美国社会与文化课终论文

众所周知（saying as is known to every one）,美国是当今世界上最大的移民国家（the united states is the world’s largest immigration country）。从历史上来看（historically），美国一直被全球各地的人们视为一片“充满了机会的大陆”（the united states has been all over the world’s people as a “full of opportunity road”）。在各个时期（in each time），这个世界每个角落的人们都满怀着憧憬和梦想（people all over the world is full of hopes and dreams），源源不断地来到这方神奇而又充满了希望的沃土（continue to come to this magical and full of hope of fertile land）。这些他们所坚信的能够在美国找到的机遇（these challenges which they do believed），再加上来到美国大陆后自己的切身经历（plus their own life experiences after they come to the united states），就构成了美国社会传统价值观的主要来源（make up the major source of the traditional American values）。

一般而言（generally speaking），美国的传统价值观共包括六个方面（the traditional American values include six aspects），即：individual freedom, equality of opportunity, material wealth 和(and) self-reliance, competition, hard work.其中（in the traditional American values），前三个方面集中代表了世界各地的人们移民到美国的原因（in the first three aspects represent the reason people in all over the world to immigrated to the united states），亦即我们通常所讲的“美国之梦”所包含的主要内容（that is we often speak of “American dream” included）；而后三个方面则是为了实现这些梦想所应付出的代价（and the last three aspects are the costs of realize these dreams should pay）。在美国人看来（in the united states people seem to ），individual freedom 和 self-reliance, equality of opportunity 和 competition, material wealth 和 hard work 是一一对应的（are one-to-one）.你若想实现前一个梦想（if you want to realize the previous dream），就必须付出后边那个代价（you must pay for the costs of the later）。我把它们翻译为（I think we can call the traditional values like this ）：个人自由和自力更生(individual freedom and self-reliance)；机会均等和参与竞争（equality of opportunity and competition）；物质富足和勤奋做工（material wealth and hard work）

By freedom, Americans mean the desire and the right of all individuals to control their own destiny without outside interference from the government, a ruling noble class, the church, or any other organized authority. The desire to be free of controls was a basic value of the new nation in 1776, and it has continued to attract immigrants to this country.

This strong belief in self-reliance continues today as a traditional basic American value. It is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of the American character to understand, but it is profoundly important. Most Americans believe that they must be

self-reliant in order to keep their freedom. If they rely too much on the support of their families or the government or any organization, they may lose some of their freedom to do what they want.

It is important to understand what most Americans mean when they say they believe in equality of opportunity. They do not mean that everyone is—or should be— equal. However, they do mean that each individual should have an equal chance for success. Americans see much of life as

a race for success. For them, equality means that everyone should have an equal chance to enter the race and win. In other words, equality of opportunity may be thought of as an ethical rule. It helps ensure that the race for success is a fair one and that a person does not win just because he or she was born into a wealthy family, or lose because of race or religion. This American concept of “fair play” is an important aspect

of the belief in equality of opportunity.

For the vast majority of the immigrants who came here, this was probably the most compelling reason for leaving their homeland. Because of its incredibly abundant natural resources, the United States appeared to be land of plenty where millions could come to seek their fortunes. Of course, most immigrants did not “get rich overnight,” an d many of them suffered terribly, but the majority of them were eventually able to improve upon their former standard of living. Even if they were not able

to achieve the economic success they wanted, they could be fairly certain that their children would have the opportunity for a better life. Most Americans, however, still believe in the value of hard work. Most believe that people should hold jobs and not live off welfare payments from the government. There have been many efforts to reform the welfare system so that people would not become dependent on welfare and stop looking for jobs to support themselves.

The strong consciousness of crisis constitutes the psychological foundation stone of the healthy development of American education. American is good at connecting education’s difficult position with the country’s future existence and development. Making it transformed into the strength source to promote education reform nation-wide. Legal system and finance constitute the basic guarantee for the education's sustainable healthy development. They are the main means for the government to adjust and control the direction and process of education reform and development effect. The mechanism of running a school autonomously, full competition and market-operation are the main motive force of American education's healthy development.

Under the influence of the traditional American values, the American education, especially to the kids’ education, parents and teachers is stress competition consciousness. This makes the American children build the equal consciousness, they know though the opportunity is equal, you must go to the competition. Competition consciousness in their life has obvious reflect.