪等大城市的同时，迅速向中小城市扩展。非但会成为城市民众新的便捷出行方式，更有助于社会绿色环保意识理念的提升。

显然，网约单车租赁的便捷和“无人看守”，也成了一座城市文明素质的“试纸”，对共享单车进行“花式”破坏的丑陋行为也是频频上演，一直对单车租赁未来踌躇满志的摩拜单车企业似乎也有些招架不住，不得不通过公众号向社会“告饶”：摩拜单车已身负重伤，需要你们的救援。既有呼吁社会善待单车之意，同样更有对政府加强公共管理的期盼。相关数据表明，摩拜单车成本大概是3000元左右，在没有损坏正常运营情况下，需要2年左右才能收回成本。即便其他企业单车成本较低，在“满负荷”且无损坏的前提下，收回成本也需要半年，如果“花式”恶意破坏频率继续升高和蔓延，非但让共享单车企业呈现“负效益”，能否可持续下去，着实都很难说。

其实，因为用于租赁的共享单车多是由企业定制生产，与市场销售自行车有很大区别，又具有特制的定位扫码系统，能被个人占为己有的可能性不大，即便是故意隐藏或“花式”破坏共享单车的“肇事者”，也完全是一种“损人不利己”的恶意发泄而已，应对这种畸形心态驱使的恶意破坏，仅靠企业完善管理加强防范是远远不够的。实际上，网约单车企业不只是一种经营行为，同时也是向社会提供的一项公共服务产品，共享单车必须依靠政府和全社会共同来保护，笔者以为，经营企业应当与政府相关行政执法部门联手建立一套共享单车的保护机制，对于诸如像整车“扔进河道”， 二维码及整车喷漆等完全让单车失去共享价值的行为，警方更应当及时介入，将其列为损害公私财物案件来查处，总之，共享单车需要共同保护，既是在维护企业合法利益，更是在维护公共利益。

无论是由政府兴建的公共服务设施，还是由企业提供的经营性公共服务产品，市民群众有免费或有偿使用的选择，却没有随意甚至故意损坏的权利，共享单车遭遇各种“花式”破坏，更说明即使在北京这样的国家首都城市，市民的文明素质和修养也有待进一步提升，而随着社会经济的发展和互联网企业的不断涌现兴起，政府和企业为城市公共服务提供的各种“自助”设施、设备甚至代步工具势必会更多，文明素质提不上去，保护共享设施、设备的意识不能提高，不只会遏制城市文明进步的脚步，让城市公共服务的成本大幅增加，最终损害还是自己，北京如此，其他城市同样更不例外。

不知从什么时候开始，我喜欢上了收集美文美句。

可是以前，我在众多的科目中最讨厌的就是语文，最厌烦的就是语文中的写作和阅读理解。那时候，我是绝对不可能想到有一天，我竟然喜欢上了摘抄，又接着渐渐喜欢上了写作。

以前，我会因为400字600字的作文而头疼，怕的不得了，每次做语文试卷做到阅读理解和写作时，我都会不自觉地紧张，手里出汗。每次老师布置作业的时候，最怕的也是她会布置作文题目。

又是从什么时候呢，我喜欢上了阅读，后来读的多了又喜欢上了写作。说说从读书开始吧，我觉得写作写不出来的最重要的一个原因就是阅读量不够，对一些事情了解的太少，以至于写的时候什么都写不出来，只是干巴巴地一些字的累积，毫无内容可言。所以说，写作的第一步，我们要从阅读开始，只有阅读的多了，才会对事情有一些属于自己的见解，我喜欢上写些东西是在大约读了几十本书之后。

如今给我一个作文题目，就不会再像曾经那样不到快要交卷时才开始下笔了。

希望像我曾经有过为作文发愁的同学快去阅读吧，并且中途不要放弃哦。

1.从多角度立意是使作文的立意达到较高要求的途径之一。刚才同学们围绕“风”这个话题，根据题目的提示，分别从自然界和人类社会这两个方面切入，有的从有形的角度出发，抒发自己的情怀，有的从无形的角度立意，或歌颂新时代新风尚，或揭露抨击坏风气，追求深刻、新颖。多角度立意需要进行发散思维，既可以从家庭、学校、社会的角度想开去，寻找新的视角，更可以凭借自己的阅读积累展开广泛的联想，使自己的立意高人一筹、别开生面。

