9月8日是美国大部分公立中学的新学年开学第一天,这一天美国总统奥巴马弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿的Wakefield
High School中学给全国中学生上了新学年第一课:MY
EDUCATION, MY FUTURE。奥巴马总统向学生们传达的信息很简单:努力学习、专心听讲、珍惜学习的机会。但这个演讲也遭到很多家长的抵制。
(时间关系,演讲要点稍后整理。中文翻译请浏览http://www.sinovision.net/index.php?module=news&act=details&col_id=3&news_id=101538)
IN A
NATIONAL ADDRESS TO AMERICA'S SCHOOLCHILDREN
Wakefield High School
Arlington, Virginia
12:06 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you, everybody. All right, everybody go ahead and have a seat. How
is everybody doing today? (Applause.) How about Tim Spicer?
(Applause.) I am here with students at Wakefield High School in
Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all
across America, from kindergarten through 12th grade. And I am just
so glad that all could join us today. And I want to thank Wakefield
for being such an outstanding host. Give yourselves a big round of
applause. (Applause.)
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school.
And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high
school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable
if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out
there who are feeling pretty good right now -- (applause) -- with
just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some
of you are probably wishing it were still summer and you could've
stayed in bed just a little bit longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived
overseas. I lived in Indonesia for a few years. And my mother, she
didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went
to school, but she thought it was important for me to keep up with
an American education. So she decided to teach me extra lessons
herself, Monday through Friday. But because she had to go to work,
the only time she could do it was at 4:30 in the morning.
Now, as you might imagine, I wasn't too happy about getting up
that early. And a lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the
kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give
me one of those looks and she'd say, "This is no picnic for me
either, buster." (Laughter.)
So I know that some of you are still adjusting to being back
at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to
discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about
your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school
year.
Now, I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've
talked about responsibility a lot.
I've talked about teachers' responsibility for inspiring
students and pushing you to learn.
I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure
you stay on track, and you get your homework done, and don't spend
every waking hour in front of the TV or with the Xbox.
I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for
setting high standards, and supporting teachers and principals, and
turning around schools that aren't working, where students aren't
getting the opportunities that they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated
teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the
world -- and none of it will make a difference, none of it will
matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you
show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those
teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and
other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That's
what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has
for your education.
I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something that you're good at. Every
single one of you has something to offer. And you have a
responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the
opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a great writer -- maybe even good enough to
write a book or articles in a newspaper -- but you might not know
it until you write that English paper -- that English class paper
that's assigned to you. Maybe you could be an innovator or an
inventor -- maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone
or the new medicine or vaccine -- but you might not know it until
you do your project for your science class. Maybe you could be a
mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice -- but you might not
know that until you join student government or the debate
team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life, I guarantee
that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or
a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an
architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to
need a good education for every single one of those careers. You
cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got
to train for it and work for it and learn for it.
And this isn't just important for your own life and your own
future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less
than the future of this country. The future of America depends on
you. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we
as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn
in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to
develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll
need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history
and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and
discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll
need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes
to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our
economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents and
your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve
our most difficult problems. If you don't do that -- if you quit on
school -- you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on
your country.
Now, I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know
a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make
it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what it's like. My father left my family when
I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mom who had to
work and who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always
able to give us the things that other kids had. There were times
when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I
was lonely and I felt like I didn't fit in.
So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been on school,
and I did some things I'm not proud of, and I got in more trouble
than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for
the worse.
But I was -- I was lucky. I got a lot of second chances, and I
had the opportunity to go to college and law school and follow my
dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, she has a similar
story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't
have a lot of money. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so
that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't
have adults in your life who give you the support that you need.
Maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there's not
enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where
you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do
things you know aren't right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life --
what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have,
what you've got going on at home -- none of that is an excuse for
neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That's
no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or
dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll
end up. No one's written your destiny for you, because here in
America, you write your own destiny. You make your own
future.
That's what young people like you are doing every day, all
across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin
didn't speak English when she first started school. Neither of her
parents had gone to college. But she worked hard, earned good
grades, and got a scholarship to Brown University -- is now in
graduate school, studying public health, on her way to becoming Dr.
Jazmin Perez.
I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California,
who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's had to endure
all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his
memory, so it took him much longer -- hundreds of extra hours -- to
do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind. He's headed to college
this fall.
And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago,
Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the
toughest neighborhoods in the city, she managed to get a job at a
local health care center, start a program to keep young people out
of gangs, and she's on track to graduate high school with honors
and go on to college.
And Jazmin, Andoni, and Shantell aren't any different from any
of you. They face challenges in their lives just like you do. In
some cases they've got it a lot worse off than many of you. But
they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for
their lives, for their education, and set goals for themselves. And
I expect all of you to do the same.
That's why today I'm calling on each of you to set your own
goals for your education -- and do everything you can to meet them.
Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework,
paying attention in class, or spending some time each day reading a
book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular
activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to
stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who
they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all
young people deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe
you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more
ready to learn. And along those lines, by the way, I hope all of
you are washing your hands a lot, and that you stay home from
school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting
the flu this fall and winter.
But whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I
want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can
be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to
success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV
star. Chances are you're not going to be any of those things.
The truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every
subject that you study. You won't click with every teacher that you
have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant
to your life right at this minute. And you won't necessarily
succeed at everything the first time you try.
That's okay. Some of the most successful people in the world
are the ones who've had the most failures. J.K. Rowling's -- who
wrote Harry Potter -- her first Harry Potter book was rejected 12
times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from
his high school basketball team. He lost hundreds of games and
missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I
have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's why
I succeed."
These people succeeded because they understood that you can't
let your failures define you -- you have to let your failures teach
you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next
time. So if you get into trouble, that doesn't mean you're a
troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to act right. If you
get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you
need to spend more time studying.
No one's born being good at all things. You become good at
things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first
time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time
you sing a song. You've got to practice. The same principle applies
to your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times
before you get it right. You might have to read something a few
times before you understand it. You definitely have to do a few
drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for
help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a
sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength because it shows you have
the courage to admit when you don't know something, and that then
allows you to learn something new. So find an adult that you trust
-- a parent, a grandparent or teacher, a coach or a counselor --
and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged,
and you feel like other people have given up on you, don't ever
give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give
up on your country.
The story of America isn't about people who quit when things
got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who
loved their country too much to do anything less than their
best.
It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years
ago, and went on to wage a revolution and they founded this nation.
Young people. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who
overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil
rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20
years ago who founded Google and Twitter and Facebook and changed
the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask all of you, what's your contribution
going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries
will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or
100 years say about what all of you did for this country?
Now, your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything
we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these
questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you
the books and the equipment and the computers you need to learn.
But you've got to do your part, too. So I expect all of you to get
serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into
everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't
let us down. Don't let your family down or your country down. Most
of all, don't let yourself down. Make us all proud.
Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless
America. Thank you. (Applause.)
END