为什么需要保护野生动物英语作文推荐20篇

说到大熊猫，大家一定都很熟悉，因为它是我们国家的国宝。但是说到它的习性，大家就不一定都知道了。下面，我就给大家讲一讲大熊猫的生活习性。 大熊猫胖乎乎、毛茸茸，满是白毛的脸上带着两个黑眼圈，憨态可掬。

大熊猫性情温顺，一般不会主动攻击其它动物。遇到危险时，大熊猫也没什么方法保护自己，只能赶快逃跑。逃不掉的话，它就会像害羞一样，用前爪蒙住脸，希望敌人看不到自己。 大熊猫天生喜欢吃竹子，鲜嫩多汁的竹笋更是它的美味佳肴。吃东西的时候，大熊猫会想人一样坐在地上，用有力的牙齿把食物咬碎。吃饱了还要喝水。大熊猫喝水可不像小猫一样舔舔了事，它经常一喝再喝，一直喝到走不动为止，然后就干脆倒在小溪旁睡觉，醒了还能继续喝呢! 大熊猫每胎2至3个，刚出生的熊猫宝宝非常小，只有妈妈体重的千分之一。两岁时，小熊猫才能离开家独立生活。

怎么样，听完了我的介绍。你们是不是对大熊猫有了更深的了解了呢。最后我们一起呼吁：“保护大熊猫，让它们永远和我们在一起!”

One Sunday afternoon, I casually adjust the TV channel. All of a sudden, disastrous scene into my line of sight: a peasant who was holding a piece of iron hammer, turned out to be a butcher is a not how big head of pig slaughter.

I saw all this. Found that pigs fate was so miserable! Is this fate arranged? Or pigs caused by past delicious lazy? I found the "people" are so cruel. Oneself have so long pig, cruel to kill it. Ah, I found that at the moment I was so sad, so sad, so lost, so helpless. In nature there are many more miserable than this things are happening, perhaps this is fate, it is inevitable in the growing of a test.

Not often say that animals are friends of human beings? Not often say that people for the ethical treatment of animals, protect the earth? Maybe this is just for those rare animals! Those animals that almost nearly perish! Pigs in a country of the world, one city, a town, a village, or even a home, a person can see. Pigs are a lot of, is not worth to treat? Pig also is to have life, and human beings, it also know pain, also have feelings, also know how sad. People for the ethical treatment of animals! The animals as their friends, for they give a little love!

Animals are friends of human beings, like humans, are the people of the earth. Let us hands reach out, to protect, to help those who need help human friends!

一个周日的下午，我漫不经心地调着电视频道。突然，惨不忍睹的一幕进入我的视线：一个农民模样的人正拿着一根铁棍敲打什么，原来是一群屠夫正在屠杀一头不怎么大的小猪。

我亲眼目睹了这一切。发现猪的命运竟是这么悲惨!难道这是命运安排好的吗?还是猪前世的好吃懒惰造成的?我发现“人”竟是那么狠心。自己养了这么长时间的猪，竟然狠心杀掉它。哎，我发现此刻自己竟是那么的伤心，那么的悲痛，那么的迷惘，那么的无奈。大自然中还有很多比这更悲惨的事情正在发生，或许这就是命运，这就是在成长中不可避免的一次考试。

不是常说动物是人类的朋友吗?不是常说善待动物，保护地球的吗?可能这只是针对那些稀有的动物罢了!那些几乎将近灭亡的动物罢了!猪在世界的某个国家，某个城市，某个城镇，某个村庄，甚至某家某户都可以见到。猪是很多，多到不值得善待?猪也是有生命的，和人类一样，它也知道痛，也有感情，也懂得伤心。善待动物吧!把动物当成自己朋友，对它们付出一点爱吧!

动物是人类的朋友，同人类一样，都是地球的子民。让我们伸出双手，去保护，去帮助那些需要帮助的人类的朋友吧!

在这个世界上，每一分钟都会有许多动物由于人类的捕杀而失去了生命。

无论天空、陆地还是海洋，只要有人类到达的地方就会有杀戮。人们为了一碗美味的鱼翅汤而大肆捕杀鲨鱼，使鲨鱼的数量急剧减少。但据科学家说，鱼翅的营养成分还不如一个鸡蛋高。不仅如此，人们还会用一种极端残忍的方法来捕杀它们。人们把鲨鱼打捞上船，用铁棒将它们打晕，割下鳍后，又会被无情地丢进大海，被人割了鳍的鲨鱼，由于无法游动，鲨鱼也没有鱼鳔，只能沉入海底，孤独地死去。当我看到那些没有了鳍的鲨鱼用尽力气，用自己仅有的尾巴拼了命地左右摇摆时，我情不自禁地想问：这些渔民还是人吗？动物也是一条生命呀！这些人怎么能如此残忍地杀害它们呢？

