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初中英语说明文写作模板【汇集20篇】

导语:友谊是一支歌,唱出了我们的欢乐与留恋,我们会将友谊定格在我们心中,小编收集定格友谊的作文,欢迎阅读。

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描写风景的初中英语

全文共 779 字

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SNOW At dusk,the weather became colder while the sky was gray,and the cold wind was blowing strongly.It seemed that it was going to snow soon. A moment later,the snowflakes began to fall quietly.Soon the land before my eyes was all white,like a beautiful blanket.Then it snowed more and more heavily.The trees were all covered with white quilts.The whole city became a silver world. T

he next morning,it stopped snowing and cleared up.I went into the yard.Looking far away,I saw a beautiful silver white world.A group of children were playing happily.Some were throwing snowballs to each other,others were making a snowman.Snow seemed to bring us warm and wishes.Cold as it was,nobaby felt cold in the white world.

I love snow,because it is pure white.It brings us hope and vigour.

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篇1:校园英语作文初中

全文共 1242 字

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The protection of the border is not a new problem for us, and our

government has long proposed clear targets for governance. As every ordinary

person in real life, although it is impossible to work directly in environmental

protection, we can start from small things and start from me. Can you raise your

hand when you see the tap in the bathroom? When the battery runs out, can you

classify it instead of throwing it away? How about when shopping doesnt use

ultra-thin plastic bags? ...... Small things are small, but they reflect how

much environmental awareness we have.

Recycling one ton of waste paper can regenerate 800 kg of paper, can save

17 tree. 20 waste recycling boxes can create a beautiful pen container.

Recycling one glass bottle to save the energy, can make the bulb light for four

hours. Recycling one aluminum can is to save the half oil cans. So we should

place the garbage classification, reproduction by the relevant department after

recycling reuse!

As long as we start from oneself, starts from the minor matter, everybody

joint efforts, perseverance, we will be for the society, also a piece of clear

water, blue sky for yourself, I hope everybody can voluntarily protect the

environment, to make our environment more beautiful life.

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篇2:关于生活英语作文初中

全文共 599 字

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Before I entered the middle school, I felt so worried about the life in

middle school, because my cousin told me that I would have to compete with so

many excellent students. Now I get used to the life, I learn many subjects from

Monday to Friday. Though I always meet the difficulties in learning the new

knowledge, I get help from my teachers and classmates. I am not afraid of the

middle school life again, I am so excited to learn new things every day. In the

future days, I will meet many challenges, I believe I can get over them. Life in

middle school has happiness and sorrow, they fulfill my life.

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篇3:初中英语作文大全

全文共 473 字

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Last March, my mother told my father and me that my grandfather would come

in April. We were very happy because my grandfather was an interesting old man

and he had not visited us since he went to Hong Kong.

On April 1 my father and I bought a lot of food from the supermarket and

bought a big bunch of flowers home. Then we did some cleaning at home. At night

when we were waiting for my grandfather, the bell rang and in came my mother.

She smiled to us and said "April fools"!

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篇4:初中英语作文Myholiday

全文共 988 字

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Oh! it was winter holiday. i was very happy. i read my favourite books. i have many wonderful books. but i could not read these books too much. i also had a lot of homework to do. i like playing computer games, too. it’s very interesting. but i could not play it too much. i wear glasses, i’m very sad. it’s not good for my eyes to play computer games too much.

Oh! it was the spring festival. it’s chinese traditional festival. people were very happy. they went shopping, cleaned their houses, had supper together……i went to my grandparents’ home with my parents. my grandparents were very happy to see us. they prepared many kinds of nice food, such as fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. in the evening, we watched tv and lighted fireworks. we also knocked on people’s doors and gave some presents to them. after the spring festival, we went to shanghai to go shopping. we bought clothes, shoes and some delicious food.

I had a good holiday, i think. i also have very nice school life now.

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篇5:关于故宫的英语作文初中

全文共 686 字

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The Palace Museum is located on city center in Peking.China is existing

biggest, most integrity of thou building cluster.It is been one of five greatest

temples in the world by the fame.

