高中英语说明文写作tornado【20篇】

This weekend, there was an art festival in our school, it had been hold for

five years and the school insisted to make it become the feature. I was so

excited, this was the first time for me to join. Early in the morning, I saw

there were so many people coming to the campus, making the campus so lively. The

students dressed so well and gave the warm welcome to the guests. I walked

around and appreciated the painting, every work was drawn by the students, I was

so impressed by these works. There were also some handworks, which were so

creative, it reflected the students’ wisdom. Though we were busy with our

subjects most of the time, some students still kept on their hobbies and made it

their talent. I should learn from them and develop some interest.

China has long been known as “the land of ceremony and propriety.” Today however people often complain that public morals are no longer what they used to be. A family for example likes a cell of society which also mirrors the general mood of a country. As we know the Chinese have very strong family ties. But with the emergence of a “modern” concept to families people find that problems like high divorce rate and extramarital affairs become more serious than ever before.

Another example: the name of Lei Feng who was always ready to lend a helping hand to others used to be known by almost all Chinese as a model to learn from. But today some people claim that “the spirit of Lei Feng” is outdated. Fashionable ideas say money talks. In the early stage of the market economic development the appearance of some evil phenomena is not surprising. But we should not sit passively by and let it run rampant. Instead active measures should be taken to improve morals and ethics of the public.

Personally the media should play a leading role in this regard. They should spare no effort to praise the good and criticize the evil. They should guide people how to tell the truth goodness and beauty from the fault ugliness and evil.中国素有“礼仪之邦”的今天，然而，人们经常抱怨公共道德也不再是过去的样子了。一个家庭，例如，喜欢一个社会的细胞，这也反映了一个国家的一般情绪。正如我们所知道的，中国人有很强的家庭关系。但随着家庭的“现代”概念的出现，人们发现问题的高离婚率和婚外情变得比以往更为严重。

另一个例子：雷锋的名字总是愿意伸出援助之手给别人，被称为几乎所有的中国人作为一个模型来学习。但今天，有人声称“雷锋精神”已经过时了。时髦的想法说钱谈判。在市场经济发展的初期，一些恶现象的出现并不令人惊讶。但我们不应该被动地坐着，让它横行。相反，应采取积极的措施来改善公众的道德和道德。

就个人而言，媒体应该在这方面发挥主导作用。他们应该不遗余力地赞美善和批判邪恶。他们应该引导人们如何从错误、丑陋和邪恶中讲真话、善和美。

Today, the world is globalized and more and more foreigners come to China

to seek for business cooperation. Many years ago, a non-profit organization

named the second Saturday of July as the International Day of Cooperatives. Its

purpose is to call for more cooperations between countries.

With the development of Internet, the world gets smaller, because the

communication between countries has increased. America is the superpower all the

time, but during recent times, there are so many business cooperation between

Chinese people and American people. It is known to all that China’s market is

full of vitality, so there is no doubt that cooperation between countries will

be the main trend.

The cooperation happens all the time and it promotes the working

efficiency. People can share the information and technology. They learn from

each other, so as to gain the precious experience and make progress. China is

the future, so more and more foreigners learn mandarin. They want to find a

place here and make their achievement. We also can gain a lot when we work with

them.

1. 内容切题

内容切题是命题作文的基本要求，考生可从以下几个方面入手：

第一要认真审题。根据题目类别，弄清文体的要求，并判明文章的种类(议论文、说明文、记叙文)，同时确定文章要阐明的主题或要表达的中心思想，若题目已经提供了提纲，还要注意弄清各提纲要点之间的逻辑关系。考生在拿到作文题后，切勿惟恐时间不够，提笔就写。一旦跑题，发现了再改就来不及了，常言道：“磨刀不误砍柴工”。

第二要注意设计安排段落。根据文章的中心思想，确定各个段落的主题内容和主题句。如果是议论文，一般要从论点的正反两个方面来考虑，首先是某观点的合理成分或某物的长处，然后是该观点的不合理成分或该物的短处，最后阐明自己的观点。如果题目提供了提纲，只要把提纲扩展成主题句即可。

第三要避免将记忆里较熟悉的句子生拉硬扯地搬进作文，使作文结构松散，意思不明确，甚至会偏离主题。

2. 表达清楚，文字连贯

文章要做到表达清楚，文字连贯，文章各段落就必须根据提纲所确立的不同主题来展开，而且各段落的主题句要将段落的各个部分凝聚在一起，流利地表达段落大意，使段落中各部分以及段落之间的联系一目了然。

3. 句式有变化

有些考生对写作没信心，不敢大胆地使用所掌握的语言基础知识，包括英语句法知识，结果整篇文章都是以主、谓、宾句式为主的简单句子，文章显得刻板无生气。实际上，

以下是由语文迷网精心为大家整理提供的关于教育的英语名言，欢迎大家参考选择。

Education has for its object the formation of character.

