成功需要勤奋英语【最新20篇】

上小学时，语文书上有一篇课文叫做《百合花开》，讲述的是一株生长在悬崖边，并不起眼的一株百合，在蜂蝶和野草的鄙夷下，坚定自己是一株百合，自己一定会开花，最终，开出了圣洁的百合花。百合花的盛开不就告诉我们成功需要等待的道理吗?

著名的音乐家贝多芬，从小两耳失聪，听不见任何东西，但他喜欢弹钢琴。所以，他并没有灰心丧气，而是艰苦训练，别人一首曲子弹两遍，他一首曲子弹三遍四遍五遍，甚至十遍二十遍。直到听他弹奏的人满意为止。终于，他凭借坚忍不拔的毅力，成为世界著名的音乐家。贝多芬的故事也告诉我们，成功需要等待。

中国著名的乒乓球冠军邓亚平，从小喜欢乒乓球。长大后想加入到国家乒乓球队，但由于个子矮小而落选，但她并没有灰心，更加努力的训练，终于，加入到国家队，为中国赢得了一枚又一枚闪闪发光的奖牌。邓亚平故事不也告诉我们，成功需要等待吗?

虽然成功的花浸透了奋斗的泪泉，洒遍了牺牲的血雨，但换来的是成功。所以说，成功需要等待。

每当到了七月初，蝉在我窗外鸣叫，就会扰的我心烦意乱，无法沉心于学习，但这又有什么办法呢？它们是七月的主人，夏天的主人。

实际上蝉的一生是很艰苦的。

蝉在成为幼虫之前就会经历一次磨难，在蝉母亲产卵之前如果被飞蝇抢了先，将自己的卵夹入蝉卵中的话，那它就会把一切都毁灭，蝉卵将成为它的美食。所以，这一劫是靠运气的，运气的好坏会直接决定蝉卵能否成功孵化。

运气好的蝉孵化成功了，它们涉世之初，还懵懵懂懂，不知自己来自何方，要去哪里，但它们却清晰地记得——自己要冲破土层，迎向阳光。每一个蝉都有这样的愿望，它们都想成为第一个看到阳光的蝉，即使它们才出生不久

有了这样的目标，幼蝉们都努力的向着土层冲去。通过那个孔就是地面，但途中坚硬的土层却挡住了它们的去路，不过好在幼虫有锐利的属于自己的挖掘工具。它们努力的向着目标前进，无怨无悔，哪怕再苦再累，它们也“咬牙”坚持。

幼虫在地底上上下下，努力挖掘。当幼虫成熟了即将变态的时候，在深深的地底里，不能准确预知外面的天气情况，那又该怎么办呢？于是，幼虫会用几个星期的时间来改善自己的“寒舍”，将它与地面只剩下一层薄薄的土层，等待着天气良好时就从洞中钻出。

话说幼蝉付出了这么多，理应得到回报才对，可若天公不作美，连续的阴雨将断送了幼蝉的最后希望。难道怎么长时间以来的努力都将白费？付出了这么多，最后只是一无所获？

不！不是这样的。老天只不过跟它开了一个小玩笑，太阳很快就出来了。最终幼蝉也钻出了土层，见到了阳光。不然我怎么能听到蝉鸣，扰的我心烦意乱呢。

有的人说“一切都由命运主宰”，又或是抒发“这就是命啊”的感慨，但我却不相信命运，一切因果都是自己努力得来的。水到渠自成，厚积薄发，当然会“功到自然成”。因为你经历了纤尘往事，悟得了世事人事。

成功是每一个人都希望的，不管是学业还是事业。成功能给人们带来喜悦。

怎么才能成功呢？伟大的发明家爱迪生说过，天才是靠99%的勤奋和１％的灵感．要想取得成功就必须勤奋努力。如果不努力，是不可能获得成功的。

在爱迪生发明耐用电灯泡之前，他曾做过千多次实验，但仍没有办法使灯丝能耐住高温。旁边有人说：“算了吧！找不到就算了。你已经作了这么多次实验了，找不到，就不要白费力了，干点别的什么吧！”他却说：“我一定要找到一种能耐住高温的材料，一定要把他找出来。”工夫不负有心人，他终于发明了耐用电灯泡，使全世界人民得到幸福，被誉为20世纪最伟大的发明之一。

我们需要学习他这种精神的，如果他不是坚持不懈地努力，是不可能发明耐用电灯泡的，可见成功是需要条件的，只要达到了成功所要求的条件，成功就容易了。

抓住机遇也是成功的条件之一。举例来说吧！世界首富比尔盖茨读大学时，敏锐地认识到计算机这门新兴的产业蕴藏的巨大的商机，他从哈佛大学退学了，与自己的朋友开了一家名叫微软的电脑公司，当时他的亲朋好友都反对他的做法，但比尔盖茨说，时间将证明，我这样做是对的。现在，计算机在各行各业中的广泛应用，给人们的工作和生活带来了巨大的变化，微软成为了世界上最大的软件商之一．

成功的条件还有很多，比如说自己的科学文化素质．没有好的基础知识，纵然刻苦努力和有天赐良机，还是不能取得成功的．还有离开了别人的帮助，要走上成功的道路，也是异常艰难的．

要想取得成功，需要努力和机遇．

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

他是赛场上的超级巨星，被祖国称为英雄。可成名之后的他，也成了众多的追星族追逐的对象。为保持正常的训练，他很少在公共场合露面，甚至左邻右舍都很难见到他。人们都说，他架子大了，不好见了。

保持原来的自己为表彰他在赛场上的突出成绩，他所在的城市奖励给他一套住房。一天，他的父亲提出带他看看正在建设中的住房，他同意了，同父亲驱车来到建设工地。他们刚从车里出来，工地上忙碌的民工们就认出了他，好多民工都放下手中的活向他们这边围过来。他看到这么多民工围过来，突然钻进车里，开车走了。所有的人都很失望，此刻唯一感觉就是明星的架子太大了。他的父亲也很诧异，只好向民工们解释……

