成功需要勤奋英语(20篇)

伟大的发明家爱迪生曾经说过：“天才是由一分的灵感和九十九分的汗水组成。”的确，我们在站在平地上仰望那些巨人泰斗时，何曾想过，他们也曾与我们站在同一位置，不同的是他们找到了通往成功的阶梯勤奋。

如果说灵感是成功前的最后一道门，那么勤奋就是打开这道门的唯一钥匙。

我国伟大数学家陈景润，为解决数学界的明珠“哥德巴赫的猜想”，坚持每天清晨三点起来学习外语，每日浸在数学符号的海洋中，一日复一日，从未松懈，终于，在反复演算，灵光一闪，摘取了这颗璀璨的明珠。

成功并不一定要通过那扇门，你依旧可以通过勤奋的阶梯跨过，走向成功。

每一个人都熟知爱迪生发明了灯泡，却不知，在他很小时，就被冠以“一事无成”的称号，但他并不在意，他依旧用心研读，努力钻研，在不断的实践，不断地改正，用他的勤奋完成他的理想，最终发明了电灯泡。

有很多人在看到了成功的大门，却未能打开，最后碌碌无为，他们不能称为成功，他们只是失败者。

中国曾有一名年轻大学生钱某，他是十二岁就学会他人苦，学多年都不懂得微积分，被赞为神童，未来以他的天资，定会带领中国数学走向新高潮，但他却懒惰得不参加补习，只是闲逛，这使得他原有的天赋消失殆尽，最终成为一界庸才。

正如爱迪生说的那样，所有成功都离不开汗水，离不开勤奋。无论是否拥有天赋，勤奋永远都是不可缺少的一部分。

成功是百分之一的聪明加百分之九十九的勤奋——爱迪生

对于我们来说，勤奋就是成功之母!——茅以升

勤奋是我们必不可少的，有了勤奋，才能让我们迈进成功的殿堂，许多伟人不单靠聪明，而是勤奋，才能在自己追求的领域有所成功!

现代有许多学生，只想有好的成绩，又不肯勤奋用功，单靠自己的一点小聪明就认为可以学好习，那是不可能的，许多事实证明，只有勤奋才能成功。不肯用功、勤奋，就不会有出息。

伟大的发明家爱迪生，小时候只上过三个月的小学，一直被人认为低能儿的他在母亲的教育和耐心教导下努力学习，勤奋刻苦，在不懂的地方用心学习，之后成为了发明大王，在留声机、电灯、电话、电报、电影等方面的发明和贡献，还在在矿业、建筑业、化工等领域也有不少著名的创造和真知灼见，这不是勤奋得来的吗?

我们发现万有引力的伟大科学家牛顿，小时候不用功读书，课堂上违反纪律，但到他青年时那他发现要想有所成就，必须勤奋学习，从此他走向了物理的知识殿堂，在物理海洋里畅游，终于在物理界有所成就!

勤奋才能成功，这是铁定的事实，但有些人就是不理会这个道理!

王安石写的《伤仲永》一文，里面的仲永是一个很聪明的小孩，从小作诗写文，一点不比当时的先生差，许多人认为他是天才，过节时都找他写对联，之后他自认为自己很聪明，不去继续学习，过了七年，当他十一岁时，他的能力大不如以前了

这就是勤奋的威力，即使你的智商再高，没有勤奋，没有努力，还是不会成功的有个名人说过，勤奋，是步入成功之门的通行证!上面的这么多例子已经可以证实，要想成功，必需付出，要想有所付出，必须勤奋!

勤奋，才能成功!

读了《钢铁是怎样炼成的》这本书后，我领悟到：一个人的毅力影响着他的一生。书中主人公保尔·柯察金，一生布满了坎坷，然而他凭借着自己的毅力跨过了一个个坎。是毅力给了他力量，创造了生命中的三次奇迹与辉煌。他十几岁参加卫国战争，身负重伤，住院治疗，战胜病魔，学习不停，革命不止。这是何等可贵的动力啊！

人生的不如意十之八九，而大家不能失去信心和勇气，因为毅力是挫折喂养的。大家都知道，一步登天之事时罕见的。很多有巨大成就的人就是在挫折中锻炼了自己，考验了自己。不要以为当作家写一本书是很容易的事情，其实他们是经历了很多的挫折和历练的。马克思写《资本论》用了40年，李时珍著《本草纲目》花了30年，司马迁编写《史记》历时20多年。古今中外，谁的成功是不凭毅力而取得的

毅力需要坚持，在坚持的同时，还要有生活的节律。大家不能一味蛮干，要毅力和节律并行，两方面都不能忽视。节律过快，频率太高，要想一直坚持下去是十分困难的。生活犹如长跑，一下子冲在前面，并不是一定就能夺标。相反，如果掌握好节律，就会稳步走向成功。

