obama,when he made the speech ,started with
a humour tongune.he just like a lovely father,tell his children, “i know that
feeling. i know that some of you are still adjusting to being back at
school.”meanwhile,he ,as a president,teach student parent”s
responsibility,teacher”sresponsibility,government”sresponsibility
andstudent”stheir own duty. because they 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.
so every single ofus should hold on rather
than give up. there is no excuse for not trying.we should take responsibility
for our lives, for our education, and set goals for ourselves. each of us try
to set our own goals for our education -- and do everything you can to meet
them.
i love michael jordan and his
saying"i have failed over and over and over again in my life. and
that’s why i succeed."may be we can face failure and do not know how
to solve it.but,we can not be beated. these people succeeded because they
understood that you can’t let your failures define you -- you have to let your
failures teach you.so don’t ever give up on yourself.
your future do not depend on your good or
bad life.none will write a bright future for you .that is,you control you own
faith . what we have to do is putting our best effort into everything we do. .
don’t let our family down or our country down. most of all, don’t let ourself
down. make us all proud.
no mater what problem you met ,you should
think someone who suffered more than you.believe theefforts you putforyour
goals,becauseno one can succeedeasily!
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 tim(感谢访问91考试网WwW.91exam.org)e 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.)
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