成功需要勤奋英语（汇总20篇）

坚持，让小溪投入海的怀抱;坚持，让毛毛虫破蛹成蝶;坚持，让平凡的人成功。但坚持又是何等的不易，我就有那么一次亲身经历。 Persevere, let the stream enter the embrace of the sea; persist, let the caterpillar break into butterfly; persist and make ordinary people succeed.But it is not easy to persist, and I have such a personal experience.

那是一个假期，我和妈妈一起去爬山。在山脚下，我边望着看不到顶的山路，边和妈妈说：“妈妈，我这次要爬到山顶!”妈妈笑着说：“好，妈妈陪你一起，你可别爬到半路就放弃了。”“怎么可能?”我说到，心中也开始暗暗为自己鼓气。

在爬前几段台阶时，我一点也不累，分分钟就到了平台上，还时不时地回头催促妈妈走快点。等到妈妈走到我身边，我又立刻拉着妈妈继续向上爬。

走着走着，快到一半时，我的速度开始下降，微微有一些喘，双腿也有些酸了，但我没有在意这些，仍然向处前进。渐渐地，我的腿越来越酸痛，开始大口大口地喘气，脸也开始变得红润起来。越往上走，我的腿越像是灌了铅一般的沉重，喘气时胸开始大起大落，步伐也慢了许多，心中萌生了想要放弃的念想。

就在这时，妈妈对我说：“怎么了?走啊!你不是要爬上山顶吗?”我心想：对啊!我的目标可是山顶，怎能在这里半途而废呢?于是，我坚定了信念，迈着那沉重的脚步继续一步一步向上爬，终于登上了山顶。我呼吸着山顶清新的空气，放眼望去，山下一切尽收眼里，真有一种“一览众山小”的感觉啊!身上的疲惫感觉一下就释放出来，全身轻松，心胸顿时开阔起来。

我想人生之路不也正和这爬山之路一样，刚开始总是很轻松，但越往后越觉得困难，甚至会充满挫折和历险。那些半途放弃的人，不会看到山顶的风景，因而成为失败者;而那些一路坚持的人，最终会看到山顶迷人的风光，成为人生的胜利者。

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。

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。

Everyone Needs Help

One day, when I was on my way home, I saw an old man walking slowly around the street Corner. Suddenly he fell down, I ran to him. I couldn’t move him. I look around. Just at that time, I saw a telephone box. I had an idea. I called the police and soon they came. They thanked me for the help. “Everyone needs help.” I said with a smile.

有一天，在我回家的路上，我看到一个老人在街角慢慢的走。突然他摔倒了，我跑了过去。我无法扶起他。我看看周围。就在这时，我看到一个电话亭。我有了一个想法。我打电话给警察局，他们很快就来了。他们感谢我的帮助。“每个人都需要帮助。”我笑着说。

说到勤奋，许多人只会付之一笑，他们认为勤奋是没有必要的，那他们就大错特错了。凿壁偷光、囊萤映雪、悬梁刺股，这些耳熟能详的故事无不告诉我们：勤奋，才是通往成功的唯一道路。

“书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟”。勤奋，又岂是说说而已？成功需要我们付出极大的努力，面对极多的困难，解决极难的问题。在那之后，成功自然会悄悄地到来。如果没有，那只是勤奋不够罢了。

智慧源于勤奋，伟大出自平凡。成功需要我们持之以恒。东晋大书法家王羲之，为了练好书法，每天都要求自己练字，练完后就在家旁的一口池塘里洗毛笔。就这样日复一日，竟将整口池塘染成了黑色。正是因为王羲之的坚持与勤奋，他才被人们称为“书圣”，名扬千古。

成功不仅要求我们坚持不懈，而且需要我们不怕困难，勇往直前。大数学家华罗庚曾说过：“聪明出自勤奋，天才在于积累。”而华罗庚本身也是一个十分勤奋的人。华罗庚从小家境贫困，初中毕业不久就在一家杂货店当学徒，但他酷爱数学，勤奋不怠：柜台旁，能看到他时常研读数学书籍；半夜里，能看到他挑灯思考的身影……十九岁时，华罗庚到一所学校去当会计，他变得更忙碌了，但他并没有因此中断钻研数学，熬夜是常有的事……经过不懈的努力，他最终成为了举世闻名的数学家。华罗庚用行动告诉我们：面对困难时，只有不断地努力，勤奋地学习，才能取得成功。