教育的目的在于品德的培育。——斯宾塞

He can ill be master that never was scholar.

没当过学生的人成不了一个好先生。

Teaching others teaches youself.

教学相长。

Better untaught than ill taught.

宁可不受教育也强于受坏的教育。

Instruction knows no cladistinction.

有教无类——《论语》

The best bred have the best portion.

最好的教养是最好的嫁妆。

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with works, and ,need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? (Friedrich W.Nietzsche, German philosopher)

所有高尚教育的课程表里都不能没有各种形式的跳舞：用脚跳舞，用思想跳舞，用言语跳舞，不用说，还需用笔跳舞。(德国哲学家 尼采 F W)

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. (Oscar Wilde, British dramatist)

教育是令人羡慕的东西，但是要不时地记住：凡是值得知道的，没有一个是能够教会的。(英国剧作家 王尔得 O)

Example is always more efficacious than precept. (Samuel Johnson, British writer and critic)

身教胜于言教。(英国作家、批评家 约翰逊 S)

Histories make men wise ; poems witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep ; moral grave ; logic and rhetoric able to contend.(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

历史使人明智;诗词使人灵秀;数学使人周密;自然哲学使人深刻;伦理使人庄重;逻辑修辞学使人善辨。( 英国哲学家 培根. F.)

If you dont learn to think when you are young , you may never learn .(Thomas Edison , American inventor )

如果你年轻时就没有学会思考，那么就永远学不会思考。(美国发明家 爱迪生 . T.)

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study.

(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

天生的才干如同天生的植物一样，需要靠学习来修剪。(英国哲学家 培根 . F.)

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

And gladly would learn, and gladly teach. (Chaucer, British poet)

勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人 乔叟)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Education commences at the mothers knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

For a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great inconveniece. (Anton P.Chekhrv, Russian dramatist)

一个受过教育的人，不懂外语是极不方便的。(俄国剧作家 契克夫 A P)

As the new bell tolled, the Chinese people exclaimed with excitement, "the New Year is here! New Year! Ah! What a wonderful New Year! I am excited to run back and forth in my home, unable to restrain my joyful mood, the Spring Festival composition 600 words. When I ran to the balcony, all of a sudden, the fireworks fly on the sky, in a flash, Fried opened, and some like countless meteor, some like colorful flowers, some like golden coat, and like the golden sun, the earth was like the day. How beautiful!

Hope Project is a Chinese public service project organized by official organization. It aims to help children go back to school, build Hope Primary School and improve rural conditions in poor regions.

In many poor areas in China, there are many school age children cant go to school because their families do not have enough money. As a result, they have to stay at home and help their families do the farm work. We often say that knowledge changes fate. Therefore, only study can help them go to the outside world and change their lives, even change the poor condition of their hometown. Through the Hope Project, much money and books and other materials can be collected to improve the poor conditions.

That makes children can share more resources to get knowledge. Besides, many people in city have a chance and channel to show their kindness. The most important and meaningful is that they can help those children who are desperate in need.

希望工程是由官方组织举办的中国公益项目。该项目旨在帮助孩子们重返校园，建立希望小学以及改善贫困乡村地区的条件。

在中国，很多贫困地区的适龄儿童由于家里没有足够的钱不能去上学。因此，他们不得不待在家帮助家人做农活。我们常常说知识改变命运。因此，只有学习能够帮助他们走出外面的世界，改变他们的生活，甚至是改变他们家乡贫困的现状。通过希望工程，我们可以收集到资金、书籍以及其他材料以改善贫困的现状。这样一来，孩子们就可以分享更多的资源，学到更多知识。

除此之外，城市里的很多人就有机会和渠道显示他们的善良。最重要且有意义的是他们可以帮助那些极需帮助的孩子们。

[希望工程高中英语作文

In our life, everyone 情态动词+have . Some could be found at last. But some of them couldn’t be found forever. I had an unforgettable experience. One day, I went home happily. I I found my watch gone (be about to do ...when ...句型 ) . I was very worried. I looked for it everywhere but 省略 ), it is very important.It’s the gift that my parents gave to me for my Two days later, to my surprise, I found my watch in my drawer, which made me overjoyed (非限制性定语从句 ). The experience precious gift (虚拟语气 ) . I should take care of it and avoid missing it again.

