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我需要勇气用英语怎么说(汇编20篇)

你们知道过年为什么要放鞭炮吗?这里可有一个有趣的神话故事呢! 。以下是小编给大家整理的民间传说作文的内容,欢迎大家查看。

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成长需要勇气

全文共 394 字

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树,砍断枝条还能再生;草,烧了还能再茂。悬崖上的一棵松树茁壮生长着,不需要谁来施肥,也不需要谁来灌溉。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,但这种毅力和勇气不得不让我佩服。

我们孩子也应该这样,遇到任何困难都要勇敢地面对,只要我们努力地去做,再大的挫折都不怕。可是在生活中,很多孩子一遇到困难就逃避。最近,泾县有一位高二男生,因他在辅导期间玩手机,受了一点批评与惩罚的挫折就跳楼自杀了。他这样做既辜负了父母的期望,又辜负了教师对他的负责关心。连一粒种子都能不屈向上,推翻比自己重几百倍的石头,向上生长,他怎么就那么懦弱,不热爱生命呢?如果我是他的话,我会勇敢地去面对学习与生活,克服困难。不是有句话说“不经历风雨,怎能见彩虹”吗?不管遇到什么事,我们都应该勇敢地去面对。

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篇1:我需要勇气

全文共 294 字

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忽然,就一瞬间。

心里面很难受。特别想就一直呆在家里头。做一个窝囊的没理想的人。自己其实也不是什么有理想人,就盼着过柴米油盐酱醋茶的平常日子。却发现,所有的平常生活都有平常人的不平常,每个人都为了生活努力的活着;就连那只狗,我家养着的那只狗,也都是一样的。反而我们这些学生,一点儿没真正尝到过什么酸甜苦辣的我们,没有接触过社会的世态炎凉、人情冷暖的我们,要求着高品质的生活,却不能完全可靠地去把握我们的人生。我们是那么的肤浅、不谙事理、不通世故。

生存。我站得不高,看得不远,我也不敢看得很远,每一次我只敢往前看半年的时间,好好走好每一个半年。

需要勇气。请给我勇气。

我需要信仰。请给我信仰。

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篇2:动物需要人类的保护英语作文

全文共 1809 字

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​导语:动物是自然资源,在整个历史过程中,人类一直在糟蹋着这种资源。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!

Animals are natural resources that people have wasted all through our history. Animals have been killed for their fur and feathers, for food, for sport, and simply because they were in the way. Thousands of kinds of animals have disappeared from the earth forever. Hundreds more are on the danger list today. About 170 kinds in the United States alone are considered in danger.

Why should people care? Because we need animals, and because once they are gone, there will never be any more.Animals are more than just beautiful or interesting. They are more than just a source of food. Every animal has its place in the balance of nature. Destroying one kind of animal can create many problems. For example, when farmers killed large numbers of hawks, the farmers stores of corn and grain were destroyed by rats and mice. Why? Because hawks eat rats and mice, with no hawks to keep down their numbers, the rats and mice multiplied quickly.

Luckily, some people are working to help save the animals. Some groups raise money to let people know about the problem. And they try to get the governments to pass laws protecting animals in danger. Quite a few countries have passed laws. These laws forbid the killing of any animal or planton the danger list. Slowly, the number of some animals in danger is growing.

【参考译文】

动物需要人类的保护

动物是自然资源,在整个历史过程中,人类一直在糟蹋着这种资源。人们杀死动物 ,获得它们的皮毛,把它们当作食物或运动方式,或者只是因为它们碍事。成千上万种动物 已经从这个地球上永远地消失了。现在另外上百种动物 也上了濒危动物 名单。仅荚国大概就有170种被认为处于危险当中。

为什么人们应该感到担忧呢?因为我们需要动物 ,因为它们一旦消失,就永远不会再出现。动物 不仅仅是漂亮或有趣。它们不仅仅是人类的食物来源。在维持自然平衡中,每种动物 都有其作用。毁灭某种动物 会导致许多问题。比如,农民们如果杀死为数众多的鹰,他们谷物和粮食的仓库就会受到老鼠和田鼠的破坏。 为什么?因为鹰吃鼠类,没有鹰控制它们的数量,鼠类就会迅速繁殖。

