我需要勇气用英语怎么说【优秀19篇】

它是成功创业者的无穷财富，它是意志不坚者无法逾越的鸿沟，它也是生活必不可少的调味品，它就是挫折。

暴风雨来临时

“妈，你看，我考了满分，第一名呐!”我得意地盯着那犹如盛开的花儿一般鲜艳的一百分，手舞足蹈的比划着我是怎样怎样攻克一个个难题的，妈妈却一如往日的平淡，说：“千万别骄傲，可不能大意啊!”可是这时已是骄傲的我又怎么会有心思听进去呢?

暴风雨来临时

不久，数学便挂起了红灯笼，地理也差点挂了科，一向对知识钻研细腻的我怎能忍受得了这般打击?我哭了，窗外风雨交加如同我的心，泪水早已模糊了我的眼睛，然而祸不单行，一向对我疼爱有加的奶奶也离我而去了，我如遭雷击，常在夜里哭醒，那段日子对我来说仿佛没有阳光;班主任也说我整天“沦陷”，妈妈察觉我整日闷闷不乐，她并没有说什么，只给了我一句话“少年壮志不言愁”这番良言像一阵清新的春风，吹醒了我昏昏欲睡的头脑，像一场绵绵的春雨，润泽着我心头潜滋暗长的幼苗。我理解了母亲的话，也理解了母亲的一片苦心，于是，我开始了改新。

暴风雨来临后

我不再沉浸于悲伤之中，而是勇敢地直面挫折，悲痛似乎已变得微不足道。每天放学回家，我都不停地在脑中回想自己在课上哪一环节做得不好，哪里应继续做下去那一应该进……很快我又临来了期末考试，我一丝不苟的答完了最后一道题，千斤重的心终于放下了，我笑了。结果和我预想的一样，我坐上了原来的宝座，阳光也有暗淡的时候，但生命的花朵永远鲜艳，当我又一次捧回满分的试卷，我和妈妈都真正地笑了，开心的眼睛里跳跃着青春的火花。

失败之后接踵而来的是成功，是生活让我彻底领悟了“落后就要挨打”“风雨彩虹，铿锵玫瑰”想要成功，就要挫折，生活需要挫折，因为有了它，才会有明天的辉煌与成功!

是呀！在生活中处处都需要勇气，勇气也无处不在。例如5。12汶川大地震，有许多本来已经成功逃生的人，却又鼓起勇气，重新冲回那些摇摇欲坠，随时都有可能坍塌的为危楼，矮墙等危险地区去救其他的人。结果几乎都是牺牲了自己，救出了别人。他们真是令人敬佩呀。他们这一种舍己为人的精神和勇气值得我们敬佩。

在这一次大地震中，有许多的幸存者们都被废墟给掩埋了。可是，他们却凭着顽强的毅力活了下来。是什么让他们有这么大的毅力。是勇气！是勇气让他们如此勇敢的面对死神。是勇气让他们创造了一个又一个的生命奇迹：不吃不喝的度过了101小时，103小时，136小时157小时，203小时。勇气，有多么大的力量呀！又有许多被埋的幸存者临危不惧，如那个“可乐男孩”的一句“叔叔，我要喝可乐”逗乐了整个为这场大灾难而感到悲伤的中国；敬礼男孩的一个敬礼，也体现出了人们的勇敢。正是这种勇气，鼓励着去与死神一争高低，坚强的活下去。

在这一场大灾难过后，有许许多多的灾区同胞们失去了亲人，朋友。一个个原本幸福的家庭变得支离破碎。数二十多万幸存下来的灾区同胞们无家可归，只好和家人们生活在一个小小的帐篷里。面对着生活上的困难，他们用生活的勇气解决，努力建造更加美好的明天！

生活需要勇气！

[生活需要勇气作文题材

人生之路曲曲折折，难免遇到坎坷。在困难面前有两种人，因此有了两种不同的选择。一种人选择鼓足勇气，勇往直前;另一种人则是逃避，则是放弃。

我是极度渴望成功的人，我付出了全部的努力。为了梦想我放弃了玩耍，为了梦想我放弃了懒惰，为了梦想我放弃了原本属于我的自由!可是期末成绩犹如晴天霹雳，给我致命的一击。我输了，没有达到自己的目标，没有保住该在的位置，没有连续的失败我咬着牙挺过来了，我渴望着这一次可以成功，可以向所有人证明我自己!终究天不如人愿，我依旧考差了!这一次怎么也鼓不起勇气，我伤心，我难过，我气馁。最终我选择了逃避与放弃!我始终不肯再翻开书本看一眼，我害怕，我认定自己失败了。