（四）语言准确简明，文字通俗浅显

选用准确的语言，精当地解说事物的事理，是说明文语言的基本要求。说明文是以介绍知识性内容为主的，只有如实反映被说明内容的客观情况，才能保证知识的科学性。相反，语言不准确就会失去知识的科学性。

明代学者徐光启笔译古数学家欧几里得的《几何原理》，其中的一节：

“凡论度必始于一体。自点引之而为线，自线广之而为面，自面积之而为体，各自三大纲。是心有长而无阔者谓之线，有长与阔而无厚者谓之面，长与阔厚俱全者谓之体。唯点无长阔厚薄，其间不能容，不可以数度，然线之两端即点，而线面体皆由此生。点虽不入于数，实为从数之本。”

这节解说数学基本概念的说明文，把什么是点、线、面、体，点与数度的联系和区别作了确切的阐释，语言也很精当。

此外，在说明文中往往有些内容是带有专门化的科学知识，涉及一些专门名词和专业术语，在说明中特别要求把它们运用得准确无误，使读者便于领会。如：“航空”与“航天”是两个不同的概念，有篇文章作了这样的解说：“飞机在大气层内飞行，称为航空;卫星、飞船在大气层外飞行，称为航天。它们是采用不同的飞行器在不同的空间来完成飞行任务的”。这种解说是十分准确的，使人对什么叫“航空”、什么叫“航天”得到了科学的了解。

说明文的语言必须简要精当。看下面的这段文字：

“蝉的幼虫脱皮是从背上开始的。先出来的一层旧皮从背上裂开，露出淡绿色的蝉来。先出来的是头，接着是吸管和前腿，最后是后腿和折叠着翅膀，只留下尾边尖儿还在那层旧皮里。这时候，它腾起身子，往后翻下来，头部倒挂着，原来折叠着的翅膀打开了，竭力伸直。接着，用一种几乎看不清的动作尽力把身体翻上去，用前脚的爪子钩住那层旧皮。这个动作使它的尾巴尖儿从那层旧皮里完全脱出不了。那层旧皮就只剩下空壳，成了蝉蜕，。从开始到完全脱出来，大约要半个钟头。

这段文字不到二百个字，具体说明了蝉的幼虫脱皮的整个过程。用简明的语言把幼虫脱皮的复杂动作细致而真切地写出来了。文字不枝不蔓，语言富有表现力，给人很清晰的印象。

说明文要介绍一些科学知识和一些内容，往往是一般人所不熟悉的内容人，要把专门化的科学知识解说清楚，让人易于了解，必须做到深入浅出，通俗易懂，生动活泼，富有趣味。如，《洲际导弹自述》是一篇介绍洲际导弹知识的科技小品。文章用拟人化手法把洲际导弹问世、分类、构造、特点及其威力和弱点都解说得十分清楚，文章把它赋予假定的人类行为，读起来生动风趣，易于理解。为了把说明文写得生动活泼、通俗易懂，人们常常运用各种修辞手法，增强文章的形象性、趣味性。

Dear Friend,

How have you been recently? I miss you very much. Do you still remember

me?

To be honest, Im honored to make friends with you. I still remember the

days when we were together. As far as I know, you are the kindest person in the

world. Once we were together, you always treated me as if I were your dear

brother, so I was grateful to you in my heart. After you leaving, I always

thought of you. Next time we have a chance to see each other, I will say "thank

you" to you. Thank you for your kindness. Now I have got the meaning of my

life.

Although we are in two different places now, we are still together, because

we are always heart to heart. I believe we can see each other again. Since we

are always close friends as well as dear brothers. Because of you, my life is

always so significant. Wherever I am, I will pray good luck for you.

Last but not the least, I hope you can make it and have a bright

future.