幸运的是,有些人正在努力帮助拯救这些动物 。有些组织筹钱以便人们了解这一问题。他们也努力使政府通过保护 濒危动物 的法律。很多国家已经通过了法律。这些法律禁止杀害濒危名单上的动植物。某些濒危动物 的数目正在慢慢地不断上升。

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篇3:勇气是什么英语

全文共 471 字

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Courage is very important.Everyone needs it.We will meet many difficulties in our life and sometimes we will fail,but we can’t lose courage.If we lose courage,we can’t do anything,because we don’t dare to do anything; we are afraid of failure.This is my Chinese teacher me in the first class.I agree with him.For example,we don’t have the courage to hands up to say our answer,how can we know we are right or wrong.I will remember his word forever,” never lose courage .”

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篇4:生活需要勇气作文800字记叙文

全文共 776 字

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随着社会的进步,科技技术的创新,人们一步一步走向新时代。也正因为社会前进的步伐越来越快,人们的压力也逐渐越大,生活是五彩缤纷,其中蕴含着拼搏的汗水,努力的奋斗和激情的热泪……

生活也是需要勇气的。

记得在一个阳光明媚,空气清新的早晨,我去补课班上课,在课间时,老师让我们玩了一次感受游戏,老师给解释了一下,就是体验一下盲人和残疾人的游戏。游戏规则就是:从讲台走到教室后方,再走到饮水机旁接满水,然后再到走到讲台上。就成功了。同学们跃跃欲试。

老师话音刚落,我们班炸开了锅,争先恐后地举起了手,老师把目光投向了我,我是一个胆小内向的人,不喜欢在人面前表现自己的动作,情绪,后来我想了想,要对自己生活有信心,我是最棒的我大胆的举起了手。老师把我叫到讲台上,对我加油打气。我信心百倍。

老师拿了一条红领巾,把我的眼睛给蒙上了。那一刻,全世界都是黑暗的,看不到一丁点儿的光,我在想那些残疾人该会有多痛苦哇,看不到光明,听不到声音……唉,他们多羡慕健康人的生活。

游戏开始啦,我摸着课桌慢慢的走,一会儿一个同学说往左,一会儿一个同学说往右我迷了方向,已经不分左右和东西南北啦,我在慌忙中碰着了头,但我没有哭泣,勇敢地站了起来,继续往前走,终于我坚持了下来,走到了教室的后方拍了一下黑板,然后摸索着我找饮水机的位置,可是前后左右都找了,就是找了到。我的一个小伙伴大声的喊道,就在西南方向,我摸索着朝西南方向找去,终于找到了饮水机,但是好景不长,我找不到杯子,一个同学帮我把杯子塞到我的手里,我去接水,水总要留出来,差点儿把杯子摔坏,我接满了水去往把将台的地方,但是半路水全都洒啦,我十分丢人。

我们补课班的同学感慨道,残疾人的生活真不容易,我们一定要好好学习,长大后尽自己最大的努力去帮助他们。

这件事让我终身难忘,这件事不仅让我体会到了生活需要勇气,还体验到了盲人的生活不易。

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篇5:我们需要勇气

全文共 670 字

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“别说你一无所有。因为,你至少还有勇气活下去。”这句话是着名科学家霍金说的。人总是需要勇敢面对某些人与事物。鼓起勇气法征服,往往迎刃而解。是的,我们的确需要勇气!

《这个世界差点没有奥x马》讲述的是一个真实的事件:炎炎夏日,奥x马的父亲带着一家人来酒吧消暑。在这片种族歧视还存在着的领土上,一位白人醉汉朝笑并辱骂奥x马一家为“野猪群”。在这种情况下,奥x马的父亲并没有与其产生争执,而是心平气和地与其讲起一番理来,这醉汉最后竟惭愧地拿出钱来向奥x马的父亲赔礼道歉……奥x马的父亲面对白人醉汉,面对种族歧视没有退缩,勇气使他克服了这一切困难。

“有心杀贼,无力回天,死得其所,快哉!快哉!”这一短语是戊戌六君子中谭嗣同临死前所吟诵的。从公车上书到百日维新最后到断头台!谭嗣同似乎不知道什么是死。当康有为梁启超在为“留得清山在,不怕没柴烧”逃往国外时,他却甘愿为这场变法抛头颅洒热血,甘愿做第一位为变法流血牺牲的人。面对强权压迫,面对死亡威胁谭嗣同从不低头。无所畏惧的他终将为这场变法而流芳百世,他那十分的勇气也终将成为他孤傲的精神品质!