可到了后来我找回了自信，因为我突然想起了盲人的生活方式：有的因为自己看不见而失望，懊恼，埋怨别人，认为自己的生活中只能拥有黑暗。他们丧失了勇气，结果得到的，也真的只是一片黑暗。而有的人却不同，他们虽然像一张有污点的纸，不过，他们看到的不是那一点黑点而是那张纸的大部分白色，他们不认为自己只能拥有黑暗，而为了他们还拥有耳朵鼻子而感到庆幸，并充分利用他们，他的还超越了正常人。海伦*凯乐就是一个典型的例子，她是一个盲聋哑人，按道理说，她有90%的希望成为一个低智商的人，可是她的勇气带着她超越了一切的困难成为了一个着名的女作家。像她易雷的人才真正的获得了生命的色彩。勇气，勇气，勇气!唯有它才使生命之血具有鲜红的色彩!

生活需要勇气，有了它，就能超越一切得到成功。勇气是处于逆境中的光芒，是通往天堂的必经之路。我们要相信有一扇门关上，必有另一扇门为你打开，而打开这扇门所需的钥匙，就是：勇气。

如果没有勇气，成龙不会拍出那么多武打片;如果没有勇气，那些现在红得发紫的明星也不会有那么大的成就。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

我们都很勇敢?是的。如果我们不勇敢，怎么可能脱离妈妈温暖的羊水来到这个美好而又残酷的世界。没有勇气，我们不可能经历无数的挫折，然后长大。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

勇敢其实并不难。经常会有这种话语：“你真胆小。”“你要勇敢!”“…………”但是你要知道，你是勇敢的，至少，你也勇敢过。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

听到这些话语，你会很郁闷吧?其实并不需要郁闷。只要你知道：“我是勇敢的!”其实你本来就很勇敢。其他人也是这样。所以你不要嘲笑别人不勇敢。大家都是勇敢的。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

第一次上台演讲，第一次表演节目，第一次当着很多人的面发表对另一个人的看法……人生中有很多第一次，这些第一次中，你都会觉得自己并不勇敢。其实你是勇敢的。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

挫折是必须面对的，成长中必定有挫折。不经过风风雨雨，没有挫折的磨练，你必定不会成功。而面队这些挫折时，需要勇敢。你可以不勇敢，但是你不能永远不勇敢。做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。

做什么事情都需要勇气，成长，也一样。想要快乐，想要成功，必须勇敢。

人生需要金钱，智慧，诚信，诚实，力量等。但我认为最需要的是勇气。

我和赵清涛是好朋友，但有一次，我跟他闹着玩，趁他不注意，我在背后推了他一把，可我下手太重，把他推到了，他生气了。使劲撞我，我被他撞倒在地上。我气坏了，趁赵清涛出去玩的时候，我把他的书包仍到了花坛里，还踩了好几脚泄愤。

赵清涛回来看见自己的书包被扔到了花坛里了，便告诉了班主任。班主任“飞奔”到教室，怒气冲天的问：“是谁把赵清涛的书包仍到了花坛里了?”教室里鸦雀无声，没有一个人承认。我心里想：活该，谁叫他撞我。但是，看到赵清涛着急和委屈的样子，我有点心软：我也有不对的地方，是我先打他的，我到底承不承认是我干的。如果我承认了，会被挨一顿揍，如果我不承认，心里会憋得慌，怎么办呢?

最后，我终于做出了决定，我要承认是我做的，即使挨揍也值。我鼓起勇气，站起来说：“对不起，老师，这件事是我做的，因为我当时非常生气，所以把他的书包扔到了花坛里了。”班主任听了，笑着说“敢于承认错误是一件好事，回去把他的书包洗干净就行了。”赵清涛看见我主动承认竟然没有怪我。

人生需要勇气，尤其是在自己的错误面前，如果没有勇气，就不会继续前进。

在一个暑假里我去了桂林游玩。

那儿的风景迷人，山清水秀，每一处景观都让人回味无穷，所以我兴奋地来到这儿，可是这里却有一条又清又长的河流，所以我们走上面的桥过，这座桥一看就知道用了很长的时间上面的木板有一个个的洞，再看下面的桥壁有一条流的十分快的河流，一看就让人心里害怕，再说我当时还是一个个幼稚园的小娃娃。

我双手紧紧握住爸爸的手，爸爸也在不停地为我打气，我还不敢走，我一下子落到了最后，看见别的孩子谈笑风生的过去了，我心里很佩服。我一下子发现对面一个小男孩正向我做鬼脸还说：“你是豆芽菜。”我心里一阵怒火。