The Palace Museum start to set up in A.D.1406, the Palace Museum have the

size courtyard more than 90s and the house contain 980 and add up to 8704.the

Palace Museum surroundings surround 12 meters in height, long the Palace Museum

wall of 3400 meters, form is one rectangular city defense, there is 52 meter

wide moat outside the wall surround, formation a fortress of severe barracks.The

Palace Museum has 4 doors, center door Wu door, east door Donghua door, west

door Xihua door, north door Shengwu door.

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篇6:英语写作小技巧

全文共 2401 字

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一、代入法

这是进行英语写作时最常用的方法。同学们在掌握一定的词汇和短语之后,结合一定的语法知识,按照句子的结构特点,直接用英语代人相应的句式即可。如:

1. 他从不承认自己的失败。

He never admits his failure.

2. 那项比赛吸引了大批观众。

The match attracted a large crowd.

3. 他把蛋糕分成4块。

He divided the cake into four pieces.

二、还原法

即把疑问句、强调句、倒装句等还原成基本结构。这是避免写错句子的一种有效的办法。如:

1. 这是开往格拉斯哥的火车吗?

Is this the train for Glasgow?

还原为陈述句:This is the train for Glasgow.

2. 他是因为爱我的钱才同我结了婚。

It was because he loved my money that he married me.

还原为非强调句:Because he loved my money, he married me.

3. 光速很快,我们几乎没法想像它的速度。

So fast does light travel that we can hardly imagine its speed.

还原为正常语序:Light travels so fast that we can hardly imagine its speed.

三、分解法

把一个句子分成两个或两个以上的句子。这样既能把意思表达得更明了,又能减少写错句子的几率。如:

1. 我们要干就要干好。

If we do a thing, we should do it well.

2. 从各地来的学生中有许多是北方人。

There are students here from all over the country. Many of them are from the North.

四、合并法

就是把两个或两个以上的简单句用一个复合句或较复杂的简单句表达出来。这种方法最能体现学生的英语表达能力,同时也最能提高文章的可读性。如:

1. 我们迷路了,这使我们的旅行变成了一次冒险。

Our trip turned into an adventure when we got lost.

2. 天气转晴了,这是我们没有想到的。

The weather turned out to be very good, which was more than we could expect.

3. 狼是高度群体化的动物,它们的成功依赖于合作。

Wolves are highly social animals whose success depends upon their cooperation.

五、删减法

就是在写英语句子时,把相应汉语句子里的某些词、短语或重复的成分删掉或省略。如:

1. 这部打字机真是价廉物美。

This typewriter is very cheap and fine indeed.

注:汉语表达中的“价”和“物”在英语中均无需译出。

2. 个子不高不是人生中的严重缺陷。

Not being tall is not a serious disadvantage in life.

注:汉语说“个子不高”,其实就是“不高”。也就是说,其中的“个子”在英语中无需译出。

六、移位法

由于英语和汉语在表达习惯上存在差异,根据表达的需要,某些成分需要前置或后移。如:

1. 他发现赚点外快很容易。

He found it easy to earn extra money.

注:it在此为形式宾语,真正的宾语是句末的不定式to earn extra money。

2. 告诉我这事的人不肯告诉我他的名字。

The man who told me this refused to tell me his name.

注:who told me this为修饰the man的定语从句,应置于其后。

3. 直到我遇到你以后,我才真正体会到幸福。

It was not until I met you that I knew real happiness.

注:not...until...为英语中的固定句式,其意为“直到……才……”。

七、分析法

指根据要表示的汉语意思,通过进行语法分析和句式判断,然后写出准确地道的英语句子。如:

1. 从这个角度看,问题并不像人们一般料想的那样严重。

Seen in this light, the matter is not as serious as people generally suppose.

注:分词短语作状语时,其逻辑主语应与句子主语一致,由于the matter与see之间为被动关系,故see要用过去分词seen。

2. 我没有见过他,所以说不出他的模样。

Not having met him, I cannot tell you what he is like.