正如达·芬奇所说：“勤劳一日，可得一夜安眠；勤劳一生，可得幸福长眠。”从中我们可以知道勤奋对于成功的重要。而有的人却因懒惰断送了自己的前程。宋代，有一位天才，名为方仲永，从小便展现出天才的天赋。人们也很赞赏他，常常邀请他和他的父亲到家中做客，让他题诗，并留下他们吃饭。他的父亲十分贪心天天带着仲永到处吃喝，对方仲永的学业漠不关心，而方仲永本身也不是一个勤奋的人，便不怎学习。很快，他就变得“泯然众人矣”了，再也看不见一点儿当初神童的影子。可见，一个人纵使有惊人的天赋和聪明的头脑，如果不勤奋，也就不会有所成就。

只有握紧勤奋的钥匙，才能打开成功之门。让我们播种勤奋的种子，期待成功之花开放吧！

成功这个词语我们并不陌生，生下来的第一声啼哭，第一次学会叫妈妈，第一次学会走路，某个层次上，这也是成功。可成功是怎么样来的？成功就是通过不懈的努力而得来的。可有一些人，却从不在乎成功，一直盲目的活着。

有一些人出门做生意，生意没做成，反而欠了一大笔债，只好回到家乡躲债，他们不知道什么叫做成功，失败在他们眼里也只是一个巨大的债务。他们从来也不知道什么叫做努力？他们自以为只要店开起来，就是一帆风顺了。其实，他们错了！成功的路上只有挫折和不懈努力，才是唯一的捷径。陡峭的路往往是通往成功的，而轻松的路恰恰是走向深渊的，只有经历挫折，才会感觉到成功的不易，才会得到想要的成功，也只有努力了才会知道成功的含义是什么。

人们常说，失败是成功之母。既然失败是成功之母，那就应该多努力，不怕惧怕失败，要谦虚，要善于总结失败的经验。其实成功的路上有许多宝贵的机会，可有些人却与机会擦肩而过。试想如果没有机会和努力，又怎样才能成功，成功之人是怎么样取得成功的？是怎样赢得所有人的尊重的？在我看来，只有努力努力，再努力才能获得自己想要的，所以为了我们能够成功，我们应该去把握住每一次可能成功的机会。

盲目的寻找，只会让自己变得无法让人相信。成功是靠努力，而不是靠盲目的寻找，因为这样是不会成功的。

成功来自勤奋成功，说来容易，做到却很难。唐代文学家韩愈说：“业精于勤而毁于嬉。”事实 一再证明，任何人做任何事都离不开勤奋，勤奋是成功之舟。

勤能补拙。传说宋代学者朱熹讲过一个故事：福州有一个叫陈正之的人，反应相当迟钝，读 书 每次只读50个字，读一篇小文章也要五六遍才能读熟。为了克服缺点，他不懒不怠，勤学苦 练，别人读一遍他就读三遍四遍，天长日久，知识便与日俱增，后来，他不但克服了自己反 应迟钝的缺点，而且成了博学之士。梅兰芳年轻的时候去拜师学戏，师傅说他生着一双死鱼 眼睛，灰暗、呆滞，根本不是学戏的材料，拒不收留。天资的欠缺没有使他灰心，反而促使 他更加勤奋，他喂鸽子，每天仰望天空，双眼紧跟着飞翔的鸽子，穷追不舍;他养金鱼，每 天俯视水底，双眼紧跟着遨游的金鱼，寻踪觅影。后来，梅兰芳的眼睛变得如一汪清澈的秋 水，闪闪生辉，脉脉含情，终于成了著名的京剧大师。 华罗庚教授说“勤能补拙是良训，一 分辛劳一分才。”即使天资再差，只要勤奋，就一定能成功。