我鼓起勇气两眼直瞪前方，如同一只蜗牛似地爬了过来，我用勇气战胜了自己，我向自己竖起了大拇指。

过了那座桥后的景色比前面的还要美，每一座山都长的那么奇特，小桥、流水、人家，好像变成了一幅山水画，美不胜收。

爸爸说：“只有鼓起勇气坚持到底勇于挑战才能成功。”对呀，生活中需要勇气，有勇气才能成功。

如果前方有一座山岭，你是选择后退还是攀爬？如果前方有一条河流，你是选择却步还是趟过？如果前方有很多困难，你会选择投降还是挑战？当你在夜晚独自睡觉时，你是否有前行的道具——勇气？我会说：“我一定有。”

那天晚上，我们全家吃完饭，由于我第二天要早起，便只好孤独地守着家，而爸爸妈妈还有妹妹则高高兴兴地坐着车去逛街。原本热闹的家，顿时变得十分冷清，空荡荡的。

我在房间里做着作业，时间在我转动的笔尖上飞逝，转眼间，已到了七点。我收起作业，从冰箱里拿出一杯牛奶，悠闲地坐在沙发上边喝牛奶边看电视。

不知不觉中，时钟已指向了八点，我的心不知怎么地“怦怦怦”地跳，我拿起电话准备叫妈妈快点回来。平时按键按得很溜的我，不知怎么按“1”却按成了“3”，按“3”却按成了“7”，不知按了多少次，终于打通了。谁知，电话的另一边却传来了“你自己先睡吧，我们要逛到十点”的“指令”。这怎么可能呀，我可是最怕黑的，让我独自睡，简直比登天还难呀！妈妈也太狠了！

看着时钟已快到九点，我直奔厕所，以最快的速度洗漱完毕，便上床了。我鼓起勇气关了灯，瞬间，屋里一片漆黑，伸手不见五指。我凭着感觉，找到了床，连忙钻着被窝里，浑身发抖，身体缩成一团。

不一会儿，我就满头冒汗，只好探出头来，突然，窗帘被一阵风掀开，窗前传出“哗哗”的响声，令人毛骨悚然，我不禁又躲进被窝。这只是阵风而已，没什么可怕的，我都快上初中了，还怕什么！想着，我又凭着内心的勇气从被窝里钻了出来。

听，我的耳边传来了细微的脚步声，我的心不由地咯噔了一下。我起身，猫着腰，从门下的缝隙望去，在客厅过道上的灯光的照映下，地板上映着一个黑影。是谁？又是脚步声又是影子的，难道是小偷？我也没听见大门的动静呀！难道是鬼？我立马钻进了被窝，转眼又想，这世界上哪有鬼呀，这只不过是大人拿来吓唬小孩的，我怕什么呀！我静下心来，闭上眼睛，伴着“哗哗”声，我进了梦乡。

第二天醒来，阳光洒满整间卧室，哈哈，勇气好可贵，我终于拥有了它。

美丽的前行属于坚强的人，坚强的人拥有勇气，勇气则使前行更美丽，因为，前行需要勇气！因为，成长需要勇气！

软弱的人永远成不了霸主，只有勇敢者才能登上巅峰。 The weak people will never be overlord, only brave people can reach the peak.

想要成功，有一颗勇敢的心是必要的，只有有了勇气，你才敢去面对;只有有了勇气，你才敢去面对、承担前方的困难，承担自己的责任，最后才能收获成功。

拿破仑，一个小矮子，却成为了欧洲的霸主，如果没有勇气，他怎敢窥视那至高无上的皇位宝座。如果没有勇气，他只会是一个战场还会偷偷逃跑的小士兵;而想要当将军的士兵要有野心，更要有勇气，因为有无数人在窥视将军宝座，你如果退缩一步，便会被无情抛弃;如果坚持，就要与无数劲敌厮杀。你需要巨大的勇气来支持你，才会有机会等上巅峰。

勇气是一个人成功的催化剂，勇敢者总是能更快地走向成功。当然，也不能排除一些没有勇气的人因运气或其他种.种走向成功。但是这些人取得的成功往往都是一些小的成功，而那些大的成功永远是那些勇敢者得到的。像汉高祖刘邦，成吉思汗等等，他们获得的成功绝不是运气，而靠的是在战场上无畏的杀敌，他们都是勇敢者。

勇，不是鲁莽，是有勇有谋，勇敢者和愣头青永远也画不上等号，勇敢者是在有把握或有一丝的把握才回去做这件事的人。而愣头青却是不管三七二十一地想做什么就做什么，所以，勇敢的勇和勇气的勇是有勇有谋的勇。