Sincerely yours,

Jason

一、写作决窍

总体把握，要点齐全;人称时态，逻辑清楚;

关键词汇，动词第一;组词成句，结构完整;

组句成文，连词增色;此路不通，绕道迂回;

字迹工整，留好印象;从句适量，高分有望。

二、写作步骤

1.认真审题。审题包括要点、格式、词数以及此篇文章要传递给读者什么样的信息，告诫读者什么(即写作目的)。

2.确定文体和时态。确定文体后，根据不同文体的特点和要求进行组织材料;同时确定出该篇文章的总时态与时态的变化。

3.写完要点，但不随意发挥。

4.先草稿，后抄写。

三、作文案例

[2004年全国中学生英语能力竞赛初赛初三组] (14分)

Choose one of your hobbies and write an article for the school magazine about it. Tell the magazine readers.

·What exactly your hobby is;

·When and how you became interested in this hobby;

·Why you enjoy your hobby;

·About your hopes and plans for the future.

写作要求：

1.根据所提供的内容，适当拓展想象空间，灵活地将提供的信息体现在文章中。

2.条理清楚，语句通顺，书写清晰、规范。

3.词数60-80.

[学生解答A]

My hobby is read books①.When I was seven years old.I became interested in reading books.I like needing books because there are a lot of useful things in books.I can learn a lot of knowledge from books. Books also② can teach me how to be a good person.Books even can solve many problems for me.I will read more good books to improve myself.

①改为reading books，动词作表语时应该用动名词。

②also的位置应放在can之后。

[点评]：档次9-11分。

①要点不全，漏掉最后一个要点。

②句子基本无误，能正确传递信息给读者但文章不流畅，句子与句子之间过渡不自然，给读者感觉在回答上述问题。

③有少量错误。

[学生解答B]

My hobby is reading.Reading books is very enjoyable.When I was young ,my mother used to tell me a story before.I went to bed every night.The stories were so interesting that I always felt they weren’t enough.So I began to read books by myself.Little by little I became interested in reading.I can learn much knowledge and many interesting things all over the world.When I read books,I can enjoy the beautiful sentences.At the same time I can improvemy writing.I want to be a writer in the future,so I must study hard and read more books so that my dream can come true.

①开门见山、点题。

②真情流露，理由充分。

③文中带圈的连词使用得恰当，使文章过渡自然、

④巧妙使用句型以表决心。

[点评]：档次13-14分。

①清楚表达写作目的，要点齐全。

②语言表达灵活多样，字里行间流露出真情实感，文章有感染力。

③恰当使用连词和从句，语言流畅，且无错误，是一篇高质量的作文。

[高分突破]

①文体：记叙文。

②要点：what → when →how → why → hope and plan for the future.

③时态：一般现在时，一般过去时，一般将来时的自然变化。

内容具有开放性，但它也是“控制性”的写作试题，因此不能随意发挥，要善于抓信息，写完要点。选用这两篇学生真实习作，一是因为他们选材相同，二是因为他们都是英语成绩优秀的同学。同学B灵活使用连词so…that,so,little by little,when,so that等，恰到好处地使用新句型和短语used to,became interested in,come true……等，使内容丰富，读起来优美流畅。其实这些表达同学A也会，只是缺乏技术加工。通过这两篇作文点评，同学们便能悟出其中的奥妙。

四、培养途径

1.根据老师布置的写作内容，独立完成一篇写作。

2.与同伴合作，交流自己的写作，通过交流找出各自作文中写得好的地方和优美的句子，合作创造一篇新的文章，供大家欣赏。

3.找老师点评，请求老师指点，尤其是怎样润色。

4.自己纠错，写下反思。

五、备考演练

A

缙云山是重庆著名的游览胜地，每天有大量的游客。请你根据下面提供的信息写一篇报道，说明现在的游客在环境保护方面的变化。

写作要求：

1.词数在100左右。

2.条理清楚，语句通顺。

3.开头已写好，但不计入总词数。

Jinyun Mountain is a famous place of interest …

B

阅读电视广告词：“If we don’t save water,the last drop of water will be a tear-drop.”根据提示，写一篇60-80词的短文。