对于我们人类来说，看可爱的海豚表演是一件愉快的事情，可是在这精彩的表演背后，却是一幅血腥的景象。由于海豚对声音极为敏感，很小的声音对它们来说已经是震耳欲聋了。人们就利用这一点来捕杀海豚。人们故意在海中制造出很大的声音，把几百只海豚逼到一个岸边，然后放一张大网把上百只海豚困在里面，让驯养师来挑选海豚。如果被挑选上了就会被驯养师带走，而没被选上的海豚则被罪恶的鱼叉叉死，眼前是一片血海。人们为了赚到钱又把杀死的海豚送到海鲜市场去卖，供人们享用。被挑选上去演出的海豚也会很痛苦，在它们表演时，听到人们的掌声和欢呼声时会让它们产生极大的心理压力，最终它们会由于心理压力过大而选择死亡，所以人们会在表演过后给它们打针，让它们缓解压力，而海豚表演不是为了食物而是为了一针药剂。

鲨鱼游过了五湖四海，也没游出人们的餐桌；海豚翻过了惊涛骇浪，却没能翻过人们的渔网。通过这几件事我知道了，其实最残忍的动物就是人类。动物的今天也许就是人类的明天。我们不仅要热爱自己的生命，也要关爱动物的生命。我们应少喝一碗鱼翅汤，就能多救活一条鲨鱼；少看几场海豚表演，就能使海豚减轻不少压力。动物也有生命。请记住，这个蔚蓝色的星球不单单属于人类。

看着变得越来越少的动物，濒临灭绝的动物越来越多，我们是不是应该开始保护动物，从我们身边的小事做起。

看了科普书《森林报》(春)后，我对大自然有了些认识，它让我爱上了蹦蹦跳跳的小白兔，喜欢上了警觉的松鸡，迷上了好斗的琴鸡，但我印象最深刻的是里面的小篇章——《打猎》。

它主要讲述了猎人们怎样打猎。如果猎人要打勾嘴鹬的话，会选择在黄昏时打他们，并会先打雌的(前提是一对勾嘴鹬夫妇)。这样雄的勾嘴鹬就会为找不到自己的妻子而发愁，这时，猎人就扔起自己的黑帽子。雄勾嘴鹬以为那是自己的妻子，于是就俯冲下来，这时，猎人再开枪把勾嘴鹬打死。

猎人们打野鸭也有自己的一套方法。他们先把捕捉到的野鸭训练成“叛徒”，然后把那只野鸭带到河面上，野鸭就会大声地叫，它的叫声吸引了众多野鸭，猎人就一枪一枪地把他们打死。

看完后，我觉得猎人们非常残忍。可转念一想，他们是为了生存而不得已这样做的。既然这样，还是从我们做起，开始保护动物吧。

现在，首先，我们尽量少吃那些用动物做成的菜啊，汤啊等等，否则就等于在杀害那些小生命。就拿鸭子来说吧，我大约算了一下，全中国最少也有几千个烤鸭店，而每天至少要卖出几十只烤鸭，这样每天就会死几万只鸭子，每年就会更多了，更何况这仅仅是中国的数子啊，要是全世界的数目就会更可怕的。其次，我们尽量不要捕捉小鸟，这样，它们可能会受惊，再加上没有朋友的陪伴，它们可能会闭上眼睛的。难道你忍心看着一只只快乐的小鸟就这样悲惨地死去吗?

让我们从自己做起，从小事做起，保护动物，保护我们的家园。

经典保护环境英语作文范文

It is very important to deal with the rubbish in cities. Rubbish must be thrown away or reused properly. Or it may cause a lot of problems. It may pollute the air and water. People may get ill when they breathe the polluted air or drink the polluted water.

Our city has started to face the problem. Some rubbish is sorted and sent to a certain place .Waste gas is cleaned before it goes into the air. Waste water is also cleaned before it is poured into rivers.

People should be prevented from throwing rubbish everywhere. We should try our best to take care of our environment and fight against pollution.

这是处理城市垃圾非常重要。垃圾必须扔掉或者重用。或者它可能会导致很多问题。它可能会污染空气和水。人可能生病时呼吸受污染的空气或饮用受污染的水。

我们的城市已经开始面临的问题。一些垃圾分类并送到某个地方。废气进入空气之前清洗。废水也在它倒入河流清洁。

人们应该阻止到处扔垃圾。我们应该尽我们最大的努力去保护我们的环境，与污染作斗争。

In our common home - the earth, life with a lot of animal, which animal do

you like? Anyway, my favorite animal is our most loyal friend - a dog.My

favorite is my neighbors dog that Beijing BaGou yuan yuan and collie handsome.