在学习中，如果连超过在你前面的人的勇气都没有，那你就永远不可能超过他。中考满分作文只有有勇气，有毅力，才能在学习上取得进步。

历史永远是成功者的光荣史，它记载的永远是勇敢者的光辉。所以想让别人知道你的光辉，就要成功，而成功必须拥有的就是勇气。只要有勇气，才敢面对挫折与困难。只有有勇气，才能战胜这些。只有有勇气，成功才会属于你。

未来的世界，是勇敢者的世界。软弱的人只能活在生活的社会最底层。拥有勇气，让成功属于我们;拥有勇气，让我们创造成功。

在家闲来无事百度了下“勇气”二字的含义。一是指拥有勇往直前的气魄，即不逃避;二是指拥有敢想敢干毫不畏惧的气概，即不退缩。 I have nothing to do with the word "courage" at home.The first is to have the courage to go forward, that is, not escape; the second is to have the spirit that dares to dare to do, that is, not shrinking.

“勇气”二字要是安放在我身上，绝对是不合身。女孩嘛~总是怕这怕那的，有时还会大惊小怪“啊，啊”的叫几声。尤其是我，极其害怕动物，任何活的动物。所以，更害怕蜈蚣这类毒物了。

小时候跟着奶奶一起在乡下住，但我却一点儿也不野，是一个实在的乖小女孩。一天傍晚回家，看见平时粗声粗气的奶奶此时却躺在床上，一只手臂包裹着厚厚的纱布。看到这场景，我瞬间就哭成了泪人。才知道，原来奶奶的手被一只很大很大的蜈蚣咬伤了。看着奶奶鼓鼓地手，本来平时应该是敲在我的头上的手，现在却软软的垂放在床上。我不禁“怒”从中来，誓要把那个“凶手”伸之以法，就地处决，为我奶奶伸张正义。

机会终于来了。那是一个午后，我正蹲在门口玩几根草玩得不亦乐乎。忽然看见门缝里有一个长长的东西正慢慢地伸出来。我知道，那就是我等待已久地“仇人”。我连忙从井边拾起一块砖头，紧紧地拿在手上，继续蹲在原位，身子有点微微发抖，眼睛却死死地盯着那个“仇人”，蓄势待发。一见那身影完全暴露在我面前，我赶忙拿起砖头一拍，哈哈，死了!又多拍了几下，直到它扁了我才停下。这时，我的脚已经软了一半了。

可那蜈蚣即使死了，我也不敢对它的尸体如何。我高兴地喊奶奶来看，奶奶惊讶地看着我手中的砖头，问我：“你平时见到一只蟑螂都要绕路走，怎么敢打死蜈蚣啦?不怕被咬啊!”我骄傲地挥了挥手里的砖头，说：“奶奶，我这是给你报仇啊，我不怕。”奶奶嘿嘿地笑着，拿起扫把一挥就把蜈蚣扫到草堆里去了。说：“啊妹真勇敢啊!都能保护奶奶了。”

是啊，只要有勇气，哪怕是面对再恐惧的东西，也不会退缩、逃避。有了勇气，再付之以行动，就能进化成勇敢了。

电视剧《将军》的主题曲中有一句歌词：“人生只要有勇气，天下无敌。”

生活需要勇气去冒险，去创新。规规矩矩的人，人生定会少了许多精彩;爱冒险的人，虽然人生路上有遭遇许多危险，但他的人生却会充满精彩。

从小，我就是一个爱冒险的孩子。刚开始学会走路的时候，我就屁颠屁颠地在家里乱闯;长大一点，我就在附近的几条小巷子里乱跑，有时候还去别人家“蹭饭”。妈妈没少训我、担心我，不过，我依然“我行我素”，享受着我的冒险，我的精彩。其中，最让我感到自豪的是一年级第一次放学我就自己走回家啦!

记得那一天放学后，我就遵照妈妈之前的嘱咐在校门囗乖乖地等妈妈，可等不到五分钟，急性子的我就开始坐立难安了。我的脑子里像放电影一样播出一幅又一幅妈妈因有事而暂时抽不开身来接我的画面。紧接着，一个大胆的念头跳进我的脑海了——自己走路回家。说走就走，不过，我还从没离家这么远呢!我暗自给自己鼓劲：就当来一次回家大冒险好了!我大阔步走在大街上，一路上东瞧瞧西望望，一会儿边走边踢小石子，一会儿又顺手在路边摘几朵小野花。我一边走一边回忆着妈妈昨天带我来时的路线，想到自己能独自回家，不禁飘飘然了，但一想到路上可能有坏人，心里还是有点害怕。我装出一副司空见惯的样子，好像这条路我从小走到大一样。当妈妈准备去接我的时候，我忽然从门外跳进来，特意在妈妈面前绕了一圈，来了一个闪亮登场。瞧我一脸的兴奋和汗水，可把妈妈吓了一大跳。妈妈一边担心着问东问西，一边又教训我不该乱跑。