在写以环境或自然为话题的作文，一定要从“自然界——有形”写到“人类社会——无形”。在写作时，可根据作文所给的材料，来确定无形(文章的主旨);如材料主旨不明显，或较笼统，可进行多角度地进行联想，主旨越细小越好，达到以小见大的效果。

2.精心选择材料。以环境或自然为话题，必不可少对环境和自然描写的内容。描写不能面面俱到，所描写的内容必须与文章的主旨有联系，能从多方面多角度地展示主旨。第二类的材料是揭示主旨的语句。语句既能紧扣环境景物的特征，又能精炼地表达出作者的写作意图。第三类材料是过渡的材料，要选择那些具有触发点的材料，由写景物既自然又贴切转到写人写情写理方面。

3.写好景和物。

首先要抓往主体，要根据主旨明确所写主体景物和环境是什么，其特征是什么;其次迅速辐射联系，写出与主体景物有关的与主旨有关的周围的联系物;必要时可展开联想，可顺时间进行联想，也可顺空间进行联想。

要写出景物的时令性，地域性，典型性，让人感到真实可见;要有层次地写出同一景物的不同方面，不同景物的共同特征;能从视觉、听觉、味觉、嗅觉、融觉、感觉等多方面进行描写;能动静结合，运用对比衬托，运用多种修辞手法生动形象地进行描写;能融情于景，情景交融。

4.抒出真情实感。以环境或自然为话题的作文，其真情实感来自于环境或自然中的景物情景，找到景物蕴含的精神，也就找到了要抒发的情感。又因景物的本身没有感情色彩，可以根据表达主旨的需要，赋予景物以某种特别的感情色彩。有时不知要抒发什么情感，只要联系现实生活进行是非的评价，进行美丑的褒贬，再加入爱憎的情感，就有了真情实感了，但必须要与描写的环境自然做到形神一致。

在中学生作文里，化实为虚的比喻、象征手法，可以让作文意境气象万千，别开生面，意味无穷。而且，这也有一定的难度，需要指导。

对此，我有以下几点感想。

一、启发学生多观察、多感悟、勤练笔。

这是写好象征文的基础。观察，是写作的重要源头之一。

感悟是立意产生的关键，是观察的深入，用心着意，则会有一定的思想指向、在这两个过程后，勤练笔成文，则可有成果，让“象征”文成就于笔下。

二、方法具体指导

1、选物(引语)

观察事物，选取有象征意义的事物，着意观察、感悟、立意。

2、绘物(赋语)

对所描写、展示的事物进行有目的的描写，描写与所立之意相符，为表里关系，暗含立意。3 .咏物(赞语)