They play together every day, it is a good friend of a stick dozen not

scattered, I also like them, they saw I was shaking his tail towards

me.Handsome shape tiger is big, the body is about more than 60 centimeters

long. Two leg, capable to my shoulders, his eyes, nose, mouth, ears are much

older than yuan yuan, I most like to see him running figure - curly float in the

sky, like a nice horse. I often and yuan yuan, running with the handsome, every

time is handsome first, second, I am the third round. Can literally, handsome

running faster than thoroughbred horse. Average dog ran up, send out "clicking"

sound, but handsome rans voice is very small, not carefully is inaudible. The

appearance of the handsome run is also very handsome, curly, bow shaped body. If

you want to use a word to describe talent, that is: handsome. If you use a word

that was impeccable.Compared with the handsome, round shape is much smaller,

only 30 centimeters in length and a half smaller than talent. The meaning of his

name from his eyes, it is too round. Like a shiny black stones. And his legs are

very round and round this is name. And his legs are very short, so even if he

runs, casting its foot also run fast, but I still like him very much the kind of

simple and lovely.This is what I like animals, do you like?

动物是人们的朋友，我们应该保护它们。

地球上如果没有动物，就没有人类。动物是这个地球生物链的一大部分，如果动物消失了，我们人类也会灭绝。例如：青蛙消失了，就没有动物去捉稻田的害虫，农作物也就无法生长，人类就没有食物；如果没有老虎，兔子就会超额繁殖，我们的粮食就可能会被兔子吃没了；如果没有猫头鹰，老鼠就会侵占我们的地盘。……

地球是一个大家庭，缺谁都不行，如果没有动物，我们人类的处境可想而知，我们大家应该团结起来，保护小动物。

Panda is one of the scarcest animals. People in the world like it very much. there used to be many pandas in China long ago. As the balance of nature was destroyed and the weather was getting warmer and warmer, pandas became less. But at present, the number of pandas is increasing year by year. there are now so many pandas that some are being sent to other countries so that people there can enjoy them.

Nowadays, the biggest nature park for panda in China is in Sichuan. there is a research centre for nature and wild life there. Scientists hope that one day they will have enough pandas to be set free and let them live in the wild again.

Dog is my favorite animal. The reason why I like it most is because it’s very competent. Dog is the best friend for mankind. It is also the best companion for the old people. The dog can feel the human nature. So many old people will raise dogs if their children are not with them. The old can give their love for their children to the dog to make themselves feel warmly. I believe the seeing eye dog is very famous. They are special dogs. Those dogs will guide their owners whose eyes is blind to go the correct way. See, I say dogs are very competent.

我最喜欢的动物是狗。我最喜欢它的原因是因为它很能干。狗是人类最好的朋友。它也是老人们最好的伴侣。狗是通人性的。如果他们的孩子不在他们身边，很多老年人会养狗。老年人可以把对他们孩子的爱放到狗狗的身上，这也能温暖他们的心。导盲犬是非常有名的。他们是特殊的狗。这些狗会引导眼睛看不见的主人找到正确的路。看，我就说狗狗是非常能干的。

My favourite animal 范文一

Dolphin is my favourite animal.

It is one of the most precious animals. Their bodies are very long, about one zhang（丈）. Dolphins live in the sea. They live on fish, shrimps and so on.

Dolphins are very friendly and peaceful. They never attack people. Instead, they have saved many people in danger in the past years. How helpful the dolphins are!

Dolphins are very clever. People often train them so that they can give a dolphin show which brings people a lot of happiness and joy.

Unluckily, the number of dolphins is getting smaller and smaller. Because of water pollution, there is less and less space for dolphins. Many people make money by hunting dolphins. If we don’t protect them, maybe we’ll lose our good friends one day. As a student, I hope more and more people should take actions to protect dolphins.

My favourite animal 范文二

My favourite animal is tortoise. Tortoise walk not fast. But I like the tortoise. Why? Because, tortoise is a cute animal. It have a short tail and a four short foot. It have a little head and a hard shell. They are forty-five little and cute tortoise in My home. They like to play in the water. When they afraid some thing. They wall run fast. They like to eat the fish. I often buy some small fish to them to eat. They can catch the fish fast. First, they fake(假) sleep. When the fish swim near they mouth. They catch the fish fast and bit the fish head. So, the fish die. They can eat the fish. In winter. They like to sleep in the sand. When they sleep, they don’t eat any food.Because they wall hibernation. But, when they are thirsty. They come out of the sand. So, we must give water to them to drink.