从那以后，每当放学的时候，妈妈就准时出现在校门口，因为她怕我又乱跑。而那次“回家大冒险”，也永远留在我心中，成为一段美好的回忆。

爱要勇气母爱是伟大的，母亲为我们奉献了那么多，而我们也应该为自己的母亲做点什么，比如----对母亲说声“我爱你”。即使如此，我也从未对自己的妈妈说声----我爱你。并非我不爱她，只是我羞于启齿。我觉得正儿八经地对妈妈说那句话，挺别扭的。

吃晚饭时，妈妈匆匆地往嘴里扒着饭。她等会儿还要上班，要不是担心我和弟弟，她早就去找一份更好的工作了。想到这里，我的心“咯噔”了一下，张了张嘴，结结巴巴地说：“妈妈，我···我···”我好想把“我爱你”三个字说出来，可这三个字就像卡在喉咙里一样，怎么也说不出口，我脸红起来。“嗯?怎么了?脸怎么这么红?是不是发烧了?”妈妈搁下筷子，想看看我是怎么了，我仓促地说：“我们十月一日要放八天假。”我低下头来，想掩饰自己的脸红，可这一切在妈妈眼里却变了样，她以为我是怪她不陪我出去玩。她坐下来，有些愧疚的对我说：“我要上班，没时间陪你们，下次我休假陪你们去玩。”

晚上九点多，妈妈拖着疲惫的身体回来了，她到家后一刻也没闲着，洗碗，洗衣服，打扫卫生····我看着看着，眼泪就流了下来。我把她叫到客厅，把她按在沙发上，别扭地坐在她旁边，低下头，轻轻地对妈妈说：“妈妈，我爱你!”

我抬起头时，妈妈的眼眶里已经充满了泪水，我用自己的手帮妈妈擦去了泪花。我和妈妈相视而笑。妈妈笑得十分灿烂，十分美丽。

原来，爱是需要勇气大声说出来的。

有人说，人在前进的路上就是两件事——前进和拐弯。前进需要勇气，拐弯需要智慧。——题记

从每个人成长的轨迹来看，人生天地间，路路九曲弯，从来没有笔直的。

爱因斯坦曾说：“人的最高本领是适应客观条件的能力。”达尔文说得更透彻：“适者生存。”他们所说的“适”，就是适应、顺应，用通俗的话说，就是会“拐弯”。

拐弯在人生的字典里是个关键词，由于每个人对这个词理解、掌握和运用的水平不同，就出现了愿不愿、会不会、善不善拐弯的多种情形，由此就造成了千差万别的人生，演绎出五彩缤纷的世界。我想如果把拐弯用英文大写的字母来表示，可分出若干种类型。

一是把拐弯用字母“V”来表示。

不仅形象上非常传神，而且真正表达了拐弯的意义：这不是一种简单的拐弯，是一种迂回型的拐弯，是形退实进。左边的一半，代表向下;右边的一半，代表向上。从左边的趋势来说，本应向下，但到底部终止了，又改为向上。这是一种消极状态向积极状态的转折。许多人和事都是这样由挫折走向成功的。北大着名教授季羡林， “文革”时被勒令守楼听电话，这对别人来说可能是无法忍受的屈辱，可季老却在困境中发现了有利因素，便利用三年看大门的时间，翻译了280万字的印度史诗《罗摩衍那》宏篇巨着，为中国翻译史和中印文化交流建起了一座丰碑。

二是把拐弯用字母“N”来表示。

这种拐弯和“V”有点相似，但又不完全相同，它是表示人们按既定的道路和方向前进时，原路走不通了，必须拐弯，但这个弯不是返回原来的起点，而是拐到一个新的落脚点上，从而在新的领域获得新的发展。人在一生中难免会遇到这样那样的挫折、不幸。关键在于你是否学会了拐弯。只要你心里拐个弯，就会路随心转、超越自我，开创新天地。红极一时的影星克里斯朵夫·李维在一次马术比赛中意外坠落，成了一个高位截瘫者。他一度绝望过，也曾想就此了结生命。但在挫折面前，他最终选择了转弯，以轮椅代步，当起了导演，他导演的影片还获得了金球奖。他还坚持用牙咬着笔，写出了他人生的第一部书《依然是我》，后来这部书还成为畅销书。