湖北荆州长江大学,又一次成为人们谈论的焦点。“大学生救小学生,老人救大学生。”在这场救生命与死亡拼搏的过程中,长江大学大一的三位学生用自己花季般的生命挽回了两位小学生稚嫩的生命。当面对死亡的威胁,面对暗涌的恐惧时。是勇气使他们奋不顾身,是勇气使他们成为又一位英雄典范!

勇气是力量眼,是希望:也是动力的源泉:更是精神的支柱,生命的脊梁!当一种种勇气出现时,我们终将会明白一个道理!我们需要勇气!

[需要勇气作文五篇

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篇6:我们需要勇气

全文共 643 字

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我时常躺在草地上,看着微微西偏的太阳。想到我的一生似乎被某些东西在不知不觉中控制着。就好象这太阳,注定了东升西落,周而复始。

我喜欢平淡,但我不甘于平庸。我相信我的青春总有一天会燃烧起明亮的火焰,我在等待。

承认生活中的我并非一个强者。很多时候,我只会等待,却不知道自己去拼搏,去取得。我想:这可能是因为我太过于相信命运吧。亦或是我为了掩饰这种性格而选择相信命运的吧。我不知道……我就这样在糊里糊涂,不明不白中成长。

“爱情需要勇气,来抵抗流言蜚语……“但我没有。在这个世界,过早的喜欢上有个人似乎是一种错误,一种痛苦。对于没有勇气的我们来说,它注定是一场悲剧。

我经常独自一个人跑到我们曾经一起快乐过的地方,轻轻地散步,轻轻地感受那些遗留下来的气息。想着昔日的快乐,不知不觉间我已泪流满面。世事依旧,人世而非,佳人何处,流星难寻。我的心在泣血。

也许,我这辈子注定了忧郁。我是一个矛盾的人,时常因为某些原因做出一些莫名其妙的行为。尔后,就为这些行为造成的后果感到彻底的悔恨。尽管它们并不是很糟糕。但它们让我陷于痛苦与无助之中。我是一个长不大的孩子,很多事情,我还不知道怎么去处理。就好象,朋友送我一个青涩的苹果,我该怎么办这样的问题,我往往需要整个青春去思考。吃掉亦或是扔掉?我总是犹豫不决。吃掉往往会肚子疼,扔掉则会心痛。我害怕自己会后悔,于是在无法抉择中深尝痛苦的滋味。

很多事情,习惯了就好了。太阳已忍受的烈焰周而复始了五千多万年。那么,就让我忍受着我的痛苦,演绎完我平淡但不平庸的一生吧。

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篇7:生活需要勇气

全文共 527 字

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生活需要勇气.

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!

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篇8:成长需要勇气

全文共 669 字

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“一生有一种大海的气魄,岁月一”将它无情地翻过,把乾坤藏在我心中的一刻就注定我比大男儿本色。

这首歌词是歌颂请圣祖爱新觉罗·玄烨的一生伟大功绩。也就是康熙帝他六岁登基十六岁亲政!亲政之后,便除敖拜平准噶尔,收复台湾创造了伟大的政绩史称千古一帝,如果没有长时间的磨励,他也不会有坚强的毅力和勇气

勇气这个词大家一定不会陌生在成长的过程中这是一个人不可缺少的东、西代表着坚强,代表着勇于挑战的精神,有勇气并不代表出风头,并不代表在大庭广众之下有勇气去哗尔现实

想这些对勇气的理向都是错误的,只有敢于面对困难,挑战困难战胜困难才是勇气。

我们成长中的青少年在学校的不也是一样吗?你面对一道道数学难题,几何证明题你不会的话你可能会放弃如果一个人他有一股勇气,一股毅力那么他就会做下去,爱因斯坦曾说过:“一个只有一个理想而勇于去实现的人比一个有一个个理想而不去实现的人要好得多。”同样也是这个道理就拿“神六飞船”来说科学家的遇到一个个困难一个个险阻他们并没有放弃他们打起精神鼓起勇气凭着惊人的毅力战胜了下去,就谈“俊龙英雄海胜好汉来说他们在地下练空中工作面对的困难有些是常人难以想困难他们不也凭着自己的那股勇气战胜了困难吗?”