I love the tortoise. I hate the eagle. Because, the eagle often eat the tortoise with it sharp mouth.My favourite animal is tortoise.

My Favourite Animal 范文三

My favourite animal is a dog.I had a dog when I was ten years old.Its name is Lily.Its a brown and white dog.It does everything with me.Everyday I give it some water to drink and some food to eat.At the weekend,Ill make it take a bath.At that time,the dog is very gentle.And I like it very much.This is my favorite animal----a beautiful,gentle and lovely dog.

假如我们的生活中没有了动物，世界就会变得很孤独。我们要保护动物，从自身做起。以下内容是小编为您精心整理的保护动物的作文300字，欢迎参考！

保护动物的作文300字一

听说过树虎的故事吗？人们用胶水先粘住一只树虎，然后借助他们善良的本质，引来更多皮毛昂贵的树虎。这对世界的霸主----人类可谓是极大的耻辱！

从小，我就是和小狗一起长大的，因为狗是人类最忠诚的朋友。我和奶奶在一起时常常看见奶奶无缘无故的踢小狗，每当这时，我都会对奶奶大吼大叫：“奶奶你怎么能踢小狗呢？”可奶奶又怎么能听得进去呢？看着这只可怜兮兮的小狗，我不禁鼻子一酸：因为我们是人类就能在地球是为所欲为了吗？难道小狗就没有尊严吗？对那些自以为是的人类，我无可奉告！动物是人类最忠诚的朋友啊！

只能够到蛇为什么会咬人吗？知道猫为什么会抓人吗？不是因为这是他们的本质，而是因为它们怕人类，怕那些残忍的恶魔！不要再欺负弱小了，让我们一起保护动物吧！

保护动物的作文300字二

我们要保护小动物，特别是小鸡这类弱小的动物，因为小鸡早晨可以叫我们起床，可以生一个又一个圆圆的的鸡蛋，还可以提供鸡肉给我们吃。

有一次，我和妈妈上菜市场，听见一位老奶奶在喊：“卖鸡了，今天的鸡又肥又嫩！”妈妈说：“今天，我们买一只鸡回家，炖汤喝。”我说：“好吧。”可又想了想：如果我们吃了鸡，那么就吃不到鸡蛋了，就对妈妈说：“不行，吃了鸡就没有鸡蛋吃了。”“傻孩子，你瞎操什么心啊！”妈妈不由分说地把我拉到卖鸡的那边。卖鸡的老奶奶正在杀鸡，只见她拔下鸡脖子上的毛，拿刀用力地在鸡脖子上划了几下。血喷向了四周，鸡挣扎了几下就死了。“太残忍了，我不要吃鸡！”我向妈妈大声的抗议。“好吧，不买了，我们就去买点蔬菜吧。”也许妈妈也觉得残忍，就同意了。

假如我们的生活中没有了动物，世界就会变得很孤独。我们要保护动物，从自身做起：少吃肉类食品，少穿皮衣毛衣；看见别人欺负动物，要勇敢地站出来劝说他们。

保护动物，人人有责！

导语：近年来,环境保护仍存在许多问题。其中最严重的问题之一是空气、水和土壤的严重污染。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!

There are still many problems of environmental protection in recent years. One of the most serious problems is the serious pollution of air, water and soil. the polluted air does great harm to people s health. The polluted water causes diseases and death. What is more, vegetation had been greatly reduced with the rapid growth of modern cities.

To protect the environment, governments of many countries have done a lot. Legislative steps have been introduced to control air pollution, to protect the forest and sea resources and to stop any environmental pollution. Therefore, governments are playing the most important role in the environmental protection today.

In my opinion, to protect environment, the government must take even more concrete measures. First, it should let people fully realize the importance of environmental protection through education. Second, much more efforts should be made to put the population planning policy into practice, because more people means more people means more pollution. Finally, those who destroy the environment intentionally should be severely punished. We should let them know that destroying environment means destroying mankind themselves.

【参考译文】

近年来,环境保护仍存在许多问题。其中最严重的问题之一是空气、水和土壤的严重污染。污染的空气对人体健康有害。污染的水导致疾病和死亡。此外,随着现代城市的快速发展,植被已大大减少。

为了保护环境,许多国家的政府做了很多。已采取立法步骤控制空气污染,保护森林和海洋资源,制止任何环境污染。因此,政府在今天的环境保护中发挥着最重要的作用。

我认为,要保护环境,政府必须采取更具体的措施。首先,它应该让人们通过教育充分认识到环境保护的重要性。第二,应该更加努力使人口规划政策付诸实践,因为更多的人意味着更多的人意味着更多的污染。最后,故意破坏环境的人应该受到严惩。我们应该让他们知道破坏环境意味着毁灭人类自己。

"Bumper harvest, bumper harvest!"!" Cried one of the fishermen, happily jumping up like a child. After a while, the full cabin fish alive and kicking, calm sea filled with coming from all sides of the fishermens laughter.........