其实好多民工都知道这所在建的房中有一套是奖励给他的，他们便给他的父亲介绍起这座房子的布局、样式。正当他们热烈的交谈的时候，他开着车又回来了。民工们将目光转向了车里的他，他笑着下了车，怀里抱着几条上等的好烟。“不好意思，师傅们，刚才我什么也没有带，就去买了几条烟，大家辛苦了，来，抽烟，干活的时候千万要注意安全……”他一边发烟，一边道歉，一边叮咛。这突如其来的举动使在场的民工都愣在了那。好长一段时间，突然在人群中爆发出如潮水般的掌声，旁边的父亲眼里噙满了泪水，他为有这样没有因为荣誉而改变自己的儿子而骄傲……

他是奥运冠军刘翔。

这个世界上，有些人因为成功而被荣誉的光芒罩住，将自己高高的悬起；有些人却在努力的跳出荣誉的笼罩，保持原来的自己。这就是为什么有些星至今依然是星，而有些人却早已从人们心中的星变成英雄的原因。其实，这一切都缘于宠辱不惊，保持原来的我。

学习需要勤奋，正所谓古语云：“—勤天下无难事”，唐代文学家韩愈也说：“业精于勤”，即学业的精深造诣来源于勤。

学习需要勤奋，因为勤出成果。在辽阔的学海生涯中，勤奋是必不可少的。爱迪生说过：“成功是1%的灵感加上99%的汗水”，可想而知，勤奋的分量是多重啊！也许有些人天生头脑比较灵活，聪明，但是那绝对不可能是一辈子的，后天教育是非常重要的。曾记得，在上中学以前，我是一个很勤奋学习的学生，对于学习，无论是对哪一种，哪一个词，哪一个字我都非常认真地去学习，对不懂的词语我做到了“不耻下问”，每一天我都很勤奋地预习、复习。此外，我还阅读很多的课外书，我渴望能在书海里可以扬帆航行，快乐成长。正所谓“皇天不负有心人”，我每一次测验，考试都可以“下笔如有神”！所以每一次成绩排名榜我的名字总可以名列前茅。我以我自己为荣，家人以我为荣，就连同学们也投来那羡慕的眼光，我的内心世界那种充盈感，幸福感难以形容，我非常喜欢那种感觉。所以，我要说，学习真的需要勤奋，只有勤奋学习，成功的果实才会有机会收获，只有勤奋面对学习和考试上的难题才会迎刃而解。

学习需要勤奋，以为勤出智慧。我们在学习的山峰上攀登，只有勤奋，努力向上爬，我们就可以登上顶峰。俗话说得好“一分耕耘一分收获”，我坚信上天是公平的，只要你付出了，就肯定会有收获，哪怕只是一丁点的收获也象征着自己曾经努力过。自从上中学之后，随着青春期的成长，成熟，对许多新奇事都产生了好奇心，对学习先是放松，后是不问不理，导致成绩一落千丈。我以前总幼稚地认为人生的道路是一帆风顺的，但当挫折出现在我面前的时候我选择了消极的态度去面对。告别了以前勤奋的学习生活，我有许多知识都不懂，有许多题目在我脑海中变成了“问号”，但是我还是那样无动于衷。现在，我开始羡慕别人得到优异的成绩。我不得不承认，我的智慧变低了，脱离了勤奋，就像学习的列车在中途停止了前进，就像……学习需要勤奋，我现在也在努力地改变，使自己变得勤奋，我渴望有朝一日我也可以登上顶峰，这次期中考试，由于我勤奋复习，所以得到了很多的进步，我感到很满足，很欣慰，因为我的勤奋得到了认可，我的付出得到了收获。

以后，我还会更加勤奋地学习，为以后的事业打下良好的基础，无论有多困难，我都不会再选择消极的态度去面对，我相信风雨过后一定会见到彩虹的！所以，我要说，勤出智慧，只要你勤奋，智慧就会慷慨的充实你的头脑，只有勤奋学习，你才不会虚度光阴，只有勤奋学习，才能拥有更多的智慧，更高的智商。

“书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟”，读书的滋味肯定会有苦，但只要你努力，勤奋地学习，就会尝到甜味。就像古代十年寒窗苦读的书生，为了有朝一日可以考取功名，废寝忘食，还有许多文学家，作家为了自己的作品可以成功发表，付出的代价是那样地大，是那样勤奋地拼搏。像儒勒·凡尔纳的《气球上的五星期》写了十几年，达尔文的《物种起源》写了20年，法布尔的《昆虫论》学了20年，马克思的《资本论》写了40年，曹雪芹的《红楼梦》批阅了10载……这些著名文学家的成功不是有力证明了勤奋的成果吗？

古语云：“只要功夫深，铁杆磨成针。”他告诉我们勤奋是学习成功的保证。也许有些同学认为自己天生资质差，很笨，学不了。其实每一个人都不笨，“天生我才必有用”，问题是你肯不肯下工夫，只要你的方法正确，再勤奋一点，一定也可以拿到好的成绩。就好比是在田地里埋下一颗种子，既不浇水也不施肥，它怎么会成长呢？相反，你下功夫精心浇水施肥，种子有长不大的道理吗？不管做什么事都一样，只要你用心，你勤奋，就可以成功。

学习的路上需要勤奋，只有用“勤”开路，学习才会进步。同学们，加油！要想有个美好的将来，要想明天会更好，请把握好现在，勤奋读书，努力学习，相信自己也可以做得到！

the proverb “no pains, no gains” means that you have to make great efforts if you want to achieve success, for nothing but poverty can be obtained without effort.

in history, there have been many famous people of great achievements. you may claim that they are geniuses. but behind their successes, they have made great efforts in carrying out their tasks. einstein said “genius is one percent of inspiration and ninety-nine percent of perspiration.”  he had been working hard for many years before he finally worked out his theory of relativity. thomas edison experienced countless failures before he finally invented the electric bulb. wang junxia was able to win the world championship of long distance race only because she had many years of hard training. therefore, diligence is the key to success. doubtless hard work promises fruitful result. everyone is awarded the right to work hard in order to reach his goal. apparently, diligence is necessary to success. happiness is nearly always a reward for hard work.

on the other hand, idleness is believed to be the root of all evil. anyone who habitually likes idling but desires everything is daydreaming. we should be aware that if we dream away our precious time, when we wake up, it may be too late for us to achieve anything. so, as college students, we should never stop working hard so that we will remain successful in the future competitions.