有毅力是取得成功的前提，名著《钢铁是怎样炼成的》给了我信念与力量。我真正的明白了“善读可以医愚”的道理。

并不是所有的麦子都是种子，成功需要磨练。

轻轻翻开《阅读年选》，那一行行熟悉的字出现在我的眼帘，我翻到了一篇名为——《并不是所有的麦子都是种子》的文章，慢慢读了起来。

当他还是6岁是，他跟着妈妈到乡下的外婆家走亲戚，当时正是挖野菜的好时节。他挎着一个篮子，学着妈妈的样子剜起了荠菜，篮子里渐渐装满了荠菜，他兴奋地跑去给妈妈看，哪想到妈妈呵呵笑了起来：“你这孩子，真当剜到篮子里的就是菜呀!”他低头一看，才发现剜到篮子里的大多数马齿苋，用马齿苋做菜吃，是要划破舌头的。

“不要急于炫耀自己，先看看剜到篮子里的是不是荠菜。”读到这儿，我细细咀嚼着这句话：虽然朴实，却藏着耐人寻味的道理啊!

他从大学新闻系毕业了，并顺利地到了一家电视台当记者。一进单位，他觉得这工作太简单了，于是他开始浮躁起来：采访前从不写采访稿，新闻稿子出来从不检查，一边抄写同期声，一边听音乐......一个季度下来，他的出错率竟位于整个新闻中心榜首!而那些毫不起眼的同事却把他远远甩在了后面。

第二年，许多像他一样的记者被刷了下来，为此，他叹了一口气说：“现在竞争压力真是大。”而台长却意味深长地说了一句话：“并不是所有的麦子都是种子呀!”

读到这儿，我忽然明白了：“并不是所有的麦子都是种子”不是和前面的“剜到篮子里的不一定就是菜”意思相同吗?在生命的原野里，麦子如果不经历土壤和黑暗的深埋与磨练，也许充其量只能被人看成一粒可供食用的粮食，但它永远不可能成为一粒孕育的种子!真正到了丰收的时候，我们就该粗心大意了吗?不，远远不能，我们还要更加留心，别让自己成了一颗滥竽充数的“马齿苋”呀

许多人都梦想成为天才，得到成功。对于天才和成功两者之间的关系，人们的理解各不相同。就拿我来说吧，过去，我以为天才是上帝赐予的，是天才就会获得成功。直到读了诸宸自传《落棋无悔》一书后，我才知道自己的想法太幼稚了。

诸宸是当今世界上唯一集儿童、青年、成年世界冠军殊荣于一身的大满贯棋后。她五岁开始学棋，十一岁就离开故乡和父老乡亲，长年在北京集训。有一个春节，集训队不放假，教练问她：“你想家吗?想你的父母吗?”“想家?我就不来这里练习了。”话虽如此，但诸宸硬咽了，泪珠早已夺眶而出。这时的她才十几岁，小小年纪就要克制着对家的思念，对父母的依恋。不分昼夜的刻苦练习是她生活的全部。尽管如此，一有空，她就摆棋谱、练棋……比赛是残酷的，没有人一生下来就是冠军，棋盘上刀光剑影的惨烈搏杀是无情的，面对无数次胜与负，没有惊人的毅力是无法承受的。假如诸宸吃不了苦，没有辛勤的付出，怎能有今天的成就?真是能忍波谷沉寂，敢上浪峰搏击啊!她的成功印证了爱迪生那句话：天才是百分之一的灵感加上百分之九十九的汗水。 掩卷沉思，我不禁为自己过去的无知而羞愧。在获得了广东省少儿国际象棋大赛一等奖的殊荣后，我开始喜不自胜，沾沾自喜，总以为自己的棋艺高人一等，是个天才。殊不知，这恰恰是我成长道路上的一块绊脚石。鲁迅先生不是说过：“即使是天才，生下后的第一声啼哭，也和平常儿童一样，决不会是一首好诗。”鲁迅先生之所以能成为一名闻名的文学家，是因为他把别人喝咖啡的功夫都用在了工作上。诸宸之所以成为棋后，是因为她把别人休息的时间都用在了研究棋谱、摆棋局上。假如说，他们都是天才的话，那么只能这么说：他们的天才来自于勤奋。

勤奋孕育了千万名成功者，古今中外，这样的例子不胜枚举。王羲之练字用尽十八缸水，李白“铁杵磨成绣花针”，杜甫“读书破万卷”……他们的成功皆出于勤。

诸宸自传《落棋无悔》这本书让我深深地体会到：一个人要想取得成功，必须付出艰辛的劳动。在我们漫长的求学道路上，更应该谨记这个道理。想当未来的棋后，必须具备诸宸那种“勤学苦练”的精神，顽强拼搏，坚持不懈地努力。只有这样，才能用今天辛勤的汗水浇开明天成功之花。

