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美国总统奥巴马开学演讲
《我们为什么要上学？》英文全文
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,
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.