[成功靠勤奋的英语作文

世界上有很多人,但能成为名人,扬名世界的,或富甲天下的,又有几人;是的,人人都想做伟人,出人头地,拥有荣华富贵,过神仙一般的生活,但是非说到就能做到的;它就象一场马拉松,在无数逐梦大军中真正能走到中点的寥寥无几,它考验着人们的意志与实力--而两者均由勤奋决定--你勤奋拉,自然会有实力,自然会在勤奋中磨练意志,自也会胜利--可以说,勤奋筑就成功.

戰國時的謀略家蘇秦，東漢洛陽人，年輕時曾四處游說各國君主，希望能夠得到一官半職。然而，他得不到任何一個君主的賞識，只好失望回家。他的家人都認為他沒出息，對他十分冷淡。蘇秦很傷心，於是下定決心，好好讀書，增進自己的學問。

蘇秦日夜埋首讀書，可是每到深夜，就不由自主地瞌睡起來。蘇秦為了驅除睡意，便將一把錐子放在身邊。每當自己昏昏欲睡時，便拿起錐子刺向自己的大腿，劇痛令蘇秦睡意全消，再次提起精神讀書。

一年之後，蘇秦終於學有所成，再四出游說各國君主，更得到各國君主的重用。

又如,西漢的著名學者匡衡，出身於農民家庭，生活十分貧困。他從小就很渴望讀書，可是父母沒有能力供他上學，甚至連書本也買不起，匡衡只好向別人借書來看。

某天晚上，匡衡很希望在睡前讀一讀書，但由於家中窮得連燈油也沒有，根本沒法點燈讀書。正當匡衡發愁時，忽然發現絲絲的光線，正從牆壁的縫隙中透射過來，原來這是鄰居的燈光。匡衡心生一計，便用鑿子把那小縫挖大成一個小洞，然後捧着書，倚在牆邊，利用那點微弱的光線閱讀。從此，匡衡每晚就借鄰居的燈光，埋首苦讀，最後成為了著名的學者。

可见，勤奋决定人生。勤劳一日，可得一夜安眠;勤劳一生，可得幸福长眠 --达·芬奇如是说，所以，要想成功，非勤奋不足以实现，因为，勤奋是通向成功的阶梯。

“天才，那就是百分之九十九的汗水加上百分之一的灵感。”这是世界著名科学家爱迪生的一句名言。从古到今，有多少名人不是靠勤奋而得来成功的?像春秋末期的孔子，近代的袁隆平先生，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，出于长期的勤奋。”因此，成功来自勤奋。

我很喜欢冰心《春水》里的一首诗：

成功的花，

人们只惊慕她现时的明艳!

然而当初她的芽儿，

浸透了奋斗的泪泉，

洒遍了牺牲的血雨。

是的，有谁的成功，不是经过艰苦奋斗的呢?在这次期末考试中，我能考到这么好的成绩，或许就是这个原因吧!我还记得，在上每一节课时，我是如何按照老师的安排、如何按照老师的讲解做好每一课程的试题、笔记等;在考试前几个星期，我又是如何抓紧时间努力地复习、背资料……终于，功夫不负有心人，在期末考试中，我用这些努力和汗水，换来了一个理想的成绩。

这一切都证明了成功来自勤奋,然而一个人学会了勤奋,也就意味着他有可能成功，而一个人如果没有勤奋，就更加难谈得上成功了。

我认为，要想勤奋，就必须有一个明确的目标、读书的意识和坚强的意志。为自己定一个目标，是为了不让自己感到迷茫;读书的意识，是为了让自己明白读书到底是为了什么;坚强的意志，是因为读书也会有辛苦的时候，也会有累的时候。而拥有坚强的意志，就能使自己坚持下去。因此，我们在读书时，有以上三个条件，就能把“勤奋”发挥得更好了，成绩也就会更高了。

新学年到了，同学们，让我们大家共同努力，携手前进，向着我们共同的目标，继续努力。奋斗吧!

my definition of successby chen heng

“once upon a time， there was a king who had a daughter as beautiful as a blooming rose. to all the suitors who came to the kings palace to ask for the hand of the princess, the old king assigned three tasks to be accomplished, each next to impossible. one day, into the kings palace came a handsome young prince..." well, you know the rest. the three tasks may be different in different versions, but the main plot is always the same, with the prince claiming the princesss hand triumphantly.

and the ending is always the same, finishing with the line "and they live happily every after."

the story not only caters to everyones inward yearning for success, but also emphasizes the inseparability of the process and the result. the reward of success will be much amplified if the path leading towards it is treacherous, and vice versa. if a person inherits his fathers millions and leads an easy life, he is not a successful person even in material terms, because there are no difficulties involved in his achieving affluence. the term "success", to be sure. will not sit still for easy definition. but as i understand it, the true meaning of success entails a combination of both the process and the satisfactory result of an endeavor. to clarify my view, let me give another analogy.

if we changed the rules of football, greatly enlarged the goal and sent away david seaman or any other goal keeper, so that another david, namely david beckham, could score easily, then scoring would not give him the thrill of accomplishment and the joy that it brings. if we further changed the rules by not allowing arsenals defenders to defend, so that beckham needed only to lift a finger, actually a toe, to score, then there would be no game at all, because the meaning of winning would have disappeared. in accepting the challenge, in surmounting the difficulties and in enduring the hardship, success acquires its value. the sense of attainment varies in proportion to the degree of difficulties on overcomes.