“唉！早知道我就应该更加努力的坚持，这样我也可以胜利。”听了这句话，你肯定想知道发生了什么？看完我下面的作文，你就明白了。

这天上午，我高兴地来到了快乐作文，熊老师说要玩一个游戏：“坚持五分钟”，什么，才五分钟而已，我肯定可以的。熊老师又讲了游戏规则：“要把一只笔放在手腕上，笔如果落地就出局了。”

刚开始，并没有那么困难。可到后来，我的手越来越酸，笔也在一点一点滑动。我心想，不行啊，我的笔快掉到地上了。我试图让笔不再下滑，可无济于事，最后我还是出局了。

不过第一次感到，出局也挺好的。我开始看大家坚持的怎样了？我身后的冯耀橙已经垂下了手。刘艺聪面露难色，虽然开着空调，我还是看到同学们的汗水在脸上流淌。这时已经开始有同学问老师还有多久，结果还剩三分钟，这五分钟可真是漫长啊！

越往后，同学们就越痛苦！胳膊在抖动，脸上流着汗水，就在快要坚持不住的时候，老师说道：“还剩一分钟了，你们一定要坚持住。”同学们听了，又个个充满了信心，最后终于胜利了。他们个个欢呼起来！我也想加入他们，可我已经出局了。

坚持，就像屋檐上的水，终有水滴穿石的一天。坚持，就像磨石上的铁杵，终有铁杵成针的一天。坚持，就像细绳上的木头，终有绳锯木断的一天。我相信，只要坚持，我也会有成功的一天。

——启示录：读冰心《繁星.春水》有感

一首首短小含蓄、富有哲理的现代诗歌，一次次爱的熏陶与感动，使我不知不觉中喜欢上了这本书。

在冰心“理想的人世间”里，“只有同情和爱恋”“只有互助与匡扶”。所以，母爱、童真和对自然的歌颂，就自然成了她诗的主旋律。

就像这首诗“万千的天使，要起来歌颂小孩子;小孩子!他细小的身躯你，含着伟大的灵魂。※ 弱小的草呵!骄傲些吧，只有你普遍的装点了世界。”

儿童是最纯真的，因而也最伟大，草儿是弱小的，世界的美貌却需它来装点。冰心的这类小诗正是表现了诗人的纯真，对真、善、美崇敬和坚强的自信心与奋斗精神。

有的诗表现出诗人真挚热烈的感情和有有教益的哲理的思考;有的表现出诗人独特的审美情趣;还有的突出了“冰心体”思想纯洁、文字典雅、带着一丝愁绪的独特风格。

其中，最让我感动的是《成功的花》这首诗：“成功的花，人们只惊羡她现时的明艳!然而当初她的芽儿，浸透了奋斗的泪泉，洒遍了牺牲的血雨。”冰心将自己从生活获得的新鲜感受，生动形象地表现出来：自然含蓄，又富于哲理，给我们以无尽的回味和思想的启迪。

今天，我正在做英语的阅读短文。我看着问题，在文章中寻找着答案。可那答案似乎在和我捉迷藏，怎么也看不见。我急得像热锅上的蚂蚁——团团转，满头大汗，不停地用脚尖点着地板。再看看这文章，句子不知，单词不晓，更是火上浇油。脑子里是一团糟，恨不得乱写一气。正在这时，似乎这朵花在我耳畔说话：“要想成功就需奋斗”。“是啊，不能浮躁啊!”于是，我定下心来，逐字逐句地看着，用老师教给我们的句型套用。不厌其烦的一遍遍地查字典。终于，我做了出来。

同时，这首诗也告诉了我们：不要只看到他人成功的一面，临渊羡鱼，自己也要拿出行动，铭记着“要想成功就需奋斗”，努力向成功进军，使自己也成为一颗耀眼的明星。

让我们好读书，读好书，快乐成长，散发出人生黄金时期的璀璨光芒。

[成功需要努力作文3篇

Before the Rio Olympic Games came, the media reported some players that caught peoples attention. There is no doubt that these players have beautiful faces, which helps them win the attention. But the more important thing is that they are not only talented, but also work very hard. The chance to take part in the Olympic Games means the players are excellent and they have stood out in their countries.

If they win the golden medal in the Olympic Games, they will gain great fame and money around the world. The beautiful face brings players the market potential, which means they will be famous easily, but on the condition that they are the top players. Mariah Sharapova is the best example. She is beautiful and top tennis player all the time. So ability decides our position on the society.