其实不是现在的人才勇气,很久以前的原始人,不也有种勇气吗?如果没有一个人脚着地走路那么现在会怎么样呢,当人们过着茹毛血的生活有一个原始人走着勇气去吃一口熟食会怎样呢?

勇气这个词有的人一生都在寻寻觅觅,而有的人生来就惧有的。

亲爱的朋友们与我有着共同语言的朋友们请你们要牢记这一点,爱拼才会赢,只要你有勇气那为何不去拼一拼闯一闯呢。

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篇9:成功需要勇气

全文共 615 字

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我漫步在春天的小道上,春色盎然、清香袅袅,不时传来几声悦耳的歌声,这歌声是那般动听,那般婉转。所有景象都在歌颂着春天。

但是,还没等我细细品味,眼前这片美景却充满了另一种气息。不知什么时候,花一般的美景竟然被一只恶狗给彻底破坏了,真晦气。

这条狗膘肥体壮,那双凶神恶煞般的眼睛足以让我心惊肉跳、忐忑不安。我不由自主地退后了几步。它龇牙咧嘴,露出了尖硬的牙齿,随时可能攻击我。那狗的影子,比世界上所有的东西都要可怕。令我毛骨悚然。我不敢靠近它,它也不敢靠近我,我们就这样一直僵持着。它越来越凶恶,越来越可怕。我又退后了一步,它又前进了一步。之后,不管我退后几步,它就前进几步。我越害怕,它也就越凶。僵持了半个小时以后,我受不了了,我觉得时间就让你这样的白白浪费了,真可惜。于是,我弯下腰,捡了几颗石子攻击它,它不再那么凶猛了,马上退缩了几步,我连续攻击它。它被砸伤了,终于夹着尾巴逃走了。我的脑海里立刻浮现出一个概念:“只要有勇气,就可以克服一切困难,一切挫折,最后把你引向成功之路。”

我用这种信念克服了很多困难,不再那么胆怯和害怕。在学习上,我敢于面对一切挫折;在生活中,我敢于面对危险或是困难。不曾有退缩、放弃的念头。不经历风吹雨打,怎么能见彩虹?这使我更自信了。也让我体验到无数次成功的喜悦。

美丽的春姑娘又回来了,我继续漫步着,继续细细地享受着这份暖暖的春意。只不过,现在却多了一份自信,一种心情,一种境界。眼前的美景真令人陶醉!

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篇10:英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

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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

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篇11:人生需要勇气作文

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人生需要很多东西,有自信,毅力,坚强,友谊……但我认为,人生最需要勇气

20**年,全国举办“新蕾杯”获奖征文大赛。平时自以为作文写的不错的我十分想参加,可是如果螺旋就会遭同学嘲笑,参加?还是不参加?我的心中好像有一杆秤,一头称着我在同学之间的面子,一头称着我对获奖的期盼。

回到家后,我问爸爸:全国举办“新蕾杯”获奖征文大赛,我到底参不参加?”“孩子,爸爸相信你有勇气自己去决定一切。”我低着头走进房间,在床上辗转反侧,睡不着。

无奈,我穿上衣服来到院子中,看见一只小狗嘴中叼着一块肉,正慢悠悠地往前走。这是,前方出现了一只大狗,它那双铜铃般打的眼睛盯着小狗嘴中的肉,对着它咬牙切齿。大狗一步一步地逼近,小狗突然双眼一瞪,向大狗扑了过去,我吓得闭上了眼睛。良久,我睁开了眼睛,见大狗已经倒在地上,而小狗叼其那块肉,慢悠悠地走了。

猛然间,我想起了什么,向那两狗相争的地方望去,小狗已经走远了,没有看到它高兴的身影,却又听到了它的叫声,这是它胜利的凯歌。

第二天,我鼓足勇气,把作文寄了过去。无论结果如何,走自己的路,让别人说去吧!