三是把拐弯用字母“W”来表示。

人生前进的道路上弯很多，并不是拐一两次弯就就能到达人生终点的，而是要经过多次拐弯的锻炼，经历多次挫折的磨练，经受多次失败的考验。一些伟人、名人成长的轨迹，就雄辩地证明了他们正是在不停拐弯中才前进，在不断拐弯中才获得成功的。伟大的革命先驱孙中山先生，为了推翻清朝的封建统治，实行“三民主义”，经受多次失败，但矢志不渝，终于取得了辛亥革命的胜利。两院院士王选一生经历了九次选择，也就是九次拐弯，终于研制成功汉字激光照排系统，引发了我国印刷业“告别铅与火，迈入光与电”的一场技术革命，被誉为“当代毕升”。

学会“拐弯”不只是转换思路的小方法，更是指引人生方向的大智慧。

“我的字典里没有不可能!” "There is no impossible in my dictionary!"

记得两百多年前，当法国士兵站在巍峨的阿尔比斯山下，望着漫天风雪瑟瑟发抖时，拿破仑坚定地说出了这句流传百世的豪语。而后世的画家将当时的他描绘成了一个身跨白马，身着战袍的领袖。画中，马儿扬起前蹄向高山嘶鸣，奋然前行，英雄驾于马上，驰骋着勇气，右手指向天顶，指挥者大军前行，又仿佛是在向天空宣战。

如今几百年过去了，当人们瞻仰英雄时，只感慨拿破仑的传奇人生和其创下的丰功伟绩，但又有多少人知道面对百万将士的抱怨和反对，他是以怎样的信心和勇气去创造一个所谓的“奇迹”?

若是当年拿破仑选择将士们的决定，放弃翻越阿尔卑斯山这项不可能完成的任务，今天又是什么样?多少人面对选择时，往往都听从前任的劝告，认为这是先代的经验，但却从未想过，这些经验也是无数次实践后才得出的结论。那么，你为什么不愿意去试一下?

当你失败时，你会比别人收获更多的疼痛，所以你比别人更加懂得吸取教训;当你成功时，无数人会以你为榜样，打破陈旧，走向新的领域。因此，面对难以预料的前路，众人的叹息不能说明前方多远，那只是失败者和懦者的叹息，成功的人才不会陪着他们望洋兴叹，那些翻过高山、越过深海的人仅仅是多了点勇气。

当法国士兵翻过高山，站在山的另一端时，人们把拿破仑视如神人。面对崎岖的山路、陡峭的斜壁，一不小心就是万丈深渊在迎接自己，加上冬天的北风和暴雪，这座山成了禁区，翻过它只是自寻死路。然而事实胜过一切解释，当拿破仑走过一生的回忆后，这也许只是他生命中的一件小事而已。往往在别人眼里仿佛做不到的事，兴许是他们压根就没做过。

百年后的今天，科技发达，许许多多的往日艰险也随时间变得不值一提，但人性却从未变过。当我们再次面临麻烦，仍有着“走为上策”的必杀技。我们从未面对过困难，只是从老人口中听说过“困难”是一个什么样的怪物，它总守在成功的前面，像一座大山，威势难挡。于是，有人想出了绕路的办法，一遇上“困难”就绕路，花去了十几甚至几十倍的时间却仍未找到通路。

那我们就一辈子在绕路吗?

不，有更简单的方法，就是把自己变成勇者，任何胆小鬼面前的鬼怪都会成为勇气的试金石，因为对于常人而言，那是高不可攀的山，而对勇者来说，那只是块石头。

每一个人的成长都要经历风风雨雨，没有风雨的滋润，哪来雨后的彩虹？名著《西游记》中唐僧师徒四人西天取经，经历九九八十一难，最终取得真经，他们始终没有放弃。即使他们知道要面对许多妖魔鬼怪，还是鼓起勇气向前进，我们也需要勇气。

那是一个阳光明媚、鸟语花香的午后，刚刚吃完“大餐”的我正在聚精会神地看着动画片。“咚咚——”突然传来敲门声，我透过“猫眼”看了看，咦？四周没人啊！突然，有一只手快速地打向“猫眼”，我一惊，吓得从板凳上摔了下来。我小心翼翼地打开门一瞧，原来是王奶奶家的孩子，要我和他一起去捉泥鳅。从小怕水生物的我，一口拒绝了，更何况我当时才8岁。但我妈妈说王奶奶家小孙子难得回来一趟，小泥塘也很安全，让我陪他一起去。