勤出成果。明代历史学家谈迁，29岁时开始著作《国榷》。因为家里穷，买不起参考书，只 好四处求人，借书来抄。一次，为了看点儿资料，带着干粮，冒雨走了100多里路。他奋斗 了27年，六易其稿，终于写成了《国榷》这部500万字的重要史书。这时他已56岁了。不幸 的是，这部书稿被小偷偷走。谈迁伤心得大哭一场。不少人以为，他从此一蹶不振，谁知第 二天他又重新开始写作。冬去春来，周而复始，花了10年光阴，终于再次把书写成了。这时 他已白发苍苍，老态龙钟了。从谈迁的事迹我们得出一个结论，只要勤奋，就可以为自己所 作的一切画上圆满的句号。

勤奋是成功的阶梯，成功是勤奋的结果，只要我们勤奋学习，勤奋探索，勤奋实践，什么事 情都一定会成功!

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

成功从何而来？有人告诉我说，成功出自勤奋，我想这是很对的。因为有三句名人名言1、天才出自勤奋2、天才在于积累，聪明在于勤奋。3、终生努力，便成天才。

勤奋其实是来自内心的一种动力，没有刻苦是不可能有好成绩、成为天才的。

有些人并不真正懂得勤奋是怎么回事，如在学习上，他们总想走捷径，希望有什么秘诀、或作弊等来帮助他们。他们夸夸具谈，却不能静下心来读点书，他们总幻想着成功，坐等着明天，希望有一天从天上掉下一块馅饼来，这又怎么可能呢？不学开车就不会开车，没有勤奋就开不了好车，这是再好明白不过的道理。只要你尽力了，无论你最总的结果如何。你都是胜利者。因为你已经战胜你自己了。

那成功从何而来，有人告诉我说，成功出自坚持，我想这也是很对的。因为有一句流传得很广的话说：“坚持就是胜利。”

一个人坚持一会儿并不困难，难得是长期地坚持。这就不知不觉想到自己亲生经历的事情了。那是去年开校运会的一件事情，它让我体会到了，要想成功的话就必须坚持到最后。本来刚开始做事情的时候，我幻想着一跃而就，最好是刚开头就有结果，那该多好啊。但是我知道这是不可能的事情的啊。在800米赛跑中，我跑到200米时，我好想好想停下来，希望已经到达终点了，这不就是“痴人说梦”吗？忽然旁边拉拉队的声音是越来越大声，这时身上就好像有一股无穷的力量，使我不得不快速的向前跑，最终到达了重点。而且获胜了，但是只拿了第3名，可是我还是非常开心、心情像火花一样的勇猛的旺盛起来，同学们也都一一的拥抱而过。因为我坚持到了最后。跑步是辛苦的，学习是辛苦的，但是这份辛苦，这份坚持，是靠自己的努力而成功的。我们当然要为自己的努力而开心啊。因为我们的努力是有价值的。这也让明白了一个道理：“要想成功就必须努力的奋斗。”

你真的想成功吗？那么请你那出你的斗志和勇气，用勤奋和坚持去做每一件事情，那么成功一定会在终点迎侯您的。

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。

挫折是一个人成功的标志。人的一生不可能一帆风顺，在奋斗的过程中，总会遇到困难、挫折与不幸。我认为首先态度决定一切。只有态度坚定，乐观、坚强面对生活的人，才能应对生活中的苦难。

古今中外，流传着无数具备这种精神的人：法国物理学家伦琴小时候学习成绩很好，但很顽皮。一次，学校以不尊敬师长的理由，开除了他的学籍，使他因为没有中学毕业证书而不能上大学。几经挫折与努力，伦琴终于以优异的成绩考取苏黎世学院，可毕业时学校又因为他的履历问题拒绝他做一名知名教授的助手。面对种种挫折，伦琴从来没有掉过眼泪，而是激流勇进，迎难而上。经过整整20年的努力，他终于担任了德国沃兹堡大学的校长。后来发现了X射线，成为第一个获得诺贝尔物理奖的巨人。