一个人的生命是有限的,在有限的生命中,机会无处不在,如果能好好把握住机会,那么一个人将体现出她本身的价值。机会无处不在,如果你有勇气去把握,你就会获得成功。

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篇12:约会青春,需要勇气初中生精选作文

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儿时的天真而又无知。

如果说人生是五彩缤纷的那么青春必是其中最绚丽的一抹,如果说人生是动静交融的那么青春必是其中活力四射的一份。

每个人都拥有青春,青春很漫长,也很短暂,人生长河中,青春是一个分界线,如果没有掌握好,那么逆流将会把你冲进无底深渊。所以,要把掌握好和青春的约会,迎着逆流,勇往直前。

约会青春,需要勇气,约会青春,需要耐心。

当年,楚霸王项羽,青春的分界线前,毅然练武,走上了反秦的道路。年轻气盛,勇往直前,终于打败暴秦。感到这世界不能没有你

世界需要你青春,虽然你让许多人坠落深渊,但也有许多人战胜了使他成为一代豪杰。

错过的就不会再回来,时光不会倒流,和青春的约会只有一次,过去了就没有了青春年少时的热血,正如《老男孩》里唱的青春如同奔腾的江河,一去不回来不及告别,只留下麻木的没有了当年的热血。看那满天的飘落的花朵,最美丽的时候凋谢,有谁会记得,这世界他来过…

和青春有个约会。约会青春,人生的鸿沟前,不再犹豫,约会青春,正和学习拼杀,虽没有刀光剑影,但也寒气逼人,青春的感染下,不在迟疑,而是跃马挺刀,冲杀在习题中间,场场胜利,经常进步。

和青春有个约会。掌握好这一次约会。青春的指南针就会深深烙在心上,给迷路的指明了前进的方向。

青春,缄默让人冷静,低调让人佩服,这高调的世界里需要你来降温。

都说,和你约会是胜利的觉得呢?

记得3月8号妇女节那天,像往常一样上完晚自习回到家,家里静悄悄的轻轻的推开门,只看见妈妈不知什么时候已靠在沙发上睡着了寂静中,望着妈妈那熟悉而又略显苍老的脸,一条条皱纹在额头和眼角清晰可见,一根根青丝显得那么醒目。忽然觉得妈妈老了如今,十六岁了没有了贪玩的念头,没有了撒娇的毛病,更没有了耍酷的兴趣,因为,十六岁,多了一分成熟。

回想起过去那个不懂事的那个总让老妈操碎心的眼睛湿润了太幼!稚,太无知了

妈妈为了每天含辛茹苦,可我却不懂妈妈的心,甚至还和妈妈顶嘴。好想大声说:妈妈,对不起!初春的夜里仍让人感到寒意阵阵,迅速的跑到屋里拿了一条毯子盖在妈妈的身上。

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篇13:成长我最需要勇气

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留不住岁月的脚步,留不住儿时的童真,我跟着似水流年的岁月慢慢长大。一路收获,一路成长……

还记得小时候跌倒的情景吗?

那天风和日丽,我在家门口玩耍,突然不小心摔了一跤,磕破了膝盖。妈妈闻讯赶来,左看右看没有找到可以打骂的东西。妈妈说:“坏风儿,坏风儿害得宝贝摔跟头”我扑哧一声笑了,“妈妈,今天没有风。是我自己不小心摔倒的。”妈妈抬头看看天,是呀,天气闷热的连丝风都没有。妈妈没有说什么,她只是抚摸着我的头笑了。我忍受着疼痛,鼓起勇气站起来。

成长,需要勇气。跌倒了要有勇气站起来,犯错误了要有勇于承担错误的勇气。

转眼间,我快小学毕业了。在人生前行的路上,我们或许迷茫,不知所措。被一个个岔路口所迷惑,那将是对我们的考验。选择一条荆棘丛生崎岖不平的小路,还是选择一条通往光明之路的康庄大道?有勇气去选择,就要有勇气服输。不过没有彻底的失败,也没有完全的成功。一切还是需要一种坚持与坚强。我们还是要经过无数的黎明,无数的黑暗。但黎明之后是光明,黑暗之后是光明。

成长,需要勇气。面对挫折一笑而过,“一切都是瞬息,一切都将过去;而那过去了的,就会成为亲切的怀恋”