the concept of success is not constant but relative because the nature of difficulty is also relative. something you do effortlessly might pose a great difficulty for a handicapped person. in acquiring the ability to do the same as you can, he or she achieve success. thats why we greatly admire stephen hawking, because, though confined to a wheel chair, he has contributed greatly to the field of science.

i myself, a rather shy person by nature who easily suffer from stage fright, had to pluck up great courage to take part in a speech contest like this. i could have stayed away and had an easy time of it by not entering the university level contest.but i chose to accept the challenge and to face the difficulties. now here i am. if i come out first, it will be a great success for me. if i come out last-i hope this will not be the case-but if i come out last, i will not call my attempt a failure, but will also celebrate it as a true success, because part of my goal is my own character training-to do more assertive, to be brave in face of difficulties. for me, it is a meaningful step forward, small as it is, in the long journey toward the final success in my life, because i have truly gained by participating.

let us return to our handsome young prince and the 4-step definition of success. you my have noticed that the usual worldly criteria of wealth, position and fame were not mentioned as part of the story, but rather, it emphasized the process of overcoming difficulties. the ancient wisdom had already defined the meaning of success, and this is my definition, too.

thank you.

译文:成功之我见

“很久以前，有个国王，他的女儿貌美如花。老国王向所有来求婚的男士提出了三个任务作为挑战，而每一项任务都异常艰巨，几乎不可能完成。一天，来了一位年轻英俊的王子……”好了，下面的故事你们都知道了。三项任务在不同的版本中各不相同，但关键部分的情节都如出一辙:王子成功地过关，得到了公主的芳心。而故事的结局也都一样，最后一句都写道:“从此他们幸福地生活在一起。

为什么我们对如此美妙、如此不切实际,而我要说,如此缺乏想象力的东西这么乐此不疲呢?这样的故事又如何能够经历几代人的重复?我想，因为它是典型的成功的例子。故事的思想性很强，具有代表性。通过故事带给我们的启示，我们认识到了成功定义中的四个步骤;第一，目标的设定，有如故事里美丽的公主;第二，所遇到的困难和挑战，就像三大任务;第三，克服困难的过程，故事中青年经历重重难关可以作为象征;第四，就是成功的果实，如同幸福的婚姻。

这个故事不仅迎合了人们内心深处对成功的向往，也强调了过程和结果的不可分离。如果通往成功的道路崎岖曲折，那么成功的回报必然硕果累累，反之亦然。如果一个人继承了父辈的百万家产而生活得轻松富足，那么，即使在物质上，他也不能算是个成功人士，因为，他的财富并没有经过艰难困苦而获得。确切地说，“成功”这个词，不是个静态简单的定义。在我的理解中，真正意义上的成功是奋斗的过程和经历了奋斗之后赢得的满意的结果。请让我另举一例来阐明我的见解。

如果我们试着改变足球的比赛规则，将球门放得很大，换下大卫·希曼或其他任何的守门员，这样，随便哪个“大卫”，比如说，“大卫·贝克汉姆”，就可以轻松进球，然而这样进一球却不能给他带来成功的震颤与喜悦。如果我们再改一改比赛规则，不让阿森纳队的防守来守门，那么，贝克汉姆只要动动手，其实就是抬抬脚就能进一球，那样的话、，实际上也没有什么比赛可言了，因为赢球的意义已经不存在了。在接受挑战、克服困难和经历磨难的过程中，“成功”的价值才得以丰满。取得成果的意义和所克服的艰难的程度成正比。所谓成功的概念不是一成不变的.而昙相对而言的,因为困难的性质也是相对意义上的。

正常人不费力气做成的事对于一个残疾人来说也许相当困难。获得了同正常人一样的能力，这个残疾人就获得了成功。这便是我们为什么崇敬史蒂芬·霍金的原因—虽然行动不便，受到了轮椅的限制，他依然为科学界作出了巨大的贡献。

就我自己而言，生性羞涩，容易怯场，不得不鼓起非常大的勇气来参加此次的演讲比赛。我完全可以待在一边，不参加大学级别的比赛，而落得轻松自在。可是，我还是选择了接受这一挑战来面对困难。现在我来了，如果我能够得第一的话.这对我来说就是巨大的成功。如果，我是最后一名—我希望情况不是这样—但如果我真的是最后一名，我也不会认为这次的尝试是一次失败，反而我要把它当作一次真正的成功来庆贺，因为我一部分的目标是对自己性格的锻炼—更加坚强、勇敢地面对困难。对我来说，这标志着我在通向成功人生的漫漫征途中又向前迈进了一步，尽管是很小的一步，但是我确实通过参与真正地获得了收益。

回到我们年轻英俊的王子和对“成功”的四步骤定义上吧，您也许已经注意到了财富、地位和名誉等这些世俗的标准在故事中并未提及，相反故事强调了克服重重困难的过程。古代的智慧已经对成功的意义下了定义，这也是我的定义。

谢谢!

[英语作文成功之我见模板

自信是成功的导火线，只有自信，才能成。如果连自己都不相信自己，怎么能成功呢？

生活中这样的事例数不胜数。每次考试前，我从来都没有为考试而担心，总是信心十足，精神饱满地去考试。我总是这样想：“考试为了什么？不就是检验自己吗？既然对自己平时的成绩信心十足，考试又有什么好担心的呢”？因此，我的考试成绩每次都比较理想。

直至有一次，我的语文考试破天荒地考了八十七分，我掉泪了。望着那火辣辣的“87”，我的心里一阵酸楚。我在心里问自己，我的自信错了吗？

可尽管如此，我没有气馁，不断地安慰自己：失败只有一种，那就是放弃努力、放弃自信。成绩的高低在于平时，如此成绩虽不堪入目，但它无论如何也是自己的真实水平。败局既已酿成，又有什么办法呢？世上没有后悔药，留得青山在，不怕没柴烧。自信是没错的！相信自己！我能行！！！

于是，在以后的学习中，我奋起直追：上课专心致志地听讲；课下认认真真的做作业；考试时聚精会神地答题。终于，功夫不负有心人，在惨痛的低分——87分后，我勇创历史新高——99分！我成功了！！！