提示：

1.生活离不开水。

2.可饮用水在减少。

3.水污染严重。

4.应保护水源，再利用水。

思路点拨与参考答案

A. [思路点拨]：

①文体：记叙文。

②时态：一般过去时态，一般现在时态。采用正反对比的写作手法，增加感染力。

③写作目的：告诉读者保护环境的重要性。

Jinyun Mountain is a famous place of interest.Every day a lot of tourists come here to enjoy its beauty. But a few years ago,some of them paid no attention to protecting theenvironment.They threw their rubbish,such as plastic bags,fruit skins and waste paper on the ground.Sometimes they broke trees,picked flowers and killed birds. Some even made fires in the woods to cook food.How dangerous it was.Luckily,great changes have taken place here.Tourists are used to putting their rubbish into dustbins,and they are doing their best to protect the birds and plants as well.They bring their own meals instead of cooking to preventstarting a forest fire in the mountains.All these changes make us very happy.

B. [思路点拨]：

①夹叙夹议(说明现状，谈谈感想)。

②时态：一般现在时态。

③广告词的含义——水很重要，应保护和再利用(写作意图)。

Water is very important to humans.We can’t live without water.The water we can drink is falling.But some people don’t seem to care about it.They waste a lot of water.They pour dirtywater into rivers and lakes.Water pollution is getting more and more serious.So we must do something to stop the pollution.We not only protect the water but also find ways to reuse it.If we don’t do this,the last drop of water will be a tear-drop.

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

1、individuals, characters, folks代替people ,persons。

2、positive, favorable, rosy(美好的),promising (有希望的),perfect, pleasurable ,excellent, outstanding代替good。

3、dreadful, unfavorable, poor, adverse(有害的)代替bad， 如果bad做表语,可以有be less impressive代替。

举例： An army of college students indulge themselves in playing games, enjoying romance with girls/boys or killing time passively in their dorms. When it approaches to graduation, as a result, they find their academic records are less impressive.

4、(an army of; an ocean of; a sea of; a multitude of; many, if not most)代替many。

注：用many, if not most一定要小心,many后一定要有词。

举例：Many individuals, if not most, harbor the idea that….同理用most, if not all ,代替most。

5、a slice of, quite a few ,several代替some。

6、harbor the idea that, take the attitude that, hold the view that, it is widely shared that, it is universally acknowledged that)替think。

因为是书面语,所以要加that。

7、affair ,business ,matter代替thing 。

8、shared代common。

9、reap huge fruits代替get much benefit。

10、for my part, from my own perspective代替in my opinion。

11、Increasing(ly),growing代替more and more(注意没有growingly这种形式。所以当修饰名词时用increasing/growing.修饰形容词,副词用increasingly)

举例：Sth has gained growing popularity. Sth is increasingly popular with the advancement of sth.

12、little if anything,或little or nothing代替hardly

13、beneficial rewarding代替helpful be beneficial of

14、shopper, client, consumer, purchaser,代替customer

15、exceedingly, extremely代替very

16、hardly unnecessary, hardly inevitable ...代替necessary, inevitable。

17、sth appeals to sb, sth exerts a tremendous fascination on sb代替sb take interest in

18、capture ones attention代替attract ones attention

19、facet, dimension, sphere代aspect

20、be indicative of ,be suggestive of ,be fearful of代indicate, suggest ,fear

21、give rise to, lead to, result in, trigger代替cause

22、There are several reasons behind sth代替..reasons for sth

23、desire代替want。

24、pour attention into代替pay attention to。

25、bear in mind that代替remember。

26、enjoy, possess代替have。(注意process是过程的意思。)

27、interaction代替communication。

28、frown on sth代替be against ,disagree with sth。

29、to name only a few as an example代替for example。

30、next to/virtually impossible,代替nearly impossible。

Teachers，good afternoon. Allow me to briefly talk about myself.

My name is - Xianning graduated from the south gate of the private secondary schools. Tourism now studying at the school in Hubei Province. Studying hotel management professional.

I was a character，cheerful girl，so my hobbies is extensive. Sporty. In my spare time likes playing basketball， table tennis，volleyball，skating. When a person like the Internet at home，or a personal stereo. Not like too long immersed in the world of books，and family members have told me，Laoyijiege is the best. Talking about my family，then I will talk about my family has. Only three people my family，my grandmother，grandfather and my own. My grandfather is a engineer，I am very severely on peacetime，the Church me a lot. Grandma is a very kindly for the elderly，care for my life in every possible way. Therefore，I have no parents in their care，childhood and growth were full of joy.