我们俩来到了一片泥塘，里面什么都没有，哪儿来的泥鳅呢？“哈哈，没有泥鳅，那就捉不了呢！”我内心暗喜。可谁知他拎了一桶泥鳅倒了进来，我看了看，那数不胜数的泥鳅，心里直打哆嗦。可那孩子开心极了，立马跳进了泥塘，捉起泥鳅来。我站在那，不知该怎么办，捉还是不捉呢？不捉现在回去肯定会被妈一顿骂，因为王奶奶的孩子偶尔才会回来，而且这次回来是特地约我出来玩；捉吧，可是看着那泥鳅，我心里很不舒服。就在我纠结时，他忽然在身后轻轻一推，我就一不小心跳了进去。都跳进来了，不管了，捉就捉！于是我也跟着找了起来，一开始我不会，但后来不知不觉我渐渐上手，捉许多泥鳅，比他捉的还多呢！从此经过这次考验，我开始有了勇气。

成长的过程中，我们一定要有勇气，去勇敢的面对一切困难和阻碍，这样，我们才能收获成长的硕果！最终，通向成功的大门！

“ 运动会100米报名还差一个，谁愿意报?”我们班的体委在班里大声地喊了几遍。

“刚强。”我们班最调皮的同学喊道，同学们听到这个名字，都哈哈大笑了起来：“实在是太好笑了，他那个胆小鬼不行的，不要让他给我们班丢脸了”。

“刚强，名字取的还不错。谁给你取那么好的名字，要不你把名字送给我好了，这名字一点都不适合你。轮到你了，你不要再像上次那样躲到厕所里去了，还要当心挂彩哦!”另外一个同学取笑道。

我今天又听到这些同学所说的话，不知怎么回事，火冒三丈，“啪”，随着一声重音，我狠狠地拍了下桌子，大声喊道：“把我的名字写上”

教室里一下子静下来，体委看了我一会，最终还是把我的名字写了上去。

“现在，我郑重地宣布，运动会正式开始!”广播里传来了校长的声音。

我听到那声音，心里感到一阵紧张。

这时，有一位同学跑过来：“你怎么还在这里呀，广播里喊你名字都好几遍了”

我马上赶到起点处，看着我旁边的那些运动健儿，我觉得手心里都出汗了。

裁判员刚说预备，我就冲出了起跑线。

“停!”裁判员严肃地喊道，“我还没开枪呢，重来。”我听到裁判员的叫喊，紧张地脚直哆嗦。但是我想起同学们取笑我的样子，就气，我想：难道堂堂一个男子汉连参加100米赛跑都紧张吗?一定要争口气。

枪声响了，我鼓起勇气向前冲，耳边只有那呼啸着的风声，我带着愤怒冲向终点，其他的体育健儿们纷纷从我身边跑向前去，但我仍在赛道上坚持不懈地跑着。

临近终点时，我向我们班的同学，瞄了一眼，鼓起勇气向终点冲刺。

“我终于到了终点!我证明自己不是胆小鬼了!”我对自己说。虽然我是最后的一名，但我却觉得很了不起，因为我这次比赛不但是没有躲到厕所里去，而且还跑到了终点，我觉得我得了我最需要最渴望的勇气奖。

我要感谢让我报名参加100米赛跑的我们班最调皮的几个同学，是他们让我找到了勇气。

人只要有了勇气，就能胜利。

其实勇气有时比胜利更重要。

记得听过这样一个故事，选择有时要三思而行，而有时却要果断。

——题记

在南美洲的大草原上，生活着一群蚂蚁。一天蚂蚁的居住地周围忽然起火，蚂蚁被逼的节节败退，包围圈在不断缩小。蚂蚁似乎只能葬身火海而别无选择。但是就在这时，事情却出乎我们的意料。蚂蚁迅速聚拢成一团，黑色的蚁球冲进火海。外层的蚂蚁早已被熊熊烈火烧得啪啪作响。蚁球越滚越快，终于穿过火海，来到河边。大多数蚂蚁绝处逢生，而最底层的烈士却漂在河面上，它们永远爬不上来了!

听了这个故事，我在震惊之余，忽然悟出了不少真谛!合作可以使弱小的力量变的强大，而团结则可以让我们抵御难以克服的困难。宽容的心态、勇于牺牲的精神是一把锋利的剑，如果有了它们，我们一定可以在困难面前勇往直前，困难将永不能阻挡我们前进的步伐。如果我们能做到团结，合作，宽容与勇敢，那么我们又何愁不能实现我们拥抱蓝天，走向太阳的梦想，找不到自己前进的目标，飞翔的翅膀呢?