自信对成功者来说是不可或缺的。它的存在意味着绝对的成功。只有有了绝对的自信，才能取得真正的胜利。

伟大的诗人泰戈尔曾说过：“自信是煤，成功就是熊熊燃烧的烈火。”是的，只要有了自信才能成功，不是吗？

自信与成功的关系秒不可言：成功因自信而存在！勇敢地告诉世界吧：我—能—行！！！！！！

暴风雨过后有最绮丽的彩虹，冷却的熔岩里有最耀眼的钻石， 尘封千年的坛子里有最香醇的美酒。 、 阳光总在风雨后

玉不琢不美，人不磨不灵。磨练自己，在磨练中造就自己，在磨练中重塑自我，使人生的价值得到最大的体现。人生到处多磨练，我们应做的不是在磨练中决定放弃，而是在磨练中学会自强。

这两天，我帮妈妈收拾旧报纸，无意中看到了一则新闻：11年前，河南一个农村家庭遭受重大变故：父亲突发间歇性精神病，饱受伤痛的母亲不辞而别，家中还有一个年幼的弟弟和父亲病后捡到的遗弃女婴需要照顾。这个家庭的重担压在当时只有12岁的长子 洪战辉身上。

故11年如一日，洪战辉一边读书一边克服难以想象的困难，照看时常发病的父亲，抚养捡到的妹妹 这期间，他曾经动摇，也曾经想到逃避，但一种责任最终让他 只是默默地走，不愿放弃 。他开始打工，做小本生意，省吃俭用供整个家，还屡屡拒绝他人的捐款，坚持要靠自己的努力得来的钱维持家庭 难道洪战辉这不叫自强不息吗?这就是在磨练中学会自强的好榜样。

自强不息，乃幸运之母。若说人生是一部戏，那么，磨练就是这部戏的灵魂所在。磨练就是生活中的种种不如意，学习中，工作中等等。对于一些经不起考验的人来说，缺少生活的磨练，遇到这些事只会束手无策，挫败不堪;反而对一个经常磨练自己，意志坚强的人来说，会从逆境中站起来，顺境中闯出去!

磨练自己，需要付出时间和耐心。磨练自己，需要耐得住寂寞和孤独。磨练自己，对生活中的困境毫不畏惧。磨练自己，战胜自己的惰性与自私。 的确，哪怕是雄鹰也得经过暴风雨的洗礼才会显得矫健;那怕是大树也得经过日晒雨淋，人们的曾经践踏才会茁壮成长。试问当今世上，那位名人伟人没有经过磨练，没有经过困难，没有碰到过逆境?拿破仑曾经说过：自强像荣誉一样，是一个无滩的岛屿。

磨练不仅是一个字词，还是每个人在人生道路上必经的路程，但在这一段路后谁还能继续走下去，就要看你那百分之一的幸运和百分之九十九的造化了。

脑筋越磨练越灵活，心灵越磨练越透彻;四肢越磨练越发达，意志越磨练越坚毅。唯有经历磨练的人生才能过得充实，唯有经历磨练的青春，才会更加光彩照人。

磨练，不会太轻易，也不会太痛苦。在磨练中决定放弃还是学会自强，看的还是自己。但你要记住：一次成功虽不代表永远成功，但好的开始毕竟是成功的一半;但相反，如果你承受不了打击，一次输给了自己，或许就永远的输给了自己。要知道：一帆风顺的人很难取得超常的成绩;自责之外无胜人之术，自强之外无上人之术。

磨练是人生的一笔宝贵财富，而自强不息，是这宝贵人生历程的见证。人生贵在磨练――谁，都要自强!

《金牌精神》这本书里讲的都是奥运冠军的故事，是金牌背后的艰辛和汗水。《金牌精神》中提到的跳水冠军胡佳就是一个很勤奋的人。胡佳的教练看中的就是他的吃苦精神。不管训练要多苦，胡佳从没说过“不练”两字，就是流着泪也会把动作做完，做好。他对自已的要求特别严格，常常进行超时训练。教练让他做5组动作，他却偏要跳6组才肯罢休。别人下班了，他一直练到工作人员赶他走。胡佳动作很标准，但他总觉得自已的动作没个性。所以他就在动作上加大难度。2004年雅典奥运会上，功夫不负有心人，他终于收获了一枚冠军奖牌。

四年前看动画片成了我的主要生活，精彩雅典奥运会被我搁置脑后。四年后的今天，正在进行北京的奥运会，赛事精彩?呈，让人眼花缭乱，我也看得如痴如醉。在关注中国金牌的同时，但我更关注每个运动员的拼搏精神。正如《金牌精神》一书中所说的“勤勉努力，世上最成功的法则”??这就是奥运精神之一。

其实每一个成功运动员的背后都有无数次血汗的付出和不断的努力。学习上要想取得好成绩，同样需要勤奋和努力。学习上我也想取得好成绩,但我是一个怕吃苦的懒人，所以到现在一直没有“惊天动地”的好成绩。对要做的作业不是想着如何认真做好，而是千方百计“偷工减料”。暑假里，我老爸?疤焐习嗲白芤?贾煤靡惶斓淖饕怠６?易苁遣扇】纯吹缡勇??龅牟呗浴Ｖ形缁蛳挛纾?惶?降摹班编薄绷缴?煜さ钠?邓?派??揖椭?览习炙仍诼ハ拢?丶壹觳槲以谧鍪裁础Ｎ冶懔⒙砉氐舻缡樱?煽炫艹隹吞???谧狼白白鋈险孀鲎饕怠；褂幸徽幸彩俏揖?Ｊ褂玫?-----不管作业对错胡乱快速做完。我的这种学习态度，反映成绩上往往是比上不足比下有余。看到比我没大几岁女子体操运动员们在奥运赛场上的龙腾虎跃、努力拼搏的场景，真的很让我自惭形秽。能上奥运赛场为国争光，不知背后要吃多少苦。品奥运，看奥运给我带来最大收获是懂得了——只有勤奋努力才有可能夺得桂冠。