Now, like this "fish and shrimp full cabin" scene has been very rare. In todays market, is the most common fish pound at least to dozens of yuan, more serious pollution of the ocean, the ocean resources gradually dried up, seafood production, prices rise, it illustrates this point?

In the ocean of natural calamities and man-made misfortunes emerge in an endless stream today, human pollution is often not from the original intention, but it is caused by the unexpected effect. The British Petroleum oil, because the drilling platform explosion, caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to 9900 square kilometers of sea water is seriously polluted, so that tens of thousands of seabirds soaked in oil to move, die in hunger and misery, makes countless fish poisoning death; and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear leak the marine pollution is more serious......

The sea is so vast that it is because the rivers and streams flow into the Yangtze River and then run into the sea. If we do not solve the pollution problem from the source, then no matter how people clean up the sea, there will always be sewage flowing into the sea, and all the efforts will be futile. Now, streams and streams are often seriously polluted, or they become places where people dump rubbish or are loaded with pesticide cans. Finding a clear stream in an inhabited area can be very difficult today!

In any case, the protection of the oceans can not be achieved by individual forces, and the protection of the oceans depends on the joint efforts of all mankind. I do not want one day in the future, our descendants can only imagine the image of the vast and wide sea.

This is not only the wish of a pupil, but also the wish of all mankind, isnt it?

In a sunny afternoon, the air was fresh, coconut particularly lush, xiao gang holding tank and nets, walked at a brisk pace, happily to catch frogs.

Xiao gang came to the pond, the skylight, just caught a crock of frogs. He happily ran home, sitting on the sofa, drinking beverages, listening to the tape recorder, want to relax, and behold, a passage from the recorder "again today to the voice of the animals, play time, please dont catch frogs to protect the frog." Xiao gang wish: everyone in catch frogs, why not let me catch! Xiao gang is very angry, he took out the animal encyclopedia started flipped up and found that it turns out that the frog is secondary to protect animals, and was little tadpoles mom, I used to love this book "little tadpole looking for mom".

Ashamed, at once, xiao gang immediately ran out of the house, run out whole body energy, rushed to the pond and the frog and little tadpoles released, little frogs in the pond croaked and cried, as if to say: "thank you!" Xiao gang also said softly: "go, go find your loved one!"

Through this story, I know a small token, that is: to protect the frog, everybody is responsible for.

在一个风和日丽的下午，空气十分清新，椰子树格外茂盛，小刚拿着鱼缸和鱼网，迈着轻快的步子，开开心心地去捉青蛙了。

小刚来到池塘边，费了九牛二虎之力，才捉了一缸青蛙。他高兴地跑回了家，坐在沙发上，喝着饮料，听着录音机，想放松放松，不料，录音机中传出一段话“今天又到了动物之声的播放时间，请大家不要捉青蛙，要保护青蛙。”小刚心想：大家都在捉青蛙，为什么不让我捉!小刚十分生气，他拿出《动物百科》开始翻阅起来，发现，原来，青蛙是二级保护动物，而且竟是小蝌蚪的妈妈，我以前最爱看《小蝌蚪找妈妈》这本书。

顿时，小刚感到羞愧万分，立即跑出家门，用尽全身力气，冲向池塘边，把小青蛙与小蝌蚪放生了，小青蛙在池塘边呱呱地叫着，好像在说：“谢谢你!”小刚也轻声说道：“去吧，去找你们的亲人吧!”

通过这个故事，我知道了一个小道理，那就是：保护青蛙，人人有责。

当这个星期六下午4时少年宫的大门一敞开，我们就像一群才长了翅膀的雏鸟叽叽喳喳地飞向自己翱翔的蓝天。对我们这一只只小鸟儿来说天空是多么湛蓝，多么地广阔呀!

忽然一个身影映入我的眼帘一只浑身碧绿脖子发蓝，身高约七厘米的小鸟。咦?它怎么会有一张小巧的嘴呢?对了，这不就是常说的红嘴相思鸟吗?遇见了一只这么名贵的鸟儿，当然要逗逗它，想罢，吹了一声响亮的口哨。就这么一晃眼，鸟儿不见了，再望望前方我又看见了那只色艳迷人的小鸟，不过，这次是在一位眼疾手快的妇女手里。我呆呆地站在一旁心里有点矛盾，到底要不要救这只小鸟呢?