有时候，选择需要勇气……

如果你问我生活需要什么？

我会毫不犹豫地方告诉你：勇气。因为在我们的生活中，难免会遇到挫折，而在这个时候，就需要我们有勇气从跌倒的地方站起来，再去迎接挑战。

有一次，我们班数学考试，我只考了118分，排在班级30几名，我本已心灰意冷，可转念一想，在哪里跌倒，就从哪里站起来，一次的失败并不能说明什么。于是，我重拾信心，在上课的时候认真听讲，课后多做练习，功夫不负有心人，我终于考上了全班第一名，142分！让同学、老师对我刮目相看。这一切的一切，都归功于我有那在挫折前不低头的勇气。

如果你问我生活需要什么？

生活需要勇气，它是我们战胜困难的不二法宝！

树，折断枝条还能再生;草，烧了苗还能再长。悬崖上的树，不需要谁来施肥，也不需要谁来灌溉，也能茁壮生长着。一粒种子，可以掀翻压着它的石块，顽强地向上生长。

植物是那么珍惜生命，不放弃一点儿生存的机会，它们凭着坚强的勇气克服重重困难，努力地生长，尽管它们也许长得并不茂盛，但这种坚强的毅力和勇气不得不让我佩服。

我们人类也应该这样，遇到任何困难都要勇敢地面对，只要我们努力地去做，再大的挫折和困难我们都能战胜。可是在生活中，很多人一遇到困难就想逃避。今天，我在报纸上看到有一篇报道，有一个大学生，家里非常很穷，国家帮助他上了大学，但他在学校里，因受了一点小小的挫折就跳楼自杀了。他这样做既辜负了父母的期望，又辜负了国家对他的关心和培养。连一粒种子都能不屈不绕地向上的生长，推翻比自己重几百倍的石头和泥土，努力地向上生长，希望能看到新的希望。他怎么就那么懦弱地结束自己的生命呢?如果我是他的话，我就会像大自然的植物一样勇敢地去克服各种困难，好好地生存下来。不是有首歌这样唱吗?“不经历风雨，怎能见彩虹”在生活中，不管遇到什么困难和事情，我们都应该勇敢地去面对困难和克服困难，这样我们才有新的希望。

每当我看到那些在风雨中昂首挺胸的花草，我就会告诉自己要好好珍惜生命，要像它们一样有勇敢战胜困难，让生命之光充满着幸福和的希望。

竹子有勇气，它敢于与大自然抗争，当风吹来时，它弯弯腰，又挺起来了;花儿有勇气，它不仅在风和日丽的春天开放，还在冰天雪地中傲然怒放……每个事物地成长经历中都缺少不了勇气。 Bamboo has the courage to fight against nature. When the wind blows, it bent over and stands up again;The spring of wind and sun is open, and it is still proudly blooming in the ice and snow ... There is no lack of courage to grow in everything.

有一次，因为“十一长假”我的英语课调到了星期三晚上。虽然父亲以为这是不要紧的，而对于我来说是一次巨大的考验，因为晚自习的学习任务是最多的。前一天，我就为这件事烦的睡不着，可是这件事是一定要发生的，何必烦躁呢?我抱着好心态准备迎接“风吹浪打”。那一天和往常一样，一眨眼就过去了。晚上，我刚吃完晚餐就背着一大堆作业和英语书上课去了。

开始上课了，我又想起了回家作业，不禁变得无精打采。可我又对自己说：“在这，你不打起精神还是要补作业，为何不多学点知识呢?”我立刻打起精神来上课。一节课上完了，接下来是15分钟的休息时间，就马上迎接下一节课。我打开作业本立刻争分夺秒起来。时间一分一分地过去了，我从没这样与时间赛跑过。上课了，虽然没有把作业全部做完，可也完成了一大半。下一节课更为精彩，我完全忘了还有作业在身，老师还为我盖上了“EF”章。

回到家，当然少不了修整一番，可有个信念促使着我：“一定要把作业做完。”我顾不上吃水果喝果汁，立刻伏在案头写起来。夜深人静，大家都睡着了，唯独我一人还在写着作业，连笔和纸的摩擦声都听得一清二楚。当眼睛不由自主地要合上时，当哈欠连打时，我终于写完了。准备上床睡觉。这次调课是对我勇气的考验，如果我没有勇气，不可能抱着好心态去上课，更不能拿到老师的“EF”章，熬夜写作业就更不可能了。

勇气，是你做错事时，敢于承认;勇气，是你面临挫折时，敢于面对……我们要有勇气才能克服一切困难，解决一切问题，在人生路上更进一步。

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”.

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