通过努力获得成功的故事有很多。凿壁借光，囊萤映雪，闻鸡起舞，悬梁刺股都是古人勤奋的成功典故。当代数学家陈景润在攀登数学高峰的道路上，翻阅了国内外上千本有关资料，通宵达旦地看书学习，演算研究，最后取得了震惊世界的成就，成为最接近数学王冠上的明珠—— 哥德巴赫猜想的第一人。也是勤奋给了陈景润通往成功的殿堂的钥匙。

“读书勤乃有，不勤腹中虚。”对照自已的学习，毫无疑问不够勤奋是我成绩不理想的主要原因。对于我来说，现在的辛苦不过是整天忙忙碌碌的学习，跟运动员的艰苦训练相比，算不上辛苦。就算考出了好成绩，那只是成功路上很小的一步。桥梁专家说过:“对搞科学的人来说，勤奋就是成功之母。”对我们学生来说也是一样的。勤奋使人生变美，勤奋更是成功之母。只有勤奋才会造就天才，所以我一定好好学习成为社会有用的人。

[勤奋是成功之母的作文

As a saying goes, success is equal to %99 sweat plus 1% inspiration. Its

true that if you want to succeed , you have to work hard.

As all of us know, a strong will, perseverance , confidence and diligence.

.. Are the essentials factors of success. Firstly I think man of strong will and

perseverance always has an aggressive spirit. He can stick to his cause no

matter how tough it might be. Secondly he should be full of confidence . He

shows no frustration and powerlessness in the face of difficulty, but with

confidence and strength soar he is ready to meet the next difficulty. So,

believe yourself and trust yourself is the most important thing. Find something

you really interest and trying to do it until then you will find everything is

so easy. Because you begin to take your first step, dont worry and keep

learning also dont give it up. Thirdly diligence plays an important role on the

way to our success. As the saying goes: "Diligence is the means by which one

makes up for ones dullness". And life is short and we have too much to do .

Without diligence, no one can achieve anything. Whats more, modesty is also one

of the factors to ones success. There is an old saying: "Modesty helps one to

progress and

pride makes one leg behind. " Everyone has his own strong points of which

he may have too high an opinion. The important thing is to be modest and learn

from othersstrong points. A modest person never hesitates to consult those who

are inferior to him. For he understands that the range of knowledge is larger

.

In a word, a man who wants to be triumphant must have a strong will, be

confident, be diligent. As a saying goes: "no pains, no gains! "

导语：人们说自信是成功的一半，它能给你带来勇气去坚持你所做的事。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

People say that self-confidence is half of the success that can bring you courage to stick to what you do. Without self-confidence, one can not do well in anything. Self-confidence is of great importance and value to a person.

Firstly, self-confidence enables us to have the ambition of being successful. Only when you have the ambition to be successful, can you be successful eventually. Secondly, once we gain self-confidence, we will possess the courage and strength to overcome the setbacks and difficulties. With self-confidence, no one and nothing can stop you to success.Thirdly, with self-confidence we may accomplish something which seems to be impossible previously. No great thing is easy for us, therefore we should hold the idea that anything is possible. We should, or have to trust in ourselves.

In short, self-confidence is the spiritual pillar of a person as well as the inherent power, which is of great importance and value to a person.

【参考译文】

人们说自信是成功的一半，它能给你带来勇气去坚持你所做的事。没有自信，一个人就不能做好任何事。自信对一个人很重要也很有价值。

首先，自信使我们拥有成功的雄心。只有当你有成功的野心的时候，你最后才能成功。其次，一旦我们获得了自信，我们就拥有了勇气和力量去克服挫折和困难。有了自信，没有人也没有什么能够阻止你成功。再次，有了自信我们可能实现一些以前看起来不可能的事。没有什么大事对我们是容易的，因此我们应该相信一切皆有可能。我们应该，或者必须相信自己。

总之，自信是一个人的精神支柱也是一个人的内在力量，它对一个人很重要也很有价值。

​

老师同学们：

大家好!

首先我想与大家分享一个有趣的故事：这个故事发生在古希腊。开学第一天，大哲学家苏格拉底对学生说：“今天咱们只学一件最简单也是最容易做的事——尽量将胳膊往前甩。”说着，苏格拉底示范了一遍，“从今天开始，每天做300下，大家能做到吗?”学生们都笑了，这么简单的事，有什么做不到的!过了一个月，苏格拉底问学生们：“每天甩300下，哪些同学坚持了?”有90%的同学骄傲地举起了手。又过了一个月，苏格拉底又问，这回，坚持下来的学生只剩下八成。一年后，苏格拉底再一次问大家：“请告诉我，最简单的甩手运动，还有哪几位同学坚持了?”这时，整个教室里，只有一人举起了手。这个学生就是后来成为古希腊另一位大哲学家的柏拉图。这个小故事所蕴含的深刻含意是显而易见的。

法国伟大的启蒙思想家布封曾经说过：“天才就是长期的坚持不懈。”我国着名的数学家华罗庚也曾说：“做学问，做研究工作，必须持之以恒。”的确，我们干什么事，要取得成功，坚持不懈的毅力和持之以恒的精神都是必不可少的。古今中外，这样的例子不用枚举，只说说同学们非常熟悉和崇拜的追风少年、跨栏英雄刘翔吧。刘翔八岁开始优育运动生涯，开始练跳高，后来转入跨栏项目。在十几年的刻苦训练中，每天面对的就是奔跑、起跳、跨越;跨越、奔跑、起跳。日复一日，年复一年，这对于热爱音乐、电脑的十几岁的少年刘翔来说，是何等的枯燥、乏味!但是，刘翔坚持下来了，十几年如一日的刻苦训练，成就了刘翔。雅典奥运会上，一个令西方世界惊诧不已的东方神话横空出世，刘翔带给全中国人民的是何等的荣耀和自豪。我想他也给我们每个人注入了一股强大的精神力量，那就是明确目标，坚持不懈，终能成功!世间最容易的事是坚持，最难的事也是坚持。说它容易，是因为只要愿意做，人人能做到，说它难，是因为真正能做到的，终究只是少数人。

成功在于坚持，这是一个并不神秘的秘诀。

同学们，当困难拌住你成功脚步的时候;当失败挫伤你进取雄心的时候;当负担压得你喘不过气的时候，不要退缩，不要放弃，一定要坚持下去，因为只有坚持不懈，才能通向成功!