等我回过神来已经有许多小孩围在了妇女的身边，每个人都想玩弄一下这个可爱的小东西，“让我来玩一下!”“能给我摸摸吗”“真可爱”“它的毛真滑!”……到等他们都渐渐散去后我与小相思鸟的目光发生了碰撞，我仿佛能感受到小鸟眼神中的痛苦与哀求。我于心不忍，但总不能坐视不管让鸟儿饱受痛苦吧?当我还在思索时又有一个调皮的小男孩走了过来抢走了红嘴相思鸟，他一边拨弄着小鸟深绿色的翅膀和小小的爪子，向前走去。小鸟似乎在发抖着，更是用一种忧伤的眼神看着我，指望有一位救星。我这才鼓起勇气向小男孩走去小声地提醒道：“快放了它吧，它也很可怜。”

结果真是出人意料，那个小男孩一声不响地推出手，慢慢地端详着这只美丽的小鸟，最后张开双手放飞了这只可爱的小鸟。我们抬头观望，天空中却不见了它的身影，耳边却响起了一清脆的鸣叫，鸟儿，是你吗?是你，在谢谢我吗?

不管怎么说爱护小动物是每一个人的责任。

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

导语：眼睛是我们身体最重要的部分，我们应该好好爱护它，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的相关英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

Everyone knows that eyes are one of the most important parts of our body.Having good eyesight means we can not only see things clearly,but also enjoy some beautiful scenes.there is also a saying going that eyes are the window of our mind.But how can we protect our eyes?

Here are some tips for you .Firstly, it is a good habits not to read your books or newspapers for a long time because our eyes need rest,too.Secondly,dont read books in a strong or poor light,otherwise,the light would harm our eyes.At last,remember to keep on doing eye-exercises and watch more green grass and other plants.

【参考翻译】

每个人都知道眼睛是我们身体最重要的部分之一。拥有良好的视力意味着我们不仅能看到事物的本质,也能欣赏到一些美丽的风景。还有一个说,眼睛是心灵的窗口。但是我们如何保护我们的眼睛呢?

这里有一些建议给你。首先,不长时间看书或者看报纸这是一个好习惯,因为我们的眼睛需要休息。其次,不在光线强或光线差下看书,否则,光会伤害我们的眼睛。最后,记得要坚持做眼保健操,看更多的绿草和其他植物。

相关标签: 保护Protect

Nowadays, Hollywood movies dominate the market and many young people take

these superheroes characters as their idols. So some people start to feel

disappointed about the local culture, because they havent seen its essence. As

the world gets globalization, it is in need of building peoples sense of local

cultural heritage.

The preservation of our cultural heritage is the necessary task. The

culture contains the essence of Chinese peoples spirit, which has been tested

by time. When people admit our culture, we will be proud of being part of the

country, so as to enhance the unity and have the desire to make a contribution

to the society. The loss of cultural heritage will destroy a country, which can

be seen in history.

As the young generation faces the cultural shock in the globalization, so

they are easy to deny the local culture, because they know little about it. Thus

school should implant the education of culture and the government has named a

day called Chinese Cultural Heritage Day, in the purpose of advocating the

essence of local culture. When children grow up, they will fight for protecting

the culture.

Environmental Protection

环境保护

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.

现如今我们的自然环境已经成为一个重要问题。世界人口增长如此之快以至于世界已经变得过于拥挤。我们在消耗自然资源的同时危险化学物品污染着我们生存的环境。如果我们继续这样下去，地球上的生物将不能生存。

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.

相关人士在环境保护方面做出了一些进展。许多国家的政府已经建立法律来保护大气，森林和海洋资源以停止环境污染。

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(保存) our natural resources and recycle(再循环) our products. We are sure that we can have a better and cleaner place in the future.