里约奥运会到来之前，媒体报道了一些吸引人们注意力的球员。毫无疑问，这些球员拥有美丽的面孔帮他们赢得关注，但更重要的是，他们不仅才华横溢，而且训练非常勤奋。有机会参加奥运会的球员都是非常优秀的，意味着在自己的国家是脱颖而出的。如果他们在奥运会赢得金奖，他们将获得巨大的名声和金钱。漂亮的脸蛋可以给球员带来市场潜力，这意味着他们会比较容易出名，但前提条件是他们得是顶级球员。玛丽亚·莎拉波娃就是最好的例子，她长得漂亮，也是顶级的网球运动员。所以，能力决定着我们的社会地位。

[英语作文：外貌与勤奋

爱因斯坦曾说过：“成功在于勤奋”，一个成功的人必定经过自己的勤奋努力而走到如今的成功，成功来自于勤奋。

在宋代，有一位天才名为方仲永，他5岁就会写字作诗，她每天在家中写字作诗，天赋极高，村里的人民也很赞赏他，常常邀请他和他的父亲到家中做客，并为他题诗。她的父亲贪心很大，天天带着仲永到处吃喝，最后仲永的潜力越来越弱了，终于“泯然众人矣”。

由此可见，一个人没有源源不断的勤奋，又怎莫能成功呢?要想成功就要学会勤奋刻苦女里去追求成功，成功来自与勤奋。

《本草纲目》的作者李时珍他为了完成《本草纲目》一书，曾多年读医书，上山采药，试药，查看其药效。一日复一日，日积月累最终完成了本草纲目。

如果李时珍没有刻苦钻研医术、持之以恒的精神有怎摸会有如今的《本草纲目》呢?由此可见，成功离不开勤奋，成功离不开勤奋，勤奋刻苦的人终会成功。

爱因斯坦曾说过“成功等于百分之九十就得勤奋努力再加上百分之一的天赋。”汉代的匡衡，幼时家境贫寒，他非常爱好读书，但是他没有钱买烛夜读。他家的邻居虽然每晚都灯光明亮，却有高墙相隔。于是，匡衡凿壁穿孔，借光读书。后来，匡衡终于成为一位有学问的名人。

由此可见，一个人的勤奋努力对后来的成功很重要。成功来自于源源不断的勤奋。

三国时吴国的吕蒙，近代数学家华罗庚，不都是经过了自己的勤奋而取得成功的吗?爱迪生还说过：“巨大的成就，出与长期的勤奋。”因此，成功来自勤奋。毛泽东也曾说过：“天下无难事，只怕有心人。”一个人要想成功，就必须要勤奋努力。勤奋的人必定会走向成功。”“只要功夫深，铁杵也能磨成针。”成功来自与勤奋让我们大家共同努力为了我们的未来的成功一起努力吧!!

坚持，是烈日下你的汗水;坚持，是你走向成功的风;坚持，是载着你我飞翔在梦想晴空中的翅膀。而我相信，所有今日的辉煌都来自于昔日的不懈努力。 Perseverance is your sweat in the scorching sun; persistence is the wind of your success; persistence, it is the wings that carry you and I fly in the sky.And I believe that all todays glory comes from the unremitting efforts of the past.

镭的母亲——居里夫人，她放弃了昔日自己美好的容颜，坚持于镭射线的研究中，正是她的那颗坚毅、顽强的心，使她走向了法国科学院的讲台，成了历璀璨的明星。

坚持的成功必有汗水的付出，爱因斯坦正是如此，他为了使点灯的寿命延长，尝试了六千根灯丝，最后终于研制出寿命为一千多小时的点灯。这是需多大的毅力，多久的坚持，才能使他走向这伟大的一步啊!现在，金钱成了这个世纪的武器，成了寿命都能买到的珍宝。这些手机、游戏机不离身的人们，我问你们，你们有坚持过吗?你们买得到坚持吗?

我爸爸的朋友，一个五酒店的老板，我深刻地记着他们的一段对话。爸爸对他说：“想当年，你还不过是小生意的老板，看写作，级别都不一样了啊。”他感概地说：“我从没有想过我会走到这一步。我想，是希望和坚持支撑着我走到今天的吧!”光阴似箭，日月如梭，何不趁着这大好时光拼命坚持呢?

我相信，有那么一个老人，深受你我的尊敬。她已九十高龄，脸上的皱纹叙说着她的沧桑岁月，可她仍不服输于岁月带走的时光。虽已高龄，但她坚持登山，坚持的她，那位高龄老奶奶的坚持使她看起来年轻了不少。是啊，时光飞逝，只要抱着一颗坚持的心，又有什么做不到呢?

在大自然的世界中无奇不有，也有许许多多的鱼类、生物也抱着一颗坚持的心。河蚌就是其中之一。也许大家都不会多想珍珠的来源，而你应该很难想象出河蚌是怎么产出珍珠的，因为那着实使我不可思议。河蚌在大海中一张一合，也难免有砂砾随着海水的起伏进入河蚌内部。而河蚌的坚持却使他把一粒不起眼的沙粒，磨成了一棵价值连城的珍珠，这至少也需要几百年吧?河蚌与珍珠的故事深深触动了我。坚持就是最宝贵的财富，坚持就是人们梦想的启航。

现在，请你告诉我，你坚持了吗?如果坚持了，那就让坚持的翅膀伴我们越飞越高吧!