伦琴并没有向现实低头，并没有想挫折低头，而是越挫越勇，艰苦的奋斗，在潜意识里不断暗示着自己的目标，吸取经验教训，从而走向成功的道路。成功之路是自己去开辟的，同时也必须把它走完，虽然途中总会有许多磕磕绊绊，正所谓不经历风雨怎么见彩虹。有人把他当作绊脚石，抱怨它阻碍了自己的发展，而想伦琴这类人则把它当成垫脚石，一步一个脚印下的艰辛，都积累了无数的经验，让自己在挫折中成长。

贝多芬——音乐界的巨人。何尝不是在挫折中奋起？当他在音乐方面卓有成就的时候，双耳失聪让他从此变得冷漠，堕落。不在接近任何一个人，痛苦的他几次想过要轻生。但后来，在音乐的帮助下，他从寂寞、无助的黑暗里走了出来。

想到这里，我们这些正常人有什么理由一下就被困难压倒？我们看到了苦难使他们的灵魂焕发出如此强大的力量，可以被伤害，却永远也不会被摧毁。他们由于坚毅而伟大，但也正是这些苦难才使他们更伟大，所以，正遭遇挫折与不幸的人们，不要因为生活的苦难而悲叹，你看，人类中最优秀的人与你们同在。

我们要知道挫折是生活中的正常现象，是任何人都不可以避免的。关键是看你如何掌握应对挫折的方法。记住：谁笑到最后，谁就笑得最好。

Life needs positive energy. A person’s life is a road with lots of difficulties and various negative emotions.

Everyone will have the desperate time. Positive energy can help us go through this period of time.

For example, I am sad about the exam yesterday. But an optimistic classmate encourages me to think in a good way and comfort me.

I can recover soon. But if she also is as pessimistic as me, I won’t have recovered so quickly. Maybe I will be sad for a long time. There are many similar things happening in our life. To live a better life, we need positive energy.

生活需要正能量。人的一生是充满困难和各种负面情绪的一条路。每个人都有郁闷的时候。正能量可以帮助我们度过这段时期。例如，我为昨天考试的事而难过。但是一个乐观的同学鼓励我往好的方面想，安慰我。我可以很快地恢复过来。但是如果她也跟我一样悲观的话，我不可能这么快恢复心情的。也许我会伤心很久。在我们的生活中有很多这种类似的事情。为了生活得更美好，我们需要正能量。

[初中英语作文：生活需要正能量

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

毅力，是迈向成功的一种韧劲。它往往在一个人的挫折中表现出惊人的力量。只要有毅力，挫折和困难就会向人们低头，从而使人们顺利到达成功的彼岸。

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，而我们不能失去信心和勇气，因为毅力是挫折喂养的。我们都知道，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。我们不能一味蛮干，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。

在成功面前，你会感到骄傲；在成功面前，你会感到自豪。但在成功背后，他需要一种毅力，是坚持。

成功需要坚持，需要持之以恒。

记得那是一次运动会，班内班上同学都在刻苦练习，生怕自己给班内抹黑，我也不例外。每天下午放学一定要跑步，这是我给自己定下的目标，这样下来，我一定能给班里争分的，下午放学，我和班内几名班上同学一商量便开始练习了。但我总偷懒，一个八百米还没跑下来就大喘气，“累死我了，我不跑了。”我抱怨着。一名班上同学看到我这样，急忙跑了过来，说：“跑步是一种毅力，它不仅仅是锻炼你的身体，而且还考验你的耐力与坚持。你这样不练了，怎么能考验出你的坚持呢。别人都这么刻苦练习，难不成你要给班里抹黑？”随着语气的加重，我似乎明白了什么。我鼓起勇气，站了起来，大声喊道：“我要加油。”随着回音的想起，我走到起步线，心想：这是一个新的起跑，一个新的起点，无论怎样我也要坚持下来。第一圈，我小步跑，算是在热身，并默念还有3圈，第二圈，已经过了一半了，我渐渐加快速度，但是刚跑到第三圈时，我就累的要死了，可是我并没有走，而是咬紧牙，并鼓励自己说：一定要坚持下来，第四圈终于到了，我不由的加快速度迎接冲刺阶段。最后我坚持着到达终点。我很高兴，留下了眼泪。