注:如果分词的动作发生在谓语动作之前,且与逻辑主语是主动关系,则用现在分词的完成式。

八、意译法

有的同学在写句子时,一遇见生词或不熟悉的表达,就以为是“山穷水尽”了。其实,此时我们可以设法绕开难点,在保持原意的基础上,用不同的表达方式写出来。如:

1. 汤姆一直在扰乱别的孩子,我就把他撵了出去。

Tom was upsetting the other children, so I showed him the door.

2. 有志者事竟成。

Where there is a will, there is a way.

3. 你可以同我们一起去或是呆在家中,悉听尊便。

You can go with us or stay at home, whichever you choose.

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篇7:初中英语作文大全

全文共 455 字

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It is well known that exercise is important. In our school, we have to do an hours exercise every day. Many students are very happy. In the one hour, some of us play basketball, football and ping pong, and some run around the playground. Everyone is talking and laughing. I love this activity very much. I also hope that there will be more and more sunlight sports in our life after school. That not only makes us happy, but also makes our body healthier.

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篇8:我的梦想英语作文初中

全文共 1255 字

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Unlike Martin Luther King’s, my dreams are fair and plain, and there are

many of them. I have a dream from the first time I sit in a car—I want to

drive.

Driving is like running without foot, racing without strength. It’s the

most meaningful way to meet human being’s desire of “faster”. When driving, I

have to put all my spirit to. Operating a car at ease will cost years of

experience.

Driving will take me to my wanting destination, no matter it rains or snows

or winds. I never am afraid of shoes wet, umbrella broken or ears frozen. A car

is rather like a moving house, which protects me completely and helps me rush

directly to the aim hanging ahead. That suits my nature perfectly: love to take

risks conservatively. A smooth ride in a good car is an enjoyable satisfaction.

Seeing rows of trees moving backward rapidly, a feeling of stepping forward will

fill fully in my mind. With music hovering, breeze blowing, my soul flies in the

air.

I was always sick when took a ride of a car, especially when I was young.

Father told me that a driver would never have carsick. That may be one of the

important reasons for me to desire driving.

This summer I am going to learn driving and get my car license. The dream

with all my heart will follow the promise it had made.

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篇9:生活初中英语

全文共 1132 字

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1995 I went into taizhou junior middle school.Totally we had 7 classes,I

was in class 4.The head-teacher of the class was a middle age woman.she was so

strict with us.for example, i was catched when i ate a big rabbit sugar during

class time,she asked me to buy that bland sugar one peice for everyone.in my

opinion ,she hated everyting except study,everyweekend ,she asked us to study in

school,sunday afternoon was just the free time for us.when she saw we played

football,she must get the ball back to her office.someone who was to be in love

was found by her,he would be punished just like a shit.luckyly,i was not found

by her.i liked the girl who was my Elementary school schoolmate during my junior

middle school.i didnt know she konwed or not.it ended when we graduated.but i

liked to talk with others during class time,everytime i was found by her,she

asked me to write 3000 words to explain why and how to do in future. nowadyas

every time i remeber what happened in my junior middle school,i deeply appreciat

her kindness.she is real a good teacher.

My junior middle school time has pasted ,but it will influece till the end

of my life.

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篇10:初中英语作文:我的未来

全文共 737 字

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I think I will be a teacher in the future,because I like to stay with children.

、Ill live in shanghai because I went toshanghai last summer and fell in love with it. I think its really a beautiful city.As a teacher, I’ll try my best to teach my students well and tell them how tobe a useful person.

In my free time, I’ll listen to music, pop songs and goshopping with my friends, Sometimes Ill keep pets-maybe a colorful bird. Itmakes me happy. During the summer holiday, I’ll go to Italy on vacation.

I hearthat its a great place to have fun.