I like this hotel management professional，because I like to live in a strict order of the management environment. I have my professional self-confidence and hope，as long as the efforts will be fruitful，this is my motto. Since I chose this profession，I will follow this path，effort，perseverance path.

Thank you teachers. I finished presentation.

Im the only child in my family, the apple of my parents eyes. my mother

and father take good care of my and give me a lot of support throughout my

life.

My father is the manager of a company and my mother is a teacher. they are

both well educated and do well in their jobs. they know that knowledge is power.

father often communicates with foreign friends and is good at english. i can

learn a lot from him, especially english. his oninion on education is as

advanced as that of my mothers. they often give me advice on my studies but

never interfere in them. they seldom force me to do what i dont like to. they

permit me to have different opinions. if something is good for me, they will

persuade me to do it as they want. many people of our age say that there is a

generation gap between their parents and them. however, it doesnt exist between

us.

My mother is a math teacher. she is very clever and good at teaching. she

can work out a problem within 10 minutes which would cost me 2 hours. i envy and

admire her. i want to be a math teacher like her.

Im lucky to have such enlightened parents. im lucky to have been brought

up in such a happy family.

If you ask someone that do they often go to library, I think they will

answer you with no, the reason I am saying this because of the development of

ebook. Many years ago, without computer, the only way to check the information

that you need is from paper books, it means you need to go to the book shop or

the library, while with the development of the Internet, people have access to

the information very easily, you only need to click on the computer, then what

you look for is in front of you. Ebook is a very popular form for reading,

people can find what they want to read in the computer, like the novel story,

then download. It is so convenient and fast, it can save a lot of time, we don’t

need to go to the library if we are busy. Ebook is a good way for reading.

参考翻译

如果你问一些人他们是否经常去图书馆，我觉得他们会回答不，我这样说的理由是因为电子书的发展。很多年前没有电脑，你想要核查你所需要的信息，唯一的方法就是去找纸质书，这意味着你需要去书店或者图书馆，然而随着电脑的发展，人们能很轻易得到信息，你只需要点击电脑，然后你所寻找的就会在你眼前。电子书是一种很受欢迎的阅读方式，人们可以在电脑上找到他们想要阅读的，比如小说，然后下载。这很方便快捷，能够省时，我们不需要去图书馆，如果我们很忙的话。电子书是阅读的好方式。

写说明文要根据说明对象的特点及写作目的，选用最佳方法。下面是小编整理的说明文写作常用的方法，欢迎阅读。

(1)举例子。举出实际事例来说明事物，使所要说明的事物具体化，以便读者理解，这种说明方法叫举例法。 运用举事例的说明方法说明事物或事理，一要注意例子的代表性，二要注意例子的适量性。

(2)引资料。为了使说明的内容更充实具体，可以引资料说明。引资料的范围很广，可以是经典著作，名家名言，公式定律，典故谚语等。

(3)作比较。说明某些抽象的或者是人们比较陌生的事物，可以用具体的或者大家已经熟悉的事物和它比较，使读者通过比较得到具体而鲜明的印象。事物的特征也往往在比较中显现出来。 在作比较的时候，可以是同类相比，也可以是异类相比，可以对事物进行“横比”，也可以对事物进行“纵比”。

(4)列数据。为了使所要说明的事物具体化，还可以采用列数据的方法，以便读者理解。需要注意的是，引用的数字，一定要准确无误，不准确的数字绝对不能用，即使是估计的数字，也要有可靠的根据，并力求近似。

(5)分类别。将被说明的对象，按照一定的标准划分成不同的类别，一类一类地加以说明，这种说明方法，叫分类别。 分类别是将复杂的事物说清楚的重要方法。

(6)打比方。利用两种不同事物之间的相似之处作比较，以突出事物的性状特点，增强说明的形象性和生动性的说明方法叫做打比方。 说明文中的打比方的说明方法，同修辞格上的比喻是一致的。不同的是，比喻修辞有明喻、暗喻、和借喻，而说明多用明喻和暗喻，借喻则不宜使用。