成长的路上,充满挑战,充满刺激与惊险。你是否能化险为夷?前方的路是未知的,或许黑暗,但我们不要为之放弃,有勇气把握自己的人生,有勇气挑战自己。

成长,需要勇气。磕磕绊绊的经历会让我们的阅历更加丰富精彩。

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篇14:爱需要勇气的作文800字

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从小我就在父母的呵护下成长,没有经历过风吹雨打,从小我都泡在蜜罐里,对外面的风风雨雨毫无知晓,他们让我在纯净中成长,对我更是万般的呵护。

我曾听说过这样的一个故事:一对夫妇是登山运动员,为了庆祝他们儿子一周岁的生日,他们决定背着儿子登上七千米的雪山。当夫妇俩很轻松地登上了五千米的高度时,猛然温度迅速下降,他们困在了雪山里,孩子被冻得嘴唇发紫,最主要的是他要吃奶,不然孩子就会死去,妻子给儿子喂奶却被丈夫制止,在妻子的哀求下她给孩子喂了一次奶,同时妻子的体温也迅速下降。时间在一分一秒地流逝,孩子需要一次又一次的喂奶,母亲的体温在一次又一次地下降,3天后这位伟大的母亲已冻成了一尊雕塑,可她依然保持着喂奶的姿势屹立不倒。一个平凡的姿势只要倾注了生命的爱便可以伟大并且抵达永恒。

我的父母虽然没有这位母亲这么伟大,但我能感觉到他们对我无私的爱。

从小不懂事的我就特别爱发父母亲的脾气,直到暑假我离开家……

可以说我在外面的每时每刻父母亲的心就在我的身上,他们害怕从未离开过家的我在外吃不好睡不好,在我打电话回家的时候,父亲劝我回家,可是倔强的我就是不肯回家,在我忍不住想家的时候,我竟然哭起来了。一个人在人生地不熟的地方,我终于收起我倔强的脾气给家里打了电话,父亲听见我在哭,当场也陪着我哭了起来还叫我回家。我当时能想像得到父亲那张布满泪痕的脸,我被父亲的哭声打动了,此时我的倔强也早已一文不值了,我也怀着愧疚的心情回家了。

我很后悔我当时那么倔强,很后悔我不肯回家,让父亲为我担心,为我流泪。我明白父亲是爱我的,我同时也明白我不能没有我的父亲,我是爱我的父亲的,只是我缺少了一种爱父亲的勇气。如果爱需要一种勇气,今后我会勇往直前。

[爱需要勇气的作文800字

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篇15:生命需要勇气

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生活如果没有了尝试就等于没有自信,只有鼓起勇气,什么事都可以解决,如果你不懂得尝试,就什么都得不到了。

虽然我胆子小,但是那几件事让我鼓起勇气懂得自信。

在一节语文课,我们语文老师曹老师还有声有色的讲述着一篇课文,大家也聚精会神地听着老师讲课,忽然老师问了一个非常简单的问题,一只只小手都举起来,像一片小森林,可单单我没有举手,就像森林里缺少了一颗大树似的,可老师偏偏叫了我的名字,我害羞地满脸通红好似一个大苹果似地微微站起,鼓起勇气,回答了这个问题,这一刻我觉得其实回答问题并没有我想象那么困难。于是我决定,一定要鼓起勇气面对现实,接下来的几个问题我又一一举手回答,还得到了老师的赞扬,这让我心中充满了自信。

四年级的风才展要开始了。才一班开始马上就轮到我们四班演了,我一天比一天心跳跳得快,更何况这个可比回答问题难多了,老师还特意给女生排了个节目—跳舞。我快崩溃了,我的脑子里沉现出各种各样的问题,我会不会跳错舞,会不会在中途摔跤……这些问题都令我烦恼。可是我不可能不演啊。我只能在家里慢慢排舞,到了表演那一天,我更紧张了,紧张地手脚都在发软了,其他同学也不例外,老师还不停地安慰我们,要鼓起勇气,不要被害怕制服,老师说得对,要为自信加油!我鼓起勇气和同学一起到操场上去,然后又从广播里传来一声:“有请四(4)班带来的表演,请各班按次序到操场上来观看。”第一个节目竟然是我们女生表演的舞蹈,我在紧张中带着勇气,自信随着我一起上台去。

在台上我想起一句话:把台下的观众当成浮云。在台上我很好的表现了自己,这次风才展算比较成功,老师又再次表演大家。

从我发生过的小时让我明白了:做任何事都要记住勇气,勇气带给我们自信。

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篇16:作文成长需要勇气450字

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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。

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篇17:生活需要勇气的作文

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生活需要勇气。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!