我觉得将来我会成为一名教师,因为我喜欢和孩子们待在一起。我会住在上海,因为我去年夏天去上海的时候就爱上了它。我真的觉得那是一个美丽的城市。作为一名老师,我会尽力教好我的学生并告诉他们如何做一个有用的人。在我的空闲时间,我会听音乐,流行歌曲,和我的朋友去购物,有时候我会养宠物,也许会是一只色彩鲜艳的鸟。它能让我开心。暑假的时候我会去意大利度假。我听说那里是去玩的好地方。

[初中英语作文:我的未来

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篇11:生活初中英语

全文共 718 字

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I have studied in my middle school for three years.My life in middle school

is rich and I have learned a lot. I get knowledge from text books as well as

from extra curricular activities. I studied hard in the past three years so that

I got perfect scores. But, I also attach importance to other aspects, such as

making friends, hobbies, health and sports. I build good relationships with my

classmates. They become an important part of my life.I like to chat with them

after class that makes me relax and comfortable. My hobby is swimming. Every

Sunday morning, I go to swim with my friends or my father. When I have fun, I

build a healthy body. Its so great to me. In one word, my life in middle is

colorful and unforgettable.

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篇12:校园英语作文初中

全文共 1038 字

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My name is Beth. Im 14 years old, and I study in No. 1 Middle School of

Hangzhou. My school is very big and beautiful. Im very happy in the school.

I usually get up at 6:15 in the morning. Then I do morning exercises in the

playground. At 6:40, I have my breakfast. You can see many students and teachers

in the dinning room. After breakfast, I often read English with my

classmates.

We have six classes every day. The first class begins at 7:50 am. I like

all the classes for my teachers can make the classes lively and interesting. My

favorite subject is English, so I join English Corner every week. I can speak

English with many other students there. Its very interesting and exciting. I

think its helpful for me to learn English well. After class, I always play

games with my friends. We play soccer ball,basketball, volleyball, ping-pong and

so on. They are very relaxing.

I like my lessons, my friends and my teachers. In a word, I love my school.

I find my school life more and more meaningful and colorful. My school life is

wonderful, isnt it?

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篇13:初中英语作文:我爱学习英语

全文共 1521 字

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Dear teacher and classmates:

I am very glad to make a speech here in this class again! This time, Id like to talk something about English.

I love English. English language is now used everywhere in the world. It has become the most common language on Internet and for international trade. Learning English makes me confident and brings me great pleasure.

When I was seven, my mother sent me to an English school. At there, I played games and sang English songs with other children . Then I discovered the beauty of the language, and began my colorful dream in the English world.

Everyday, I read English following the tapes. Sometimes, I watch English cartoons.

On the weekend, I often go to the English corner. By talking with different people there, I have made more and more friends as well as improved my oral English.

I hope I can travel around the world someday. I want to go to America to visit Washington Monument, because the president Washington is my idol. Of course, I want to go to London too, because England is where English language developed. If I can ride my bike in Cambridge university, I will be very happy.

I hope I can speak English with everyone in the world. Ill introduce China to them, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Anshan.

I know, Rome was not built in a day. I believe that after continuous hard study, one day I can speak English very well.

If you want to be loved, you should learn to love and be lovable. So I believe as I love English everyday , it will love me too.

[初中英语作文:我爱学习英语

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篇14:怀念的英语作文初中

全文共 1225 字

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The news that Mr Cai had passed away was known, and I fell into great

sorrow. The sound of the rain knocking on the window was so mournful that it

deepened my distress.

My memory brought me back to the class when I saw him for the last

time.

That evening it was raining, too. We started our lesson as usual at a

quarter past six. I sat in the first row, and I saw Mr Cai press his stomach

with a hand from time to time, but I didn’t know the reason then. The two hours

passed quickly. When the lesson came to an end,Mr Cai told us that he had

possibly developed a stomach cancer, and would go to Beijing to see a doctor. If

there was nothing serious, he would continue to teach us after he came back. He

was very calm and his voice was steady. He still gave us some homework. He said

that he would mark the papers as soon as he came back.

Then I started to wait for his return. I had not thought that I would not

see him any more. The cancer had taken his life, even though he was still

young.