同时更应该采取措施来解决环境问题。应该进一步教育人们认识到问题的重要性，应用现代的生产控制方法来节约我们的自然资源和实现产品的再循环。我们相信在将来我们会拥有一个更好的更干净的生存之地。

[初中生环境保护英语作文

经典例句：

1. It’s our duty to save water这是我们的责任节约用水

2. As we know , water is very important to man, 我们知道，水是非常重要的人， 3. We can’t live without water. 我们的生活离不开水。

4. The amount of water which is suitable to drink is less and less. 水的量是适宜的饮料是越来越少了 5. But some people don’t care about it, 但有些人不关心它。

6. Many rivers and lakes are seriously polluted. 许多河流和湖泊受到严重污染。

Something must be done to stop the pollution. 必须采取某种措施来制止污染。

7. It"s our duty to protect our environment. 它是我们的责任来保护我们的环境。

8. It is very important to take care of our environment 这是非常重要，我们要保护我们的环境

范文：

1、假如你是新华中学的学生，名叫MIKE。去年6月1日我国已经禁止使用塑料袋，你对此有何看法和什么好的建议

I’m Mike. I am a student in Huaxing Middle School. Do you know the plastic bagsDo you often use the plastic bagsI don’t like them. I think they use the wasting valuable oil their production. And they can’t decompose(分解) in a short time. The plastic bags will make our world worse. I agree with the rule, which people can’t get the free plastic bags in the shops, supermarkets. It encourages people to use their cloth bags and baskets. It’s good for our environment.

So I hope all the students in our class stop to use the plastic bags, and use our own cloth bags. I hope we can take care of our environment. Let’s make our world more and more beautiful.

2 、6月5日( June 5)是世界环境保护日， 我们周围的环境变得越来越糟糕，污染越来越严重……。假如你是学生Jone.，你校要进行“如何保护我们的环境”专题演讲比赛。

要求：1、举例说明环境存在的问题1—3方面; Dear headmasters,teachers,classmates and friends:

I’m very proud that I have chosen to speak to you all today, I’m a bit(=a little) nervous as I’ve never made a speech before to so many people ,so please forgive me if it shows.

As we all know, the environmemt around us is getting worse and worse . In some places we can’t see fish swimming in the river or trees on the hills. Some people even have no clean water to drink. So I think we must do something to protect the environment. .But what can we doHow to protect our environmemt For example ,we can go to school on foot or by bike . we can use shopping basskets not plastic bags when we go shopping and we can use both sides of the paper when we write . In a word ,if everyone pays more attention to our environment , there will be less pollution and our lives will be better.“There is only one earth”,I hope everyone will protect our environment well. Thanks! 3、(江苏南通)目前南通市正在积极创建全国文明城市，中学生也在为之努力。假如你是你是某中学的一名学生张通，请根据下列图表所示内容，给笔友John写一封电子邮件，介绍有关情况。

注意：1.邮件内容应包含所有要点，不要简单翻译，可适当发挥;2.文中不得使用真实姓名、校名等信息;

3.词数90左右(邮件中已经写好了的部分，不计入总词数)。4.参考词汇：civilized 文明的 respect 尊敬 Dear John,

I’m glad to hear from you. Now let me tell you something about our city. Nantong is trying to set up a national civilized city. We middle school students are also doing some things for it. We are all polite to our teachers. (In class, we listen carefully to them./ When we meet them, we always say hello to them./…) We also respect the old. For example, we help them cross the streets.

We are always ready to help each other. (When one has difficulty with his studies, others will help him at once./...)We often show our love to those in trouble. Last month, the students of my class donated money to the earthquake-hit areas.

Besides, we plant trees to protect the environment and make our city more beautiful.

Nantong is my hometown. I will do my best to turn Nantong into a civilized city.Zhang Tong

9. We should not throw litter onto the ground 我们不应该往地上扔垃圾

10. We should not spit in a public place/ cut down the trees 我们不应该在公共场所吐痰/砍伐的树木 11. We should plant more flowers and trees。 我们应该种更多的花和树。

12. We must pick up some rubbish and throw it into a dustbin 我们必须拿起一些垃圾，扔到垃圾桶它

13. If everyone makes contribution to protecting the environment, the world will become much more beautiful.

如果人人都为保护环境作出贡献，世界将变得更加美丽。 14.Trees are very helpful and important for us. 树是非常有益的，对我们很重要。

15.We should plant more and more trees in order to live better and more healthy in the future.

我们应该种更多的树，为了生活得更好，更健康的未来。 16.It’s everyone’s duty to love and protect the environment. 这是每个人的责任，爱护和保护环境

4、保护环境( 四川乐山) 从2008年6月1日起，国家将禁止商家免费提供塑料袋，掀起全国“拒塑”的环保运动。假如你是李华，准备以“What Can We Do for the Environment” 为题，写一篇保护环境的英语演讲稿。内容包含：1.在购物时用布袋子替代塑料袋;2.尽可能地再利用使用过的课本;3.离开教室应关灯;

4.最好走路或骑自行车上学;5.简述理由：保护环境，减少污染，节约能源等

注意：1.词数：80词左右。开头和结尾已经为你写好，不计入总词数; 2.可根据要点适当增加细节，使行文连贯;

3.文章中不能出现真实姓名和校名，否则以零分处理。

4.参考词汇：布袋子cloth bag塑料袋plastic bag保护protect能源energy污染pollution课本textbook What Can We Do for the Environment

参考作文：

What Can We Do for the Environment

Hello, everyone. I’m Li Hua. It’s nice to speak about what we can do for the environment, and I think each of us can do a little bit to help with this problem.

