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美国总统奥巴马
9
月
8
日开学演讲
英文全文
For Immediate Release September 8, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN A NATIONAL ADDRESS TO
AMERICA'S SCHOOLCHILDREN
Wakefield High School
Arlington, Virginia
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,
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. B
ut
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,
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 jus
t