把所描写的事物的意义——象征意义揭示出来，加以赞美。用以物喻人的方式或直抒胸臆，赞美其象征的品格精神，显示作文目的。

三、有计划，有的放矢地指导训练

范例素材：

1.骆驼——任重道远，坚忍不拔

2.海鸥——胸怀宽广，搏击风浪

3.海燕——勇敢顽强，远见卓识

4.春蚕——兢兢业业，无私奉献

5.萤火虫——渺小却不卑微，勇于展示自己的生命火花，点亮暗夜。

6.白鸽——和平友谊的使者

7.喜鹊——活泼热情，吉祥如意

8.春燕——报春使者，勤劳亲善

9.白灵——聪明伶俐

10.梅花——坚贞不屈

在咖啡馆里，有两个人，一个人说咖啡苦涩；一个人说咖啡香浓。同是一杯咖啡，为什么会有两种体会呢？吾曰：心境不同。这一杯咖啡，如同一本书，看书的人不同，感想也不同，就像莎士比亚说的：“有一千个读者，就有一千个哈姆雷特。”高尔基曾说，书籍鼓舞了我的智慧和心灵，它帮助我从腐臭的泥潭中脱身出来，如果没有它们，我就会溺死在那里面，会被愚笨和鄙陋的东西呛住。书，是需要阅读的，需要记的，只有阅读，才能助我们成长。书无私奉献的把智慧给了读者，它让我进入了一个又一个的欢乐国度与神秘海洋。他让我在书中懂得什么是善、恶、正义、邪恶、让我知道了历史的兴衰与和平，民族的团结，灾难和耻辱。它像一块吸铁石牢牢的把我吸住，我一捧起来就爱不释手，跟着主人公一起欢笑，一起流泪，走进他们的世界中，去感受他们的处境，去体验他们遇到的事的时候，那是我最快乐的时光??书籍、报刊，使我坐在家里，便知道天下的事情，不断的给我鼓励??我看书不到废寝忘食的地步，也就算的上手不释卷，连上厕所都不放过，每次总是上了一个多小时，妈妈催了半天，我才合上书。有时候，我也会边走边看，妈妈总是教育我，不过现在我改了，因为我知道这是一种不好的习惯，这是从我的好朋友“书”当中知道的呢。但我走到哪里都会带着一两本书，尽管要出去郊游要带许多东西，我也要带几本书，每次妈妈总是让我带一两本就好了，可是那两本要是看完了，就变得无聊了，所以我每次总是跟妈妈讨价还价，两本变成三本，有时候明的不行，我就来暗的，我便自己偷偷藏几本带走，哈哈，每次睡觉前，我都会看一下书，妈妈总是无奈的说：“好吧，就5分钟”我总是很不甘心的让妈妈多让我看会儿，过了一会，妈妈来催我睡觉，我总说看完这一页，看完这一页，还得寸进尺，再看下一页，不等妈妈下最后通牒，我是不会合上书的。

也许冰心奶奶，老舍先生也像我一样，所以，这些伟大的作家都是读书读出来的。许多道理，也许就在你读书的过程中，你就领会到了，所以在我的成长中，我需要阅读，阅读就能使我成长。在漫漫的人生旅途中,每时每刻都需要读书。书是我们的精神食粮,它可以化为人生之路上的精神驱动力。

科洛廖夫曾经说过：人离开了书，如同离开空气一样不能生活。所以，我们要为了自己生存，努力读书吧！成长的路上离不开书！

[成长需要阅读作文200字

一、以读促写

英语写作作为一个高度复杂的产出性活动一直以来是高中生英语学习中的一个难题。以读促写法能有效地拓展词汇量，丰富写作素材、习得写作技巧、提高遣词造句的能力以及培养语感和篇章结构意识。

（一）精选阅读材料

在我们的英语课本中有许多贴近学生学习生活的文章和语言表达地道、优美的句子。教师应充分提炼利用好这些文章和句子，以此来充分调动学生的阅读兴趣。教师可以对所学的语言材料进行重组，结合相关的语境供学生阅读，更可在教学语篇时丰富一些幽默、趣味的材料。

（二）围绕课文，开辟以“读”引“写”的路径

换位性训练：我们阅读课文时，习惯站在作者的立场上，循着作者的思路去考察、理解课文中的人和事。换位训练就是让学生转换一个角度、从自己的立场和经历来表现内容。如在教完阅读文章后，我便让学生进行换位练笔，从自己的经历出发仿写。

（三）读后摘要——英语写作由简单起步

目前，学生写作中存在的问题首先表现在心理上，大部分学生对英语写作有畏惧心理，为了避免这种心理，教师的指导就得避免从语法角度着手，而应着力培养学生遣词造句的能力。摘要写作可谓是一种既简单又有实效的方法，操作起来也很方便。

（四）读后仿写——写作须从模仿开始

大多数学生的作文

（五）化解写作中的难点

在语篇上，学生谋篇布局的能力较弱，不懂得在写作中使用过渡、转折手段将主题有机地连接起来，文章前后往往缺乏照应。学生必须在教师的指导下多阅读，通过学会怎样分析文章结构，怎样恰当地运用连词，怎样正确地使用词组，怎样利用所学知识论证观点，让学生掌握英语写作的基本能力，从而创造出连贯统一、符合逻辑的作文。

（六）鉴赏语句或篇章——在感悟中提升写作能力

大量的阅读可以提高阅读速度，扩大词汇量。另一方面，它还可以增强英语语感，对英语写作起着潜移默化的作用。在阅读时，可以从精美的文章中获取好的词语、句型及表达法，把它们记下来，并加以分析鉴赏，熟读成诵，并有意识地将它们应用到自己的作文中。

二、以写促读

以“写”来促进阅读除了有利于加深对阅读材料的理解外，还有利于提高学生用英语表达思想的能力和运用所学语言的准确性。只要应用得当，且引导学生积极配合，那么通过“写”来促进高中英语阅读教学质量的提高是可以实现并且高效的。在教学过程中，我们可以通过以下措施来进行“以写促读”的训练。