The first thing we can do is to use cloth bags in stead of plastic bags when we go shopping. It helps to protect the environment. The second thing we can do is to reuse(再利用) the old textbooks as possible as we can. We should also never forget to turn off the lights when we leave the classrooms in order to save energy. What’s more, it would be better if we walk or ride a bike to school. We should try our best to reduce pollution and waste.

In fact, even the simplest everyday activities(日常活动) can make a real difference to(对有影响) the environment. I believe we can make the world a better place to live in.Thank you for your listening!

5、.环境问题：

今天环境变得越来越糟糕,环境问题影响着人们的工作,学习,生活等,而我们的工作,生活,生产等又使环境污染越来越严重..........,如何保护我们的环境请以“ How to protect/save our environment/world”为题写一篇短文。

提示：存在问题: 1.水污染越来越严重 2.砍伐森林严重 3. 大气污染严重 4. 白色垃圾等。

要求：如何改善/保护环境至少:3---4个方面， 80字左右的。How to protect/save our environment/world

The environmental pollution is worse and worse /more and more seriously today . Water is polluted ,we have no clean water to drink. Many trees are cutting down, some animals is getting less and less. Some factories is pouring(排出) dirty air into the sky , the population is increasing faster and faster , resources is getting less and less…etc. Not only does it affect our lives and health, it also has a great affection in the future. People’s health has been greatly affected by air, noise and water pollution. Many people died of diseases. In order to live a better life, we need protect our world.

We shouldn’t throw away rubbish everywhere. We want to recycle(回收), reduce(减少), reuse(再利用) things . Don’t waste things ,This saves money and reduces pollution. Use things for as long as possible. We don’t use plastic bags . We mus plant more trees and stop the people cutting them. We hope our world will be more and more beautiful .

6、为了保护地球有限的资源，我们应该采取什么措施呢请根据下面提示写一篇约80词的短文，短文开头已经给出。提示词：

1.save water, the source of life , protect drinking water, stop polluting, make full use of it;

2.save electricity, crucial, turn off, other electric machines;3. save forests, useful ,stop cutting down;4.recycle useful rubbish, save resources参考作文：

Although the world develops much faster and better, the resources on the earth get fewer and fewer. In order to protect them,something must be done.

Save water. Water is the source of life.(水是生命之源) No water, no life.(没有水，就没有生命) So it’s very important for us to do so. Not only should we(我们不仅应该)protect drinking-water(饮用水) and stop polluting it, but also make full use of(充分利用) it.

Save electricity. It is crucial(关键的，至关重要的). We can’t imagine what the life will be like without it. Everyone should do his best to save electricity. Don’t forget to turn off lights or other electric machines(电器)when we finish working.

Save forests. They are useful .Please stop cutting them down and use recycled paper instead. Make our world a green one to live in.

Recycle useful rubbish. Plenty of rubbish can be recycled like cans, paper, bottles, and so on. We can save resources in this way.

7.随着现代社会经济的高速发展，人类赖以生存的环境变得越来越差，特那么提议感到积极宣传环保方面知识的重要性。请你根据下面图片中所提供的环境变化，用英文写一篇90个词左右的短文。 要求： 1. 描述图片由于环境污染造成的环境变化； 2. 作为学生，请你谈谈如何为保护环境作出贡献 例文：

Great changes have taken place in the village. From the picture we can see a same village in two photos are quite different.

There are beautiful trees, flowers and grass in the first photo. In this photo we can see the sky is blue and beautiful, water is clean. However it is not be like that anymore. Let’s look at the second photo. Trees are less, the water isn’t clean, and the sky is not blue. More factories were established. The village is not beautiful anymore.

It’s easy to see the environment is becoming worse. As a middle school student, we should do our best to protest our living place, but what should we do nowWe’d better use cloth bags instead of plastic bags when going shopping. We should ride bicycle instead using cat to school.

If everyone does something to the protection of our earth I believe the pollution will be reduced a lot.

I love dogs, dogs are the cutest animal ever on earth. From small and cute ones to big and fierce ones. I love all kind of them. They say dogs are mans best friends. I agree with that because dogs are royal, friendly and fun to play with. Some of them are extremely cuddly and soft to hold and hug. While some of them are extremely royal and helps us guard all our properties.