【推荐2】College students usually hear the praises of education. We have all become used to believing that a college education is always a guarantee of an easier life. I was nine years old when my fourth-grade teacher presented me with a task, to write down all of the things I wanted in my life. I filled my paper with things like: own a big house and have servants; be rich and have a good job. The next day my teacher handed back my paper and in red ink she wrote: “GO TO COLLEGE.” For a long time, I believed that once I got a college education, BAM! Life would be easier.

However, education cannot promise all wishes, dreams, and desires. Society must reject (拒绝接受) the foolish idea that a college education’s main purpose is to satisfy our desires and secure success. Like most challenging things, education is a gamble (赌博) in which results depend entirely on people’s ability to look past their wants to see the realism and reason behind their wants.

For example, my first year of college, I took a sociology (社会学) class. In class, we were taught that Third World countries were poor. We learned that our quality of life would be almost impossible for an average person in those countries. I began to examine my own desire to be rich. To always go after money felt selfish when knowing others had none at all. Learning about other society’s economic situations forced me to look beyond what I wanted.

Through the process of education, everything once desired is tested. Wanting something no longer is enough; it’s more important to examine why we want it and whether we really want it. When my desire for money changed, everything changed. I stopped longing for money-driven careers and stopped valuing the people who had them. I began to examine the things I bought and my reason for wanting them.

Education is a tool to be used to develop and advance our desires, so we can discover the things that are truly important in life. Education is a source to improve our society to see beyond the superficial (表面的) attractions and the “quick fixes”, leaving the belief of an effortless life behind in order to desire a meaningful one.

【推荐3】They had a dozen children, six boys and six girls, in seventeen years. One reason Dad had so many children was that he was confident anything he and Mother teamed upon was sure to be a success.

Our house at Montclair, New Jersey, was a sort of school for scientific management and the removal of wasted motions — or “motion study,” as Dad and Mother named it.

Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he could determine how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry through the task. Each child who wanted extra pocket money put forward an offer saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the contract(合约).

Dad put process and work charts in the bathrooms. Every child old enough to write — and Dad expected his children to start writing at a young age — was required to sign their names on the charts in the morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath, combed his hair, and made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh himself, mark the figure on a graph, and sign the process charts again after he had done his homework, washed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth. Mother wanted to have a place on the charts for saying prayers, but Dad said as far as he was concerned prayers were voluntary.

It was strict management, all right. Yes, at home or on the job, Dad was always the efficiency expert. He buttoned his vest from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, because the bottom-to-top process took him only three seconds, while the top-to-bottom took seven. He even used two shaving brushes to make his face smooth enough, because he found that by so doing he could cut seventeen seconds off his shaving time. For a while he tried shaving with two razors, but he finally gave that up.

“I can save forty-four seconds,” he complained, “but I wasted two minutes this morning putting this bandage on my throat.” It wasn’t the injured throat that really bothered him. It was the two minutes.