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篇18:生活中需要勇气的六年级

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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。

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篇19:关于生活需要勇气的

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在你心里,你是怎样定义“勇气”的?或许,你心里是有答案的吧!在我心里,我是这样认为的:勇于冒险,敢于进取,勇往直前。我有个小小的故事,关于勇气的故事,要和你分享。

六年级,因为我的数学成绩一直上不去;所以,被我亲爱的老爸大人扔到了补习班去.悲催啊!接下来的每个周六,每一个美好的清晨好梦,都被老爸无情的叫喊声打碎了。然后,你会看见,一个脸上挂满不情愿的少女,被他家老爸拽去补习班;然后甩甩手,扬长而去.爸啊!

接下来的两个小时里,乖乖做题,等老师评奖完,再等到老爸的电话,就以百米冲刺的速度离开这。给老师留下一句再见和潇洒的背影,老师错愕的眼神在我眼前掠过.管他呢。回家吃饭才是王道!

某天,第一次早早的起床等着老爸送我去补习班;谁知道,我这亲爱的老爸大人居然跟我说:“我今天早上没空,所以,我跟老师说了,今晚再去。上午你爱干嘛干嘛去。我走了哈!”就这么走了?!我张张嘴,过了好一会再回过神来。好吧!嗯.今天天气还是很好的,出去走走啦!不知不觉就到了晚上了,天还不怎么黑,到了的时候,老爸嘱咐了我一句:“等我电话啊,别一个人乱跑。下课了我来接你。”我点点头。下课了,老师说我爸在楼下等着呢,让我赶紧下楼。跟老师说了再见之后就慢慢的下楼了。好黑呀!我不禁打了个冷战。转头看了看身后,妈呀,怎么这么黑呀!还要不要往下走呢?我纠结着。

我突然联想到了那些恐怖电影中的场景,然后看着这条楼梯,越发觉得这里阴森恐怖了。感觉腿好软啊!还是走吧!我一步一回头的往楼下走去,不停的咽口水;突然,楼梯的声控灯突然熄灭了,身旁人家半掩的门又把我吓了一跳;我尖叫了一声,灯又亮了。吓死我了!其实也没那么恐怖的吧!况且电影里的场景都是假的啊!我这样想着,渐渐的也不怎么害怕了。爸爸还在楼下等着我呢;想到这,我鼓足勇气,不禁加快了脚步。走完楼梯,眼前是一片空旷的花园,好恐怖;怎么以前看不出来啊!我的脚步又慢了下来,可是一想到老爸,于是硬着头皮,咬咬牙,向楼下冲去。终于看见眼前这条明亮的街道,还有前面那辆亮着灯光的车;我赶紧冲过去拉开车门跳上去。呼!没事了!我冲老爸笑笑,突然感觉自己也是很勇敢的。

这就是我的小小故事。经历了这件事,我又对“勇气”有了新的定义:在面对选择的时候,可以想想那些对自己至关重要的人,这样可以倍增勇气。因为是他们给了你信念,给了你勇气。

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篇20:生活需要勇气作文

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生活需要勇气》生活需要勇气 走在每个路的角,与你擦肩而过的人是低头叹气,还是昂头飞奔。在人海中,今日受挫折明日振作后成功的人你认识几个?受到打击不敢再次抬头的人你又认识几个?这些人为什么而成功又为什么惨遭失败?对了,就是2个字:勇气一直支柱在雨天后织网,由于墙面湿滑空气潮湿而一次又一次掉下来。

可它还是要一次又一次地尝试,直至成功为止,这仰仗的是什么?是勇气,一种不被逆境所打倒的勇气带领着它在挫折面前奋勇前进。一个成功的商人,背后都有许许多多的血泪史,而他们为什么没有屈服呢?这是一种勇气在支撑着他们向一切希望的光芒靠近并利用这一光芒让自己得到成功,勇气是通往幸福的康庄大道上的路标,没有它是找不到沙漠里的绿洲的。就拿盲人来说吧。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著名的女作家。

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。

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