现在奥运会开始了，看着电视上的那些奥运健儿的表现，我自愧不如，望着那块龙板，我有了信心。我决定练习绝技 ，像电视上的明星一样勤奋苦练.享受成功的喜悦。

我练习的第一个技术是漂移，就像赛车一样滑过弯道。我在健身房里的一块空地上练习，我先加速，然后把转弯时的重心放在后面，这时候感觉心很悬，看来我真是这方面的天才，练了不一会，我成功了，就是出弯时没控制好，摔倒了，不过这也给我了信心，说明我基本上会了，我又第二次是试验，我吸取前一次的教训，出弯时把重心移到了前面，终于成功了。

我又练习第二项绝技，就是用绳子把脚和板绑在一起，跳过障碍，这个技术难度较大，控制不好的话，肯定要摔得打破伤风针，所以我很谨慎，但一向精力充沛的我是不会放弃的。我用鞋子的尖尖头，钩住板的前空白部分，我纵身一跳，结果只跳了一点点高，而且摔?土耍?⒙砩砩嫌侄嗔艘豢槲谇唷Ｕ馊梦沂?职媚眨??也挥Ω闷?佟Ｓ谑俏矣种厥靶判摹？?际粤妨似鹄矗?ち撕眉铬樱?饧铬尤梦颐靼祝?挥蟹椒ㄊ遣恍械摹５?俏矣忠皇泵缓玫姆椒ǎ?趺窗欤课曳锤醋聊チ税胩欤?沼谙氲搅耍?街唤庞Ω靡黄鹛??匦牟呕崞胶猓?沂粤艘幌拢??缓芨摺Ｗ约阂蚕氩坏交嵴饷锤?虽然下降时没控制好,但我已知道窍门了,我非常有成就感.

这次绝技训练，让我明白了，面对困难首先要有足够的信心，再寻找窍门，有了自信，有了方法，再加上苦练，成功就属与你。

[信心+窍门+勤奋=成功_初中作文

读书需要勤奋，读书没有什么捷径，只有勤奋，才能取得好的成绩。

古诗云：“书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟”。古有孙敬头悬梁、苏秦锥刺股等典故，被传为千古美谈，后有许多发奋读书的名人成为我们学习的楷模。

宋濂字景濂，他幼年家贫，常借书苦读。他在其《送东阳马生序》一文中，叙述了自己苦读的经历：他幼时就爱读书，可是家贫买不起书，就经常到有藏书的人家借书，一借到书，就日以继夜地赶抄，即使在数九寒天，砚水结冰，手指冻僵，也不停笔。

宋濂十年寒窗，家境虽贫，但他有志苦读，几十年如一日，壮志终酬，功名传千古。

从宋濂勤奋读书，最终取得杰出成就的事例中，我们可以感悟到：在浩瀚的学海中，也只有勇于逆水行舟的强者，才能到达胜利的彼岸。

[形容读书勤奋的作文

假如今天你去问你身边的某个人，问他对于自己的现状是否满意，我想大部分时候得到的答案都是否定的，一个人要获得成功必须要付出努力，然而很多时候我们也付出了很多的努力却并没有获得期望的成功。有个故事我想大家肯定都听到过，南辕北辙的故事：有个人想到南方去，他有有明确的目标，有良好的技术，有足够的资金。然而却到达不了他想去的地方。这是因为他的方向不对，所以，无论他怎么努力也达不到目的。

选择大于努力，这是很浅显的道理。方向不正确，越努力，结果离目标越远。所以不同的选择，成就不一样的人生。我们今天的一个正确选择，努力去坚持，就会出现明日的辉煌；而今天一个错误的选择，不断努力去作为，却只能使你错得更加离谱。其实像上面说的那个人，其实他只要改变一下方向，就能实现他的目标，因此选择非常重要。

那么，怎样的选择才是正确的呢？我们不妨每天把自己想要的东西写下来，不管你想要什么，都要写，因为它能不断提醒你，什么是我当前最需要的，心里就会产生强烈的欲望。如果你每天都能看到自己的目标，它会影响你的潜意识，时刻暗示你自己要怎样去做，才能获得自己想要的东西。所以正确的选择就是：我想要的，我一定要的，我也将必定能得到的。而成功的确很简单，就是要懂得改变。

社会在变，职场在变，而我们绝大多数人却拒绝改变。安于现状是人类固有的惰性。日复一日地重复着昨日的生活，然而世界总是朝前发展的，科技不断在进步，人们沉睡在这样一个时代是多么可怕而悲哀的，也许我们无法掌控世事的变化，但是我们应该懂得怎样应对变化。很多东西都会过时的一天，问题是由我们让他过时还是别人让他过时。开发一次成像的宝丽来公司曾经多么辉煌，然而被迅猛发展的数码相机打垮了，20xx年10月不得不申请破产。我们很多人只知道抱怨，自己却不思进取，或幻想着天上掉下馅饼或期待贵人相助，殊不知别人获得的一切全是努力耕耘的结果，殊不知真正的贵人就是自己。

选择决定命运，而决定我们选择的是观念，要改变自己的人生，首要的就是改变观念。我相信没有哪个人甘居平庸，没有哪个人不渴望成功。然而大多时候大家都安于现状，不思进取，也有很多人列出了各种优秀的计划，行动的步骤，只是空想的多而行动的少，他们总是说出：我没有显赫的家庭背景，没有足够的资金、没有优良的技术、没受过良好的教育、身体又差等等十分可爱的理由。励志文章 其实人们只是忽略了一件事，那就是，没有强烈的成功欲望。要做任何事，要成功，就一定要有我一定要的决心。有了这种强烈的企图心，你才会真正懂得自我约束，自我管理，才会全力以赴去实现你想要实现的目标，虽百阻千扰也不会改变自己的信念。记住，不要为失败找任何借口。