(7)摹状貌。为了使被说明对象更形象、具体，可以进行状貌摹写，这种说明方法叫摹状貌。

(8)下定义。用简明的语言对某一概念的本质特征作规定性的说明叫下定义。下定义能准确揭示事物的本质，是科技说明文常用的方法。 下定义的时候，可以根据说明的目的需要，从不同的角度考虑。有的着重说明特性，如关于“人”的定义;有的着重说明作用，如关于“肥料”的定义;有的既说明特性又说明作用，如关于“统筹方法”和“应用科学”的定义。

(9)作诠释。从一个侧面，就事物的某一个特点做些解释，这种方法叫诠释法。 定义法和诠释法常采用“某某是什么”的语言形式。形式相同，如何区分呢?一般来说，“是”字两边的话能够互换，就是定义;如果不能互换，就是诠释。 例如，“人是能制造工具并使用工具进行劳动的高级动物”这句话，改成“能制造工具并使用工具进行劳动的高级动物是人”，意思不变。“雪是在云中形成的一种固态降水物”这句话，如果改为“云中形成的固态降水物是雪”就不成。由此可以辨别，前一句是定义说明，后一句是诠释说明。

(10)画图表。为了把复杂的事物说清楚，还可以采用图表法，来弥补单用文字表达的缺欠，对有些事物解说更直接、更具体。 一篇说明文单用一种说明方法很少，往往综合运用多种说明方法。采用什么说明方法，一方面服从内容的需要，另一方面作者有选择的自由。是采用一种说明方法，还是采用多种说明方法，是采用这种说明方法，还是那种说明方法，可以灵活，不是一成不变的。

我有个姐姐。她的名字叫胡丹。20岁，是一名高中生。

她有一张圆脸，两只明亮的大眼睛和一个小鼻子。她的头发很长.她最喜欢的颜色是蓝色。最喜欢的运动是网球。春天里她经常和我打网球。

她擅长画画。她画的画很美。我喜欢看她画画。

她很和善、友好，喜欢助人为乐，因此她有很多好朋友。

这就是我姐姐。我非常喜欢她。

i have a sister. her name is hu dan. she is twenty years. she is a high school student.

she has a round face, two big , bright eyes and a small nose. her hair is long. her favourite colour is blue. her favourite sport is tennis. in spring,she often plays tennis with me.

she is good at drawing. her drawings are very nice. i like watching her draw pictures.

she is kind and friendly. she is always ready to help others,so she has many good friends.

this is my sister. i like her very much.

以下英语短句由语文迷网整理提供，更多英语写作素材请看语文迷作文网。

1. be closely related to…与…息息相关

2. be essential to sb 对某人来说必不可少

3. in a society with more competitions and challenges / in a competitive society

4. feel frustrated (挫折的)/ discouraged

5. a precious (宝贵的) experience

6. raise / arouse the awareness of …

7. acquire knowledge and skills学习知识和技能

8. a growing /increasing tendency

9. have a desire for sth / to do sth

10. put sth into practice

11. be keen on… 热衷于…

12. broaden one’s horizons开阔眼界

13. a large variety of / a wide range of …

14. make one’s dream come true

15. lay a solid/firm/stable foundation for/in…为…/在…方面打下坚实的基础

16. listen to teachers attentively

17. make a practical plan

18. hold the strong belief that…

19. I’m confident / I’m convinced that…

20. with iron will and perseverance

21. pursue one’s dream 追逐梦想

22. arouse one’s passion for…唤起对…的热情

23. resist the temptation of good food

24. change one’s original mind

25. spare no effort to do sth 不遗余力做…

26. redouble one’s effort 加倍努力

27. leave a deep impression on sb

28. turn to sb for help / advice

29. relieve/lessen/reduce/ease one’s burden

30. with time going by=as time goes by

31. cherish/treasure/value our lives

32. vary from person to person

33. a boarding school 寄宿制学校

34. What surprised me most was that…

35. cause severe consequences(后果)

36. pay their tuition/school fees/schooling

37. physically and mentally

38. Some in favor of it think that…., while others are against it, holding the opinion that…

39. Success stems from hard work as it can help us accomplish the goal we’re striving for.

40. establish a special fund to help the poor

41. its negative aspect/impact is also obvious.