（一）课文填空

课文填空是指在根据课文改编或缩编的短文中进行填空，要求学生在空格中填写恰当的词语—关键词、词语搭配等，以使短文结构完整，意思连贯，符合课文原意。这样的练习可在课堂上进行，也可在课外进行。如在课堂上进行，教师可先利用教学投影（PPT）呈现带空格的课文，进行集体填写或部分学生口头填写，然后进行全班笔头填写。这样可降低难度，帮助学困生完成填写任务。

（二）听写、默写

对于课文中一些精彩的字、词、句子或段落，及新句型和长难句，教师可以采用听写或默写的方式，促进学生对文本的再次或多次阅读。学生对新学词语、句型和难句理解到位了，那么对课文的理解也必然随之加深，“写”也就起到了促“读”的作用。

（三）精华摘抄

对于阅读课文中的精彩句子和段落，教师可要求学生做好摘抄和记录，这样做的益处是促使学生有目的地鉴赏、阅读课文、通过阅读关注英语思维与汉语思维的异同，欣赏英文独特的表达方式，体验英语语言的美感。让学生学会欣赏优美的语言本身就是一种文化熏陶。

（四）课文缩写

课文缩写是原文的精华和梗概，这就要求学生要先通过多次阅读文本，透彻理解课文，把握课文主线，将课文内容用自己的语言加工和理解方式表达出。课文缩写有助于增强学生对课文的理解并提高阅读技能。

（五）课文仿写

课文仿写指的是模仿课文格式写类似文章。在仿写过程中教师应注意指导学生尽量模仿课文中所新学词语的正确用法，句型使用、段落、篇章的合理布局，以便更好地达到以写促读的目的。

（六）写读后感

在学习过课文之后，可让学生讲获得的感受、体会以及受到的教育、启迪等写下来。读后感的重点在“感”字上，那么“读”是“感”的前提，“感”是“读”的结果。因此，学生要对课文进行多次的阅读，才能准确地理解原作，把握要点，是写好读后感的前提和基础。

总之，在高中英语教学中，写作教学应该和阅读教学放在同等重要的位置。不仅教师要高度重视，而且要促使学生把它放在一个重要的位置上。在日常教学中，我们不仅要扩大学生的阅读量，而且更应该关注学生的写作实践和写作过程。只要方法正确，学生的阅读和习作能力都会有所提升。

考试作文时语文科目的重中之重，如何让孩子平常的阅读习惯与语文作文写作衔接是每一个父母的心病。

我家孩子从小就喜欢读书，各种课外书都看，但我感觉他的作文水平并没因为读书的增多而成比例的提高。人都说读书独到一定的量作文自然就提高了，但这句话在我儿子身上好像不适用。

在上期末的时候，利用家长会的机会，我就这个问题请教了一下孩子的语文老师，他给总结了两点原因：1、孩子的阅读只是浅表性的阅读，像看动画片一样，只是关注了故事情节，而没深入进去。这样的话需要家长配合，让他帯着问题去阅读、多读几遍，情况会有所好转；2、作为男孩子，感情方面不如女孩子细腻，考虑细节就差一些，有些作文题材写起来就达不到那种深度-----当然，这只是说一部分现象，并表示所有的都是这个原因。总的来说阅读还是很重要的，俗话说熟读唐诗300首，不会作诗也会吟。

通过老师的解答，我感觉自己平时对孩子的阅读关注太少，只是觉得多给他买书，只要他多看自然就会有提高，这种观点显然行不通了。我们做家长的除了提供源源不断的书籍外，也得多引导孩子、多指点孩子该怎么看、怎么读才是有效地、可行的。

基础是将结构所承受的各种作用传递到地基上的结构组成部分。基础最基本的元素组成，可分为条形基础、刚性基础。以下小编为你收集了阅读与写作基础知识，希望给你带来一些借鉴的作用。