勤奋的主要目的就是成功，有了勤奋，才有成功；然而，成功的主要途径也正是勤奋，想要成功，就必须勤奋。勤奋与成功，彼此都需要彼此，因此，它们之间有较大的关联。

曾经看到过那么一则小故事：有一位很聪明的书生，在考试前觉得自己很聪明了，不必再读书。在考试时因平时的懒散而丧失了机会。这则故事在我心里敲醒了警钟：成功离不开勤奋。

去年暑假，我和妹妹一起到小婶工作的厂里打工。“工作”是把珠子一颗颗地镶在铁丝做的树上。妹妹学的很快，用最快的速度可以达到一分钟串三十个，是我速度的两倍。我们都对这份“工作”产生了兴趣，每天按时去那里打工。一次，在我们快要回家的十分钟前，妹妹赶好了她那天的任务，伸了个懒腰，冷冷地对我说：“你的速度真慢，简直是乌龟的化身！我去玩十分钟，到时候你才能赶上我。”

我心里有些不服，于是在她玩的十分钟里，我拼命地在赶，终于超过了她。记得那天以后，她每天都忙里偷闲十分钟，尽情地玩。我也每天都利用十分钟时间超过她。眼看快要结束工作了，妹妹再怎么赶也追不上我了。不错，我是乌龟，但也应该是《龟兔赛跑》的故事中的乌龟；而妹妹，只能是那只速度比别人快，行动却比人家懒散的兔子。再聪明的人，如果不勤奋，那么后果也只能是竹篮打水——一场空。

如果大家不想做一事无成的兔子的话，那么就必须勤奋，必须始终坚信“成功离不开勤奋”。成功没有捷径，勤奋是唯一通往成功的路。

成功，就像那散落了的珍珠，不一定可以全部拾起，但只要你努力了，就必定会有收获。想要成功？那么就要从这一秒起，勤奋！

爱因斯坦曾经说过：“a=x+y+z。”a就是成功，x就是认真工作，付出勤奋的汗水，y就是掌握正确的方法去发现，z就是少说废话，这不就是勤奋吗？

古往今来，有许多医学者，发明家，科学家都获得了巨大的成就。

我国四大名医之一——华佗，他风餐露宿，来到了山上学医，在一年中他留心观察病人的情况，到了晚上也丝毫不放松，点起油灯功读医术，在每天都认真学医的华佗一晃就是三年，又在师傅的敖药房里又刻苦了三年，在这六年里他刻苦、认真、坚持不懈，这不就是展示了成功来自勤奋，华佗要是不认真，不坚持不懈，能取得这样大的成就吗？

在四大名医中还有一名用汗水创造成就的李时珍，在这二十七年里，为了写书《本草纲目》他跋山涉水，尝遍百草，历尽千辛万苦，冒着被毒蛇咬的危险，为老百姓服务，最后终于编写完了《本草纲目》。李时珍用汗水撑起了成功，获得了巨大的成就。

在坚诗不懈的基础上，用勤奋、汗水唤醒了成功。

伟大的画家——达.芬奇，在小时候老师专门让他画鸡蛋，他不知道老师的意思，为什么让他画鸡蛋，最后在老师的提示下，终于体会出老师的真正含义，他坚持，知难而进，把汗水付出在画画上，把勤奋用在画画上，他画的画终于取得了巨大的成就。

鲁讯先生曾经说过：“我不是什么天才，我只是把别人喝咖啡的时间，用来看书。”

伟大地吸引力发现者——牛顿，创造电灯者——爱迪生，四大名医——扁确、李时珍、华佗、张仲景……

这些取得成就的人，不就是用自己的汗水，用自己勤奋取得成功吗？在成功之路上，挫折是必要的，勤奋是必要的。

转眼间，我从一个牙牙学语的婴儿成长为一个六年级的“大哥哥”。在这段成长的过程中，我觉得成功最重要的是别人的掌声了。

从小，我便是一个害羞的孩子。父母带我去外面和他们的朋友吃饭，我总是不肯答应，躲在房间里的角落——因为我不敢和这么多人打招呼，也不敢被这么多人看着。因为害羞，只要在大街上有人看我一眼，叫我的名字，我的脸就会红起来，并迅速地跑开了……

这种害羞的生活，一直持续到四年级的某一天。

那天，我们班正在进行口语交际。害羞的我自然不敢参加这个活动，但孟老师说每个人都得上台演讲。于是我拿着稿子，慢慢地走向讲台，怀着忐忑的心情开始演讲。大家都屏气凝神，48双眼睛齐刷刷地“盯”着我，这使我更加紧张，原来就不流利的话语变得更加结结巴巴，变得更加“不堪入耳”。这时，我想到了放弃，但“台下观众”认真倾听，又使我恢复了勇气，让我勇敢地讲了下去。演讲完毕，虽然我的演讲十分失败，但大家都没有嘲笑我，反而送给我雷鸣般的掌声。这让我感动不已，同时也增添了几分信心。