世界上有两种不同类型的人，一种人总是认为环境决定人的发展，总认为自己是环境的牺牲者，总是祈求老天爷把好运降临在他头上，总是想着，等环境许可了再做决定。等待、拖延是他们最真实的写照。而另一种人则相信环境是可以操纵在自己手上的，他们总是以积极的心态去发现机会，制造机会。所以成功者与失败者之间最大的差别，不是才能，而是彼此的观念不同。

于是人们在从事某项事业的时候，有的人抱着试试看的心里，瞻前顾后，想获得成功有缺乏自信力，所以不会用心投入进去，故而成功的希望不大；有的人心里有了一番触动或因为对自己所处环境极为不满，或非常羡慕他人的成功，心里有了些激情与信心。他也努力去行动，决心把事情做好，然而一旦遇到挫折便心灰意冷，渐渐放弃，这种人中运气好的，也许能成功，运气不好的人，就会抱怨：成功不是我这样的人能过做到的，然而归根到底，不是成功抛弃他，不是上帝步眷顾他，实在是他自己不要成功啊，只要他坚持，成功唾手可得；而真正有所作为的人，却不是这样，他会全力以赴，对于成功他是志在必得，他将会用全部的生命和热情去达成自己的目标。无论遭遇什么都义无反顾。要想获得成功，就得全力以赴。

要改变别人，首先得改变自己，如果你自己依然和过去一样，一成不变，生活依旧一潭死水，毫无起色，又如何能影响到人？自己做到认同产品、使用产品、熟知产品、推崇产品、宣传产品，任何时候都要懂得去认同企业文化、传播企业精神，推广直销和保健理念。直销的核心理论是口碑分享，就是把好的产品通过口头宣传的形式销售出去。而我们每个人只不过是改变一些行为习惯，使自己更健康，使自己对生活更有热情、更有激情，对自己的人生更充满信心；只不过付出一些努力，多去关心一下我们亲友的健康；只不过使自己拥有一个明确的、值得追求的、并且通过我们的努力完全可以实现的梦想。人生感悟

人生有没有作为，不在于你学了多么高深的学问，而在于你能不能应用所学的知识，人能不能成功不在于阻力是大是小，而在于信心足还是不足。每天的时间于我们每个人都是一样的，关键在于我们怎么去管理，有的人每天靠自己努力的工作，赚取或多或少的钱来养家或不能养家，而有的人却能利用别人的能力来帮助自己成就事业。项羽凭自己之力差一点得到天下，最终却失去了天下，刘邦能用他人之力却拥有天下，所以成功者不一定需要有特别的才能，而是我们想不想获得成功。要想成就事业，我们就需要改变：心态要变、态度要变、状态和观念要变。世界上最伟大的力量就是改变。

[成功需要自己去改变作文欣赏

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

在我家楼下的花园里你总能听到快乐的笑声，那就是我和我的伙伴们在骑自行车的时候发出的笑声。记得那是上一年的暑假，妈妈给我买了自行车，我的自行车可漂亮了!蓝蓝的车身上有一句英语黄黄的格外耀眼。

车身前后的两个轮子有很大的作用，可以防滑、防震，所以在水面上行驶也不会摔倒。可是现在它被多次擦掉漆，每一次骑的时候我要看它一两分钟，总是不禁回想起以前发生的事情。那一天烈日当头，妈妈教我骑自行车，一开始我感到很害怕，因为这个两轮自行车不像三轮车一样，两轮自行车要保持平衡，如果一不留神就会摔倒。妈妈说：“上来这里坐。”我害怕地说：“不、不!如果坐上去，两轮自行车就会倒下。”“不怕，妈妈扶着，法拉第说过‘拼命去争取成功，但不要期望一定成功。’”妈妈说。“你不要放开手，我看别人学自行车也是不放开手的。要不你先骑一圈给我看看，我就会了。”我说。妈妈二话不说就上了车，坐在坐位上，手扶着扶手，脚踏在踏板，一蹬脚车就动了，车慢慢地走动起来了，车速由慢变快，妈妈的头发也被风吹得飘来飘去，多威风啊!刹时间强烈的好奇心，牵引着我……

轮到我了，心里既兴奋又害怕，我上了车，妈妈在后面扶着。虽然妈妈在后面，但是我还是免不了紧张害怕，不过比刚刚好多了。我学妈妈那样，脚踏在踏板上，手扶着把手，可是一摇一晃的，在路中间摇来摇去，像一条蛇一样走路。“啊!”我尖叫了一声，车撞到一块石头了，自行车把我“扔”到几米外，我被摔得四脚朝天，我虽然觉得两轮自行车摇来摇去容易倒，可是那种凉爽那种快活使我又爬上了车，踏上脚板，重新再来。“咦?把手好像没刚才摇得那么厉害了，可是还是会摇。”我自言自语道。一阵微风迎面吹来，我骑完一圈回头望了望，顿时，“惊讶”侵入了我全身。妈妈在远处向我招手，妈妈放手了，这证明我学会了骑自行车。我骑着自行车在花园里逛着，心里有一说不出的自豪感。“张亮，小心点!”几个声音同时提醒了我。啊，原来我在骑自行车，还差点骑到水池了……伙伴们的笑声把我从回忆中拉回到了现实。

此时的我真想跟他们分享我成功的喜悦，忘了哪一位名人曾经说过这样一句话“成功不是战胜别人，而是战胜自己，而要战胜自己，首先得相信自己”，著名科学家牛顿也说过：“今天你尽你最大的努力去做好，明天你也许会做得更好。”是啊，成功何尝不是来源于努力呢!不但学骑自行车如此，做其他事情也一样!