Mr Cai’s words are still ringing in my ears,“I hope you will be one of the

best students.” I think I should work hard at English and live up to his

expectation .

I have lost a good teacher. Tears will dry up in time, but the memory will

stay for ever.

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篇15:初中英语作文:我的入学考试

全文共 944 字

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My Entrance Examination

For going on with my further studies, I took the entrance examination in a Senior Middle School last week。 I still remember there were more than three hundred candidates taking part in this examination。 For the first day, in the morning, Chinese was easy。 We were required to write a composition of 250 words on "My Home Life", and give definitions and illustrations to twenty phrases。 In the afterno on, we took an English examination。 There were dictation, sentence formation, and analysis for oral English。 In the oral examination, I was questioned about my home life, my experience in the junior middle school and my future prospects。

On the second day, we were examined on history and geography in the morning and physics and chemistry in the afternoon。

我的入学考试

为了进一步学习,我上周在一所高中参加了入学考试。我还记得参加考试的有300多人,第一天上午,语文很简单,我们要写一篇250字的作文,关于“我的家庭生活”,并解释20个短语。下午,我们考英语,有听力,造句,分析口语。口语考试时,我被问道我的生活,中学经历以及未来的希望。

第二天,我们早上考历史、地理,下午考物理、化学。

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篇16:英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

全文共 45713 字

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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17:初中英语作文之我的家人

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I am a chinese girl and i study in wuyilu primary school. i get up very  early in the morning and then help my mother cook breakfast. after breakfast, i  walk to school, because its not far from my house.

I have many friends at school. we often help each other with our lessons.my  mother is forty-six years old, and she works in meet all supermarket. its near  my school. the supermarket is very big, and it sells all kinds of things. the  students in my school often buy school things there.

my father is two years younger than my mother. he is in the same  supermarket, but he doesnt sell things. hes a driver.

my family is a happy one.

[初中英语作文之我的家人

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篇18:初中英语作文:面对挫折

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People always say in one life, they can’t be sailing plainly, it means people will meet all kinds of difficulties and they are easy to feel frustrated, the one who gets over frustration, the one who becomes successful.

When we meet difficulties, we must learn to face it in the optimistic way, so we can see the hope and have the faith to move on.

The difficult moment is just the small interlude of our lives. As the saying that failure is the mother of success, so we need to learn lessons from failure and then when the time comes, we will get successful. Facing frustration is unavoidable, if we can handle it well, we will win.

人们总是说人的一生不可能一帆风顺,这意味着人们会遇到各种各样的困难,他们很容易会感到受挫,谁能走出挫折,谁就能获得成功。当我们遇到困难,必须要学着去乐观面对,这样我们才能看到希望,有信念前进。困难时刻不过是我们生活的小插曲。俗话说失败乃成功之母,我们要从失败中学到教训,当时机到来,我们就会成功。面对挫折是不可避免的,如果我们能处理好,就能赢得胜利。

[初中英语作文:面对挫折

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篇19:初中英语

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It is known to all that China is a great big old country, which has

profound culture. As a result, the diversity of culture makes this country

charming. There are fifty-six minorities and all of them have different

features. Many foreigners come to China and they are attracted by the diversity.

For example, the scenery is different in areas. We have green and high mountains

and amazing historical relics. What’s more, Chinese food is famous around the

world. The unity of the minorities makes our country become stronger. Every

Chinese knows that we are families and will fight for the country’s future. We

have the responsibility to keep the country peaceful.

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篇20:环境问题的初中英语作文

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Today the quality of our natural environment has become an important issue.

The world population is rising so quickly that the world has become too crowded.We are using up our natural resources and at the same time polluting our environment with dangerous chemicals.

If we continue to do this,life on earth cannot survive.Concerned people have made some progress in environmental protection.

Governments of many countries have established laws to protect the air,forests and sea resources and to stop environmental pollution.Still more measures should be taken to solve environmental problems.

People should be further educated to recognize the importance of the problems,to use modern methods of birth control,to conserve our natural resources and recycle our products.

We are sure that we can have a better and cleaner place in the future.

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