又过了一年，步入五年级时进行班干部改选。拥有几分自信的我勇敢地走到讲台上，开始滔滔不绝地发表我的竞选演讲。此时，我仿佛忘记了整个世界，忘了自己害羞的性格。终于，我的“表演”结束了，“台下的观众”再次给我送上了掌声。

从此，我越来越自信，上台表演都是“家常便饭”。这也再次告诉我，成功需要掌声！

熟悉农活的人都应该知道一句话“你看这棵树苗，根扎得越深，长得越好。”一棵树只有根扎得深，才能长得壮。橡树一样，青年人应该有扎根精神。

扎根精神需要持久的耐力。就像荀子曾说过：“锲而舍之，朽木不折；锲而不舍，金石可镂。”大致意思就是说不能坚持到底，即使是朽木你也折不断。但是只要能坚持到底，就连雕刻自然界中最硬的金石也不在话下。古希腊哲学家柏拉图便可以很好的证明这个例子。当时苏格拉底让他的学生们每天甩手。任务布置下去的前几个月几乎所有人都完成了。可是一年后当他再提起甩手这件事时，只有柏拉图做到了。而百年以后的今天，柏拉图的思想闻名世界，其他人却连姓名也没有留下。而帮助柏拉图成功的，便是细微的坚持。因此，只有像树根一样年复一年的向地心钻，才终有一日可以见到太阳。

扎根精神需要甘于奉献。守岛英雄王继才32年孤岛生活，只为守护0。013平方公里的国防战略岛；黄旭华为国深潜，潜心研发中国核艇；张富清收起了抗战勋章，响应新中国号召下乡工作；于漪一生站在讲台上，用生命歌唱……这些人都在用一生做一件事，即便不是惊天动地的大事，却是中国富强道路上不可或缺的铺路人。就像艳丽鲜花、繁茂枝叶背后，是因为有根在给予养料。

因此，每一位青年都应该有扎根精神。只有拥有这种精神，才能通向成功，成为国之栋梁。

生活，仿佛一座山。它巍峨，它高耸，它壮丽，但它也危险。我们便是这座奇山的匆匆游人，正向着那辉煌的吞吐日月的峰顶攀爬。

正是缺乏那我们的人生磨砺出的智慧和聪敏，一眼看去陡壁上那嶙峋巨石，往往难辨它是否坚固。正当我们兴冲冲地一脚踏上时，松动的泥土便拽着巨石和我们一摇直下。

我们往往被摔得头破血流，一汪泪眼渴望着明日，继续攀爬。

挫折不过是一块奇妙的垫脚石，迷离的色彩隐藏着无限玄机。踏破它，眼前便有豁然开朗的境界，便是一种最佳成功；畏惧它，它就是绊脚石，便是无可逾越的悬崖。

闻讯突至的往往是我们的妈妈。她们心痛，关切，自责的目光中闪动着泪光。来自她们的惊恐反倒吓坏了我们，她们开始小心翼翼地呵护着我们。整日胆战心惊地将我们掩在她们背后。我们便痴痴地顺着她们踩过的固石，向前懒散地前行。

紧接着，便是老师来了。有时，他们太苦心，严厉的表情反而禁锢了我们，我们只有无望地盯着眼前的攀山之石。劳，还是松？一脸茫然的我们，猛地想起那责备的目光……罢了，原地不动，或许最安全。

殊不知，这是思想的禁锢，这是灵魂的囚笼，我们不愿，更不敢可曾想，那些花儿明丽的色泽在一块块脱落！

而我们的人生奇山却始终静默着，它叹息着那些被宠被束的孩子们，凝望着那些独自站起来继续前行的背影。对于那些刚刚被摔下的孩子，只不过是淡淡一笑，然后期待着爬起的身影能多积分坚毅。

挫折，是奠基石，使我们的人生走向辉煌，使生命感悟真谛，这需要一种博爱和默默的支持；痛斥和溺爱，反而使挫折苦海无涯，再难跨越。

“宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来”。这不仅是一种坚韧，更需一股动的大气；“世上无难事，只怕有心人。”这不仅是一种坚强，更需一种默许和宽松。正是它们，林肯在困难中磨出了“最伟大的美国总统之一”，爱迪生跨出了世间永恒不落的日！

成功，需要坚强，更需要这样一种爱：博大，豁达，默许和支持。摔倒后，所有人都会淡淡笑笑，却赐予你追寻灿烂阳光的希望与勇气！

爱迪生的坚持，给世界带来光明。

哥白尼的坚持，让“日心说”得以发扬。

老鹰的坚持，使自己得到美味。

……

——一切成功源于坚持——这是名人留给我们的经验，也是我们从动物身上学到的处世哲学。

还清楚的记得2008年5月12日，中国大地上那场地震。它夺去了无数人的生命。可是，在整理死亡名单的同时，我们别忘了那一个个生命的奇迹。他们在废墟下、在荒山野林里，在那种没有食物、没有水，甚至生命时刻受到威胁的环境下，可以坚持数天、数十天，正因为他们的这种精神让生命成为奇迹。