在运动会的赛场上，大家努力拼搏，但我并没有受打击，最后进入前八名，那一刻，我更是骄傲与自豪。

成功需要坚持，不仅在体育方面，学习方面也是如此。

一次拼词比赛中，班级老师选上了我，但我却不知如何下手，爸爸走头，看我着急得热锅上的蚂蚁，就教了我一套方案，我按照方案去做，每天都如此，最后拿到校级二等奖。成功需要坚持啊！

成功是一种喜悦，但背后总离不开坚持。坚持能战胜自己，赢得胜利。成功也是一种意志上的磨练，成功需要坚持啊！

There are many characteristic exist in the world, and characteristic is

very important to people. For example, active, persistence, optimistic makes

people successful; lazy, passive makes people fail. Having a good characteristic

means you have the key to the successful door, but you have to find the way of

success. This is what I am going to talk about, the key to success:

persistence.

Persistence is a key to success, whether for a single person or an

organization. People who lack of it would mean failure in reaching a certain

goal. People need to know that success seldom comes easily on the first try;

they should have the patient to insist trying until they get the goal.

Unsuccessful people try something just a few times, and when it fails, they give

up; they usually pass the blame onto someone or something, and learn nothing

from their experience. Successful people are different, even they fail, and they

won’t lose their passion.

Let me take a famous person to example. His name is Da Vinci, he is known

as a great painter, artist. Everyone knows him, but I think there are not much

people known that how much effort did he made before he became a famous artist.

Da Vinci draw eggs everyday when he was young, hundreds and thousands times a

day. It is definite a boring work, many people could not bear to face an egg and

draw it in different angle thousands times. But Da Vinci did it, and he made it.

We could say it is not for his persistence that he would not get the great

aptitude for painting.

Talent is a gift from god, persistence is a key you’ve got, and effort

makes those working which bring you to open the door of success.

如果你问我成功的必要条件是什么，信念?勇气?坚持?还是专注?那么一定非专注莫属了。

记得在二年级时，八卦一直是热点话题，对于当时拼命追赶潮流的我，怎么会落伍呢?

每天放学后，作业，做完是没有的时候，但明星之间的八卦事件，却被我整整齐齐的列在小笔记本上，并背过，再加上一些解释，就如老师备课般，准备明天到学校炫耀一番。还好，我的努力并没有白费，在学校里，谁要知道什么八卦。找我准没错。

我知道的可不仅仅是明星之间的，学生之间的乌龙事件也逃不过咱的法眼，咱可以毫不夸张的说：跟我拼歌，你行吗

五年级，情窦初开的季节，由于咱的卑微，谈情说爱的大门对我关闭，中，爱情咱不要，唱情歌总可以吧!

就这样，在同胞们都被爱情所毒害的季节里，我独自一人沉浸在歌曲的浪潮中，有时由于太过喜欢唱歌，会不分场合、不分地点地哼唱起来，在我“情不自禁”的引导下，竟在学校里掀起了一番拼歌的浪潮，每当别人与我拼歌时，都会想起：跟我(她)拼歌，你行吗?

太阳，从西边升起来了

想起六年级的我，就好像做梦一样，不仅是我自己，包括认识、了解我的所有人，毕竟，谁会相信，一个连作业都不会做的人竟会开始过埋头苦读的生活!

因为我的表现，世人尽是惊讶，但在惊讶之后，却是深深的嘲笑，可是，谁又能够想到，就是被他们所嘲笑的一个人，下半学期在班里竟排到了第十名，而且稳升，他们不得不惊叹：太阳，从西边升起来了!

也许你会惊讶我现在所取得的成就，但是只有我自己知道，我的成就都是自己用汗水换来的。

当你专注的做一件事的时候，成功就离你不远了。专注是一种态度，这种态度是每个成功着必须具备的。

坚持就是胜利。 这种话听多了，就麻木了，也就认识不到坚持的意义了，导致推动坚持的执着的心也渐渐隐去了，于是社会上许许多多人就怕执着，怕坚持，只愿干小事，不愿干时间稍长一点的事。那么，不着急，从现在起点燃你执着的心，让执着之心再次涌动。

成功的法则是执着，成功的人大多都是坚持下来的。诺贝尔经过500多次试验才制造出炸药，如果没有一颗执着的心，他是绝不会成功的。由此可见，点燃执着的心是多么必要。着名化学家拉瓦锡当年几乎就推翻了错误的 燃素学说 ，却由于舆论的指责而放弃坚持，多么可惜!