42. motivate sb to do sth

43. bury oneself into study埋头学习

44. our determination and efforts

45. express my gratitude to her sincerely

46. be strict with sb in sth

47. achieve the final victory

48. encounter/face some difficulties

49. neglect the disadvantages

50. With the great efforts we’ve made, …

51. enhance/improve his ability of singing

52. be optimistic about

英语写作中积累很重要。下面是语文迷网为大家整理的英语四级作文精彩句式，希望对你有帮助。

一.开头句型

1.Recently the phenomenon has become a heated topic.

2.Recently the problem has been brought into focus.

3. Nowadays there is a growing concern over ... .

4. What calls for special attention is that...

5. There’s no denying the fact that...

6. what’s far more important is that...

7.It is common knowledge that honesty is the best policy.

8.It is well-known that…

9.Many nations have been faced with the problem of ...

10.According to a recent survey, ...

11. With the rapid development of ..., ...

二.结尾句型

1.From what has been discussed above, we can draw the conclusion that ...

2.In conclusion, it is imperative that ...

3.In summary, if we continue to ignore the above-mentioned issue, more problems will crop up. 4.With the efforts of all parts concerned, the problem will be solved thoroughly.

5.Taking all these into account, we ...

6. Whether it is good or not /positive or negative, one thing is certain/clear...

7.All things considered, ...

8.It may be safely said that...

9.Therefore, in my opinion, it’s more advisable...

10. It can be concluded from the discussion that...

11. From my point of view, it would be better if...

三.表原因句型

1.A number of factors are accountable for this situation.

A number of factors might contribute to (lead to )(account for ) the phenomenon(problem).

2. The answer to this problem involves many factors.

3. The phenomenon mainly stems from the fact that...

4. The factors that contribute to this situation include...

5. The change in ...largely results from the fact that...

6. Part of the explanations for it is that ...

7. One of the most common factors (causes ) is that ...

8. Another contributing factor (cause ) is ...

9. Perhaps the primary factor is that ...

10. But the fundamental cause is that ...

四.表比较句型

1.The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

2.The advantages of A are much greater than those of B.

3.A may be preferable to B, but A suffers from the disadvantages that...

5.For all the disadvantages, it has its compensating advantages.

6.Like anything else, it has its faults.

7.A and B has several points in common.

8.However, the same is not applicable to B.

9. A and B differ in several ways.

10. Evidently, it has both negative and positive effects.

五.表证明句型

1. No one can deny the fact that ...

2. The idea is hardly supported by facts.

3. Unfortunately, none of the available data shows ...

4. Recent studies indicate that ...

5. There is sufficient evidence to show that ...

6. According to statistics proved by ..., it can be seen that ...

六.表结果句型

1. It may give rise to a host of problems.

2. The immediate result it produces is ...

3. It will exercise a profound influence upon...

4. Its consequence can be so great that...

七.表反驳句型

1. It is true that ..., but one vital point is being left out.

2. There is a grain of truth in these statements, but they ignore a more important fact.

3. Many of us have been under the illusion that...

4. It makes no sense to argue for ...

5. Such a statement mainly rests on the assumption that ...

6. Contrary to what is widely accepted, I maintain that ...

The Pregant Teenage Girl

Recently, a girl who was born after the year of 2000 showing a picture of her pregant image in Weibo. This teenage girl wrote down the words that she was busying giving birth to a child for her so called husband, who was also a teenager. Soon this picture became the hot issue. People were so shocked by the girl’s young face, which looked so innocent and she was just no more than 16!Such a young girl surely did not have the ability to raise a kid, what’s more, they even did not figure out the meaning of responsibility. The problem of family education was brought to the public again. The root of young pregancy lies in the parents’ caring. The lack of communication between parents and chidren is easy to have such problem. It is not appropriate to have baby at such early age.

最近,一个出生在2000年后的女孩在微博展示了她怀孕的照片。这少女写下一些话,她忙着为所谓的丈夫生孩子,他丈夫也是一个少年。很快这张照片成为了热点。人们如此震惊于这位女孩稚嫩的脸,她看上去很天真,不超过16 岁!这样一个年轻的女孩肯定没有能力抚养孩子,更重要的是,他们甚至没有弄清楚责任的意义。家庭教育的问题再次被带到公众面前。如此年轻就怀孕的根源在于父母的关怀程度。父母和子女之间缺乏沟通很容易有这样的问题。如此小的年纪就有孩子是不合适的。

[高中写人英语作文