着名哲学家柏拉图上学的时候，一天，老师苏格拉底布置了一道特别的作业：每天做甩手运动三十下。当时，全班同学都说太简单了。一个月后，老师问还有多少同学在做，只有不到一半的学生在举手。两个月后，老师又问，已经只有几个学生举手了。一年后，老师再问，还有一个学生举手，他就是柏拉图。

一个别人不以为然的甩手运动让柏拉图坚持了下来。可是，有谁知道正是这种简单的坚持，却成就了一个哲学家。

他是一个名不见经传的小人物，写了一个剧本。当时好莱坞有五百家电影公司，他拿着剧本去一家家要求拍，可五百家电影公司无一例外地拒绝了他。面对百分之百的拒绝，他没有灰心，又进行了第二轮、第三轮。结果都和第一轮一样。他还不死心，又进行了第四轮，到第三百五十五家电影公司时，那家公司终于同意了。

他就是好莱坞着名影星席维斯·史泰龙，那部影片就是《洛奇》。

他一共遭遇了一千八百五十五次拒绝，面对这一千八百五十五次的拒绝，他坚持了下来。他的坚持，让影坛出现了一部《洛奇》，也出现了一个席维斯·史泰龙。

成功在于坚持，无数功成名就的人证明了这条永不改变的真理。因此，我们要成功，就要坚持。只有朝着坚持这条路走下去，成功才会离我们越来越近。

爱因斯坦曾经说过：“a=x+y+z。”a就是成功，x就是认真工作，付出勤奋的汗水，y就是掌握正确的方法去发现，z就是少说废话，这不就是勤奋吗?

古往今来，有许多医学者，发明家，科学家都获得了巨大的成就。

我国四大名医之一——华佗，他风餐露宿，来到了山上学医，在一年中他留心观察病人的情况，到了晚上也丝毫不放松，点起油灯功读医术，在每天都认真学医的华佗一晃就是三年，又在师傅的敖药房里又刻苦了三年，在这六年里他刻苦、认真、坚持不懈，这不就是展示了成功来自勤奋，华佗要是不认真，不坚持不懈，能取得这样大的成就吗?

在四大名医中还有一名用汗水创造成就的李时珍，在这二十七年里，为了写书《本草纲目》他跋山涉水，尝遍百草，历尽千辛万苦，冒着被毒蛇咬的危险，为老百姓服务，最后终于编写完了《本草纲目》。李时珍用汗水撑起了成功，获得了巨大的成就。

在坚持不懈的基础上，用勤奋、汗水唤醒了成功。

伟大的画家——达。芬奇，在小时候老师专门让他画鸡蛋，他不知道老师的意思，为什么让他画鸡蛋，最后在老师的提示下，终于体会出老师的真正含义，他坚持，知难而进，把汗水付出在画画上，把勤奋用在画画上，他画的画终于取得了巨大的成就。

鲁讯先生曾经说过：“我不是什么天才，我只是把别人喝咖啡的时间，用来看书。”

伟大地吸引力发现者——牛顿，创造电灯者——爱迪生，四大名医——扁确、李时珍、华佗、张仲景……

这些取得成就的人，不就是用自己的汗水，用自己勤奋取得成功吗?在成功之路上，挫折是必要的，勤奋是必要的。

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

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

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

1.?????? Proverbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Damaging Research

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

3. Education and Citizenship

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

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

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

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

4. The Teacher’s Role

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

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

5. Education Philosophy

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

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

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

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

6. Student Life

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

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

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

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

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

7. Adult Education

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

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

8. Moral Relativism in American

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Schools Should Teach Values

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. College Pressures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then why are you going?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. To Err Is Wrong

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

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

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

Right over 90% of the time = “A”

Right over 80% of the time = “B~”

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

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

Playing It Safe

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

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

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

Different Logic

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

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

Errors as Stepping Stones

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

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

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

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

[英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

真正的成功在于自力努力完成某事后并做的很好，有成就感。这种成功需要勤奋。在许多竞争对手中鹤立鸡群，获得成就，也是成功。这种成功也需要勤奋。所以成功源于勤奋。

爱迪生曾说1%的灵感加99%的汗水=100%的成功。可见勤奋是成功的必要因素。孔子也说：“发奋忘食，乐以忘忧”。更表现出胜任教学生，教育勤奋的原因了。颜真卿也在《劝学》中写到：三更灯火五更鸡，正式男儿读书时。黑发不知勤学早，白首方悔读书迟。这不也说明了勤奋的重要吗？书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟。这句流传至今的谚语。更能说明勤奋对于成功的重要性。所以成功源于勤奋。