执着首先要坚持，要对自己充满信心。那些半途而废，做事 三天打鱼，两天晒网 的人，不去自己点燃执着的心，他当然只能与成功失之交臂。苏格拉底曾对自己的学生说： 把你们的手向前平举十分钟，每天都这么做。 一个月后，苏格拉底问自己的学生有多少人做到时，有三分之一的人举手，两个月后还剩十几个人，三个月后只剩一个人，他就是柏拉图，后来成为着名哲学家。只有点燃执着的心，才能成功，才会成功。

不要轻易说放弃，这也是执着的一个重要内容。如果轻易放弃，可能把到手的财富给放弃。一个美国人买下一块田来开采石油，挖了几十米仍没有石油，他就放弃了，坚持不下去了，于是把这块地低价卖给了另一个美国人，这个美国人在原来的基础上又向下挖了5米，终于发现了石油，他就是 石油大王 亨利，而原来那人却懊悔不已。

执着不是固执己见，但丁的 走自己的路让别人说去吧 ，过于以自我为中心了，适当地听取别人的意见对自己也会大有裨益。

执着是金，坚持是银，只有坚持才能成功点燃你执着的心。只有这样，才可能不人云亦云，不随波逐流。只有这样，才可能登上顺风船，驶上成功的彼岸。那句已经听得麻木的话再加上半句也许更好，那就是： 坚持就是胜利，执着才会成功。

翻开历史的画卷，我们可以清楚地看到，古今中外的伟人名士，专家学者，他们成功的奥秘之一都是勤奋。

不是吗？我国著名的生物学家童第周，上中学时，他考试不及格，老师要让他留级，同学们笑他，他不悲观失望，从此发奋学习，最后取得了优异的成绩。出国留学时他又刻苦钻研，为中国争了光，成了世界著名的生物学家。还有连学都没上过的张海迪姐姐，身残志坚，勤奋学习，克服了健康人也难以克服的苦难，硬是攻克了几门外语。

古往今来，许多誉满全球的伟人，他们的每一项发明创造，每一次成功，都是要流下滴滴汗水，留下步步脚印的。他们的成功都是靠着自己的勤奋钻研而得来的。

成功的关键在于勤奋，勤能补拙是良训，一分辛劳一分才，只有勤奋才能取得成功。传说古希腊有一个叫德摩斯梯尼的演说家，因小时口吃，登台演讲时，声音含混，发音不准，常常被雄辩的对手压倒。可是他气不馁，心不灰，为克服这个弱点，战胜雄辩的对手，便每天口含石子面对大海朗诵，不管春夏秋冬，坚持五十年如一日，连爬山，跑步也边走边做演说，终于成为全希腊一个最有名气的演说家。这样的事例不正说明勤奋可以克服一切困难，战胜一切，从而取得成功吗？不是正告诉人们，一切事物都要勤奋吗？

鲁迅之所以渊博，正是因为他把别人喝咖啡的时间，都用来汲取精神养料。李时珍的《本草纲目》的写成，正是由于他27个年头的跋山涉水，“访采四方”，“搜罗百代”的成果。

高尔基说过：“天才出于勤奋”。卡莱尔也说过：“天才就是无止境地刻苦勤奋的努力”。这些名人的经验之谈告诉我们，只有勤奋，才能成功。

物理学家牛顿；化学界的大师诺贝尔、门捷列夫；放射性元素的发现者居里夫人……他们之所以有这样伟大的成就，有一个重要的因素，就是由于他们都是勤奋学习，不耻下问，大胆实践，用于向失败挑战的人。而最后呢，他们胜利了，成功了。无数事实证明了这样一个真理：成功来自勤奋。只会不是自然的恩赐，而是勤奋的结果。

让我们大家以此共勉，勇勤奋去攀登智慧的巅峰，用知识的钥匙打开成功的大门！让我们永远记住：成功来自勤奋。

When doing the same thing, some people success but some fail. There must be

many factors leading that result. In my view, the most important factor is the

difference of confidence, determination and sociability are the foundation and

condition of success.