一、表达方式：记叙、描写、抒情、说明、议论

二、表现手法：象征、对比、烘托、设置悬念、前后呼应、欲扬先抑、托物言志、借物抒情、联想、想象、衬托（正衬、反衬）

三、修辞手法：比喻、拟人、夸张、排比、对偶、引用、设问、反问、反复、互文、对比、借代、反语

四、记叙文六要素：时间、地点、人物、事情的起因、经过、结果

五、记叙顺序：顺叙、倒叙、插叙

六、描写角度：正面描写、侧面描写

七、描写人物的方法：语言、动作、神态、心理、外貌

八、描写景物的角度：视觉、听觉、味觉、触觉

九、描写景物的方法：动静结合（以动写静）、概括与具体相结合、由远到近（或由近到远）

十、描写（或抒情）方式：正面（又叫直接）、反面（又叫间接）

十一、叙述方式：概括叙述、细节描写

十二、说明顺序：时间顺序、空间顺序、逻辑顺序

十三、说明方法：举例子、列数字、打比方、作比较、下定义、分类别、作诠释、摹状貌、引用

十四、小说情节四部分：开端、发展、高潮、结局

十五、小说三要素：人物形象、故事情节、具体环境

十六、环境描写分为：自然环境、社会环境

十七、议论文三要素：论点、论据、论证

十八、论据分类为：事实论据、道理论据

十九、论证方法：举例（或事实）论证、道理论证（有时也叫引用论证）、对比（或正反对比）论证、比喻论证

二十、论证方式：立论、驳论（可反驳论点、论据、论证）

二十一、议论文的文章的结构：总分总、总分、分总；分的部分常常有并列式、递进式。

二十二、引号的作用：引用；强调；特定称谓；否定、讽刺、反语

二十三、破折号用法：提示、注释、总结、递进、话题转换、插说。

二十四、其他：

（一）某句话在文中的作用：

1、文首：开篇点题；渲染气氛（记叙文、小说），埋下伏笔（记叙文、小说），设置悬念（小说），为下文作辅垫；总领下文；

2、文中：承上启下；总领下文；总结上文；

3、文末：点明中心（记叙文、小说）；深化主题（记叙文、小说）；照应开头（议论文、记叙文、小说）

开头要引人（开门见山，直截了当；制造悬念，引人入胜；提出问题，引人注意；说明情况，交待背景），结尾要有力（画龙点睛，发人深思；总结全文，照应开头；叙述结束，自然收尾；抒发情感，引起共鸣）

（二）修辞手法的作用：

（1）它本身的作用；

（2）结合句子语境。

1、比喻、拟人：生动形象；

答题格式：生动形象地写出了＋对象＋特性。

2、排比：有气势、加强语气、一气呵成等；

答题格式：强调了＋对象＋特性

3；设问：引起读者注意和思考；

答题格式：引起读者对＋对象＋特性的注意和思考

4、反问：强调，加强语气等；

5、对比：强调了……突出了……

6、反复：强调了……加强语气

7、夸张：突出了……的本质特征

8、对偶：句式整齐有节奏。

（三）句子含义的解答：

这样的题目，句子中往往有一个词语或短语用了比喻、对比、借代、象征等表现方法。答题时，把它们所指的对象揭示出来，再疏通句子，就可以了。

（四）某句话中某个词换成另一个行吗？为什么？

动词：不行。因为该词准确生动具体地写出了……

形容词：不行。因为该词生动形象地描写了……

副词（如都，大都，非常只有等）：不行。因为该词准确地说明了……的情况（表程度，表限制，表时间，表范围等），换了后就变成……，与事实不符。

（五）一句话中某两三个词的顺序能否调换？为什么？

不能。因为（1）与人们认识事物的（由浅入深、由表入里、由现象到本质）规律不一致（2）该词与上文是一一对应的关系（3）这些词是递进关系，环环相扣，不能互换。

（六）段意的归纳

1．记叙文：回答清楚（什么时间、什么地点）什么人做什么事

格式：（时间＋地点）＋人＋事。

2．说明文：回答清楚说明对象是什么，它的特点是什么，

格式：说明（介绍）＋说明对象＋说明内容（特点）

3．议论文：回答清楚议论的问题是什么，作者的观点怎样，

格式：用什么论证方法证明了（论证了）＋论点

我今天在萧山日报社九楼参加了“快乐阅读轻松写作”这个让人受益匪浅的活动。

小记者团请来了童言老师给我们上课。童言老师原名张宇飞，童言是她的笔名。童言老师告诉我们写好作文的三个关键点：多读、多写、多记。

多读：就是多看别人写的著作，从别人的书中得到多方面的有点。老师为我们推荐了几本好书，如《草房子》、《青铜葵花》、《床边的小豆豆》、……

多写：就是要平时多写写日记写写作文，这样写作文的速度就会快上很多了。老师刚讲完就从一个袋子里翻出来两本已经很破的本子，我们很不解，听老师一解释，我们才知道这原来是老师在小学时用过的日记本，老师让我们看一下，我看过上面的日期从来都没有断开来过。

