奥巴马是如何谈 “将个人奋斗和国家发展紧密结合” 的
多年前在上高中的时候，看到了奥巴马开学演讲的视频，深受触动，为什么短短十几分钟的演讲，相比国内 CCTV 录制的时长达数十分钟、制作丰富的电视节目《开学第一课》，更能让我记忆犹新呢？总结起来，我认为带来这样的差别的最为本质的因素，在于对学生的尊重：学生不再是配合演出的道具，而是真正的听众。
不同之处和亮点具体表现在：
语言风格
幽默风趣、平易近人
开场的问候显得温暖而包容，触及了不同年级的学生的处境和感受：
some of you are probably wishing it were still summer and you could've stayed in bed just a little bit longer this morning.
以幽默和饱含共情的言语建立了与听众的情感联系、营造了轻松氛围，快速吸引并有效保持了听众的注意力：
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."
语言干练、简洁而不失感染力
没有摇头晃脑、装腔作势的空话套话，没有歌颂千秋伟业、沧桑巨变的宏大叙事。对教育其他主体方面的成绩简单带过：But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world
主题专注于启发学生思考教育对于个人未来发展和国家前途命运的价值：
-- 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.
思想内涵
以人为本
充分传达激励、肯定和期盼，鼓励每个人发现自身才华：Every single one of you has something that you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. 强调教育的重要性在于帮助学生发现潜在的自身才华。使用排比列举了不同的职业和相应的教育要求，给学生以对未来职业的美好憧憬，再谈及其与当下教育的密切联系，运用排比，通过生动具体的例子，以极强的感染力和说服力启迪听众：让人对教育带来的未来发展感到充满希望：
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.
进一步强调教育带来的个人发展对国家的贡献：清晰地阐述了科学、数学、历史和社会科学等学科知识对于解决重大社会问题的重要性。通过提及诸如癌症、艾滋病、能源技术、环境保护、贫困、无家可归、犯罪和歧视等现实问题，使听众意识到学习与现实世界的紧密联系，非常鼓舞人心。同时指出放弃学习不仅是放弃自己，也是放弃对国家的责任：
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.
实事求是、直面问题
承认并指出听众可能面临的现实问题，如家庭经济困难、缺乏支持、不安全的环境或不良的朋友压力。
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.
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.
- 通过真实案例带来情感共鸣：通过引入Jazmin Perez、Andoni Schultz和Shantell Steve的真实故事，提供具体的榜样，来展示通过努力和坚持可以克服困难。使听众能够感同身受，并激发他们面对挑战的决心。
- 提供具体的行动建议：如完成作业、上课专心、每天阅读、参与课外活动、社区志愿服务等，这些都是实现教育目标的可行途径。强调了健康意识：提醒听众注意个人卫生，如勤洗手、生病时留在家中，这有助于维护公共卫生和个人健康。
- 指出误区：这段讲话稿是一段非常积极和鼓舞人心的演讲，它传达了几个关键信息，以下是对这段讲话的评价：
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现实主义：讲话开篇即指出了现代社会中普遍存在的一种误解，即通过娱乐和体育等领域可以轻易获得成功和财富。演讲者明确指出，这种成功途径并不适合大多数人。
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努力的价值：演讲强调了成功需要付出努力，并且可能伴随着不喜欢的学科、不总是与老师相处融洽，以及作业和生活之间的不直接相关性。
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失败的正面作用：通过引用J.K.罗琳和迈克尔·乔丹的例子，演讲者展示了即使最成功的人也经历了失败，并且正是这些失败塑造了他们的成功。
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成长心态：演讲鼓励听众采取成长心态，即不应让失败定义自己，而应让失败成为学习和成长的机会。
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积极的自我认知：演讲指出，遇到问题或成绩不佳并不意味着个人有缺陷，而是需要更加努力或改变方法。
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励志和启发性：整体上，这段讲话具有很强的励志效果，能够激励听众面对挑战，接受失败作为成长的一部分。
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语言和结构：语言简洁明了，结构清晰，使用了具体的例证来支持观点，使得演讲内容更加有说服力。
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普遍性：这段讲话不仅适用于学生，也适用于任何追求成功和成长的人，具有普遍的适用性。
总体来说，这是一段非常正面、鼓舞人心的讲话，能够有效地激励人们面对困难，从失败中学习，并持续努力追求自己的目标。
原文
Remarks by the President in a National Address to America's Schoolchildren
Hello, everybody! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. All right, everybody go ahead and have a seat. How is everybody doing today? How about Tim Spicer? 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.
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 -- 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."
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.
注释
评价
这篇演讲是美国前总统巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）在2009年9月8日对全国学生的一次演讲，主题是“重返学校”。奥巴马总统强调了教育对于个人未来和国家发展的重要性。
结构清晰：演讲的结构清晰，从个人故事引入，到强调教育的重要性，再到具体行动的号召，逻辑流畅，易于听众理解和接受。 语言风格：奥巴马的语言风格通俗易懂，既有正式演讲的庄重，也有与年轻人交流的亲切感。
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感同深受、个人经历：奥巴马在演讲中分享了自己的个人经历，比如他的母亲如何在早晨4:30教他学习，以及他自己在成长过程中的挑战。这些故事使得演讲更加亲切和有说服力。
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鼓励与激励：演讲充满了鼓励和激励的语言，旨在激发学生们的学习热情和自我提升的动力。
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现实联系：奥巴马提到了学生们可能面临的现实挑战，如家庭困难、社区问题等，并告诉他们这些都不是放弃教育的借口。
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榜样的力量：演讲中提到了几位克服困难并取得成功的年轻人的故事，如Jazmin Perez、Andoni Schultz和Shantell Steve，用以激励听众。
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行动号召：演讲不仅仅是激励，还包含了明确的行动号召，鼓励学生们设定目标并为之努力。
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幽默与真诚：奥巴马在演讲中适当地使用了幽默，使得演讲更加轻松，同时也展现了他的真诚和对教育的深切关怀。
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情感投入：演讲中奥巴马的情感投入明显，他不仅以总统的身份，也以一位父亲和曾经的学生的视角来谈教育，这增加了演讲的感染力。
总的来说，这是一篇充满激情、鼓舞人心的演讲，它不仅强调了教育的重要性，也鼓励学生们面对困难时不放弃，积极追求自己的目标。
maybe you ...
这段讲话稿好在以下几个方面：
鼓励听众认识到自己的潜力，通过参与学校课程和活动来发现自己可能未曾意识到的才能和兴趣。强调了教育对于实现个人职业目标的重要性，无论是成为医生、教师、警察，还是建筑师、律师或军人，都需要良好的教育基础。提倡通过实际参与（如写英语论文、做科学项目、参与学生政府或辩论队）来发现和培养自己的才能。鼓励听众设定目标，并认识到为了实现这些目标，必须接受教育和不断学习。 语言的感染力：使用排比（列举不同的职业和相应的教育需求），增强了语言的感染力和说服力。整个讲话稿传达了一种积极向上的态度，鼓励人们追求教育，不断努力，以实现自己的职业梦想。
- 讲话稿中提到的例子和情境具有普遍性，能够引起不同背景听众的共鸣。
- 启发思考：讲话稿不仅仅是传达信息，更是启发听众思考自己的未来和教育的价值。
整体而言，这段讲话稿通过其内容的深度、语言的力量和逻辑的清晰度，有效地传达了教育对于个人发展的重要性，并激发了听众对自我潜力的认识和对未来的憧憬。