匡衡为读书，又因为家里没钱买灯油。就在与富人家之间的墙上，凿了一个洞。透过洞里的光看书。苏秦为读书更是头悬梁。董仲舒在家刻苦读书，后花园三年年仅去过一次。这样的勤奋不言而喻，后来他们都成功了。难道不能证明成功源于勤奋。

只有勤奋努力，才能赢得成功与认可。只要你有对功成名就的向往，持之以恒的努力下去，追求下去并永不罢休，就一定能成功。正如XX所言：如果放弃就等于失败，不放弃就有可能成功。只要我们拥有一颗向往成功的心与能持之以恒和拥有毅力的信力，就一定能成功，有梦勇敢去追。因为只有勤奋，才能成功。成功源于勤奋。

自力更生的意志力。艰苦奋斗的创造力，是创业的精神支柱，使我们叩开知识与成功的大门。

成功是非凡的傻劲，奋斗与恒心，与聪明无关。天才不代表成功，99%的汗水和1%的灵感才能铸就成功。

只有勤奋，才能成功。因为成功源于勤奋。您想走成功的捷径吗？请试试勤奋。

试看历史长河，成大事者，没有经历挫折的少矣;昔日高祖，不过一介小吏，却开创了汉的四百年的基业;太史令身受宫刑，但其志不催，一曲无韵离骚，足以让后人叹绝千古;东坡被贬黄洲，大江东去，浪淘尽，千古风流人物谁人不知，谁人不晓?上皆遭不辛，但哪个不是名垂千古?

古人尚且如此，那我们能不其差吗?达尔文从小被视为异类，但进化论谁又能推翻?谁又能说差?爱迪生小时候被视为笨蛋，但不也成为了大发明家吗?

挫折并不可怕，可怕的是自己的理想的沦丧!人生要经历过无数的事，如果为了一件小事的失败而放弃，那只能说明尔是一介匹夫。还是爱迪生，研制了电灯，经理了上百次的失败他放弃了吗?如果他放弃了一次，那么电灯可能要晚几百年出现了，那一次失败算什么呢?相反的，只要相信光明永远在我们面前，只要不懈追求，天地也在你脚下。

经历风雨，我们才能拥有众人皆醉我独醒的超然;经历风雨，我们才能拥有不为五斗米折腰的气节;经历风雨，我们才能拥有轻舟已过万从山的豁达;经历风雨，我们才能拥有举杯邀明月，对影成三人的潇洒;经历风雨，我们才能拥有大江东去，浪淘尽，千古风流人物的豪迈;经历风雨，我们才能拥有凿壁借光的勤奋;经历风雨，我们才能拥有不破楼兰终不还的坚定;经历风雨，我们才能拥有天地与我并生，而万物与我为一的心态;经历风雨，我们才能拥有人不知而不愠的人格!

超然+气节+豁达+豪迈+勤奋+坚定+心态+人格=一个既成人，又成功的圣人!

宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来”。逆境给人以宝贵的磨砺机会，只有经历逆境的洗礼，才能学会奋勇拼搏，从而走向成功。喜欢主人公邓蒂斯的坚忍，佩服他生命的顽强。命运的突变，使他来不及享受新婚的幸福，就被关入伊夫堡监狱，那是一个让活人窒息，连死人都恐惧的地方，我也仿佛看到邓蒂斯最后生存的希望都被黑暗吞没了。

致命的打击、精神的摧残足以将邓蒂斯的血肉之躯打垮，但对生命的渴望，对老父和新婚妻子的思念，化作一股生存的力量，与命运搏斗，14个年头的历练，终于使他逃出那个地狱，展开了另一段复仇的神话。邓蒂斯复仇的成功究竟是因为什么?我想，不外乎是因为命运给他的逆境亮里使他忍人所不能忍、及人所不能及。哲人说：“困厄逆境的砥砺和生活是强者的驾驭，恰如正电和负电，一经碰撞，驾驭者就能欣赏到自己胜利的火花”。既然谁都无法摆脱挫折，何不坦然接受他呢，给生命多一些顽强。但在现实生活中，不乏有些人因为一次小小的失败，就感到绝望以至于轻生。

现代人的脆弱是这个世纪的悲哀。我们是祖国未来的希望，更应该选择在逆境中拼搏。如果我们永远只生活在顺境中，蓦然回首，竟发现没有一个脚印是自己的，这难道不是一种悲哀吗?人生本五味，不要妄想只摄取甘甜，否则最后只能迷失自己，只有苦尽甘来的人生，才让我们大声喝彩。让我们庆贺风雨与我们同在，一起迎接彩虹的到来，笑对挫折是来自内心的呼喊，在逆境中拼搏更是我们最大的愿望。