First of all, no matter who want to success, they must have confidence, as

confidence is the basic need for success. If someone always thinks he can’t do

this or that well, then he can’t finish it well. For example, when a person is

being interviewed, if he doesn’t believe he can do that job well, how can he act

believable, so how can the interviewers trust his ability? Therefore, the

interview is obviously a failure. However, if a person is confident, he can

receive the opportunity to prepare for every challenge easily, which makes

success become closer.

In addition, confidence just the door for success, if someone wants to get

into the house of success, determination is necessary. The determined meet

difficulties always overcome it and insist to the end. On the other hand, if

someone is not determined, he would give up when facing difficulty. For

instance, when doing homework, the person who is not determined always can’t

finish perfectly and even copy from others when he thinks that homework is hard

to finish. However, the person who is determined always can finish it well,

because he know what he really wants and he is able to carry on.

The last but not least is that no one can do anything well by themselves,

so they need help. At that time, sociable is helpful. It is well-known that

success is hard to reach. Therefore, people need others to help them. A sociable

person can get help easily, as he has so many friends. On the other side, a

person is not good at communication, when he gets in trouble, maybe no one helps

him. So we can see the importance of sociability to success.

In a word, there maybe not only confidence, determination, and sociability

are essential to success, but I think they are the most important ones, for they

are the foundation and condition of success.

成功是我们每一个人的追求与理想，那么，我们怎样才能获得成功呢?让我们一起来听一下历史杰出人物们的声音吧：

爱迪生说：成功需要99%的努力+1%的汗水。

爱因斯坦说：成功需要发达的头脑

哥伦布说：成功需要探索。

曾国藩说：成功需要专一，不能坐这山，望那山，否则一事无成。

而我却要说：成功更需要坚忍不拔的毅力!

我曾经听说过这样的一个故事：

在很久以前有一匹老骆驼在垂暮之年又一次的跨越了号称“死亡之海”的千里沙漠，当它凯旋归来之时一名记者上前采访道：“你能谈一谈您面对一片茫茫的沙漠你是怎样坚持到最后的吗?”

只见老骆驼顿了顿后，沉稳地说：“其实也没有什么好说的了，如果要说我为什么能坚持到最后，我只能够说你要看准目标，耐住性子，一步一步脚踏实地的往前走，就到达了目的地。老骆驼的话让这位记者思索了很久很久。最后这位记者感叹道，是啊!看准目标耐住性子就是成功的前提。

还有人认为，成功是一种毅力——如果你不信你去看——看金字塔顶的老鹰和蜗牛你就会明白了。

老鹰生来就会飞，它那雄健的双翅好像能够不费吹灰之力就能到达金字塔顶一样，而我却不认同这种观点。因为当老鹰还是雏鸟的时候，也只是胆小地畏缩在窝旁，看着深深的悬崖峭壁。但是如果不经历过无数次的跌落摔爬，它能翱翔于令人向往的蓝胆战心惊地望着大地?

但是总有那么一些人奢望道：“我要是一只老鹰该多好呀，喜欢到哪就到哪!”孰不知，就凭这种浅识，你若是一只老鹰也是一只永远畏缩在窝中的老鹰，不会有你同类直冲九天的胸怀。由此看来，金字塔顶的老鹰的出现并非出于偶然。它能振翼天宇，而原因是什么呢?那就是——毅力!

很多人对从不显眼的蜗牛很是鄙视，嘲笑它身上背负重重的壳，不论在哪一种场合，只要干什么慢就拿蜗牛说事：“你怎么比蜗牛还慢?”听听这话，能不让人生气吗?

可蜗牛却从不与人争辩，只是用行动让明自己的实力，金字塔顶蜗牛的身影，就是最好的证明。因为在蜗牛身后的一道道明亮的痕迹清晰可见，那就是蜗牛毅力的彰显。

再看看赛跑的乌龟和兔子，你还不能悟出成功究竟需要什么吗?那便是毅力。