多记：就是要在读书时，边读书边做笔记。于是，书中的好内容就被这种“烂笔头”给记了下来。

之后，老师还给我们分享了一些他在小学时的写作经历。这一次活动我受益匪浅，明白了“快乐阅读轻松写作”。

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

今天是个重要的日子，我忐忑的坐在考场。就在刚刚我见证了一次邻里有情的真实场景。

街坊老郭的儿子麒麟，是个非常孝顺的儿子，第一个月开工资，就给老郭买了20瓶肾宝。在进入考场前，隔壁老于的媳妇住院了。

我握着钢笔，老郭的形象立马在我心中更加高大起来。当然老郭有一点不好，要不是坐他的0.5L排量的宝马牌自行车，我早就在考试结束前30分钟到考场了。

高尔基曾经说过，青春的阅读需要一个领路人，于是我们就被老郭领上了一条不归路。在说什么是“青春的阅读”的时候，我们得弄清楚什么叫青春?

青春如烟花一般绚丽，如鞭炮一般轰轰烈烈。我和小学同学一起吃饭，偶然看见他拇指根部有一个疤，就问他怎么搞的。

他说是小时候放炮炸着了，那时候学校刚放过《董存瑞》，正好学校边下还有一座桥…………

青春如女神一般美丽，如AV一样此处无声胜有声。以前看AV的时候，想，这么漂亮的女孩子，演AV可惜了;现在看到漂亮的日本女孩子，想，不去演AV实在太可惜。

说完了青春，就是阅读，不得不提那位知识渊博的老郭。老郭读过很多书，经常在夏天的夜晚，给我们讲文学、历史，可以说不仅是我的启蒙恩师，连隔壁的于小宝都对老郭感恩戴德。

我们一起谈宗教!

老郭问我：嘿，你知道耶稣和释迦摩尼最大的共同点是什么吗?

我回答说：他们都是神?

老郭说：不是，他们都是自然卷!

我们一起看文学!

老郭问：你知道许仙站在雷峰塔前，叫白娘子回家的时候，白娘子说什么吗?

我答：法海你个老秃驴!

老郭说：那是前一句，后一句是谢谢老秃驴给我在杭州弄了一套独栋别墅。

我们一起聊武侠!

老郭讲了一个情节。一灯大师见一蝎子掉到水里，决心救它。谁知一碰，蝎子蛰了他手指。一灯大师无惧，再次出手，岂知又被蝎子狠狠蛰了一次。

一根手指被蛰得又肿又粗，大师不惧蝎蛰，换一指继续，旁有一人忍不住说：它老蜇人，何必救它?

老郭幽幽的眼睛放着光问我：你猜一灯大师说什么?我要把它养在裤裆里。

我们一起说汽车!

真正牛逼产品，一定是能改变世界，像苹果和Photoshop。前者拯救了无数等待器官移植的病人，后者拯救了无数女人。

比如老郭刚买的那部东韵西律，有着“最美中级SUV”美誉的荣威RX5，就是一部牛逼的互联网SUV!

这让老郭想起了最近发生的一件小事。

那天，他开着荣威RX5，看见路边有一男孩表白遭拒。

妹子说:我们不合适，不是因为你没钱，谢谢你对我这么好。

这时一辆宝马开过来，下来一个50多岁秃头猥琐大叔，搂着妹子就要走。

老郭实在看不过去了，掉头，下车，开门，90度鞠躬，对那男孩说：少爷，老爷叫我接您回家!

女孩当场蒙圈了……

2秒钟后听到那女孩撕心裂肺的喊着，后视镜一看还在追着车跑。

边跑边喊：求你让我蹭蹭你车里的Wifi!

男孩绝情没有作声!

紧接着女孩又喊：这就是马云花了10亿要做的汽车?太TM漂亮了，求你告诉我是在哪儿买的?

只听见男孩回应喊道：

上天猫，就购了!