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作文书免费阅读 作文书推荐初中生篇三

’s high time men ceased to regard women as second-class citizens

this is supposed to be an enlightened age, but you wouldn’t think so if you could hear what the average man thinks of the average won their independence years a long bitter struggle, they now enjoy the same educational opportunities as men in most parts of the have proved repeatedly that they are equal and often superior to men in almost every hard-fought battle for recognition has been won, but it is by no means is men, not women who still carry on thee sex war because their attitude remains basically in the most progressive societies, women continue to be regarded as second-rate hear some men talk, you’d think that women belonged to a different species!

on the surface, the comments made by men about women’s abilities seem same tired jokes about women drivers are repeated day in, day apparent light-heartedness does not conceal the real contempt that men feel for r much men sneer at women, their claims to superiority are not borne out by ’s consider the matter of driving, for all know that women cause far fewer accidents than are too conscientious and responsible to drive like this is a minor have succeeded in any job you care to politicians, soldiers, doctors, factory-hands, university professors, farmers, company directors, lawyers, bus-conductors, scientists and presidents of countries they have often put men to we must remember that they frequently succeed brilliantly in all these fields in addition to bearing and rearing men go on maintaining the fiction that there are many jobs women can’t -level political negotiation between countries, business and banking are almost entirely controlled by men, who jealously guard their so-called ‘rights’.even in otherwise enlightened places like switzerland women haven’t even been given the situation is preposterous!the arguments that men put forward to exclude women from these fields are all too , they say, are unreliable and much on intuition and instinct to arrive at are not even capable of thinking when women prove their abilities, men refuse to acknowledge them and give them their much for a man’s ability to think clearly!

the truth is that men cling to their supremacy because of their basic inferiority shun real know in their hearts that women are superior and they are afraid of being beaten at their own of the most important can be sure that if women were allowed to sit round the conference table, they would succeed brilliantly, as they always do, where men have failed for things are too important to be left to men! governments should conduct serious campaigns against smoking

if you smoke and you still don’t believe that there’s a definite link between smoking and bronchial troubles, heart disease and lung cancer, then you are certainly deceiving one will accuse you of us just say that you are suffering from a bad case of wishful needn’t make you too uncomfortable because you are in good er the subject of smoking and health is raised, the governments of most countries hear no evil, see no evil and smell no edly, a few governments have taken timid britain, for instance, cigarette advertising has been banned on television continues to puff its way to smoky, cancerous don’t have to look very far to find out why the official reactions to medical findings have been so answer is simply o is a wonderful commodity to ’s almost like a tax on our daily tax revenue alone, the government of britain collects enough from smokers to pay for its entire educational while the authorities point out ever so discreetly that smoking may, conceivably, be harmful, it doesn’t do to shout too loudly about is surely the most short-sighted policy you could money is eagerly collected in vast sums with one hand, it is paid out in increasingly vaster sums with the us amounts are spent on cancer research and on efforts to cure people suffering from the ess valuable lives are the long run, there is no doubt that everybody would be much better-off if smoking were banned course, we are not ready for much drastic if the governments of the world were honestly concerned about welfare of their peoples, you’d think they’d conduct aggressive anti-smoking from it!the tobacco industry is allowed to spend staggering sums on advertising is as insidious as it is are never shown pictures of real smokers coughing up their lungs early in the would never advertisements always depict virile, clean-shaven young suggest it is manly to smoke, even positively healthy!smoking is associated with the great open-air life, with beautiful girls, true love and utter nonsense!

for a start, governments could begin by banning all cigarette and tobacco advertising and should then conduct anti-smoking advertising campaigns of their g should be banned in all public places like theatres, cinemas and efforts should be made to inform young people especially of warning-say, a picture of a death’s head-should be included in every packet of cigarettes that is individuals we are certainly weak, but if governments acted honestly and courageously, they could protect us from sion is doing irreparable harm

‘yes, but what did we use to do before there was television?’ how often we hear statements like this!television hasn’t been with us all that long, but we are already beginning to forget what the world was like without we admitted the one-eyed monster into our homes, we never found it difficult to occupy our spare used to enjoy civilized instance, we used to have hobbies, we used to entertain our friends and be entertained by them, we used to go outside for our amusements to theatres, cinemas, restaurants and sporting even used to read books and listen to music and broadcast talks that belongs to the all our free time is regulated by the ‘goggle box’.we rush home or gulp down our meals to be in time for this or that have even given up sitting at table and having a leisurely evening meal, exchanging the news of the day.a sandwich and a glass of beer will do---anything, providing it doesn’t interfere with the monster demands and obtains absolute silence and any member of the family dares to open his mouth during a programme, he is quickly generations are growing up addicted to the is left uneaten, homework undone and sleep is telly is a universal is now standard practice for mother to keep the children quiet by putting them in the living-room and turning on the doesn’t matter that the children will watch rubbishy commercials or spectacles of sadism and violence---so long as they are is a limit to the amount of creative talent available in the day, television consumes vast quantities of creative is why most of the programme are so bad: it is impossible to keep pace with the demand and maintain high standards as millions watch the same programmes, the whole world becomes a village, and society is reduced to the conditions which obtain in pre-literate become utterly dependent on the two most primitive media of communication: pictures and the spoken sion encourages passive become content with second-hand is so easy to sit in our armchairs watching others by little, television cuts us off from the real get so lazy, we choose to spend a fine day in semi-darkness, glued to our sets, rather than go out into the world sion may be a splendid medium of communication, but it prevents us from communicating with each only becoe aware how totally irrelevant television is to real living when we spend a holiday by the sea or in the mountains, far away from quiet, natural surrounding, we quickly discover how little we miss the hypnotic tyranny of king form of education other than co-education is simply unthinkable

imagine being asked to spend twelve or so years of your life in society which consisted only of members of your own would you react? unless there was something definitely wrong with you, you wouldn’t be too happy about it, to say the is all the more surprising therefore that so many parents in the world choose to impose such abnormal conditions on their children—conditions which they themselves wouldn’t put up with for one minute!

any discussion of this topic is bound to question the aims of ng children’s heads full of knowledge is far from being foremost among of the chief aims of education is to equip future citizens with all they require to take their place in adult adult society is mad up of men and women, so how can a segregated school possibly offer the right sort of preparation for it? anyone entering adult society after years of segregation can only be in for a shock.a co-educational school offers children noting less than a true version of society in and girls are given the opportunity to get to know each other, to learn to live together from their earliest are put in a position where they can compare themselves with each other in terms of academic ability, athletic achievement and many of the extra-curricular activities which are part of school a practical advantage it is to be able to put on a school play in which the male parts will be taken by boys and the female parts by girls!what nonsense co-education makes of the argument that boys are cleverer than girls or vice segregated, boys and girls are made to feel that they are a race y between the sexes is a co-educational school, everything falls into its proper perhaps the greatest contribution of co-education is the healthy attitude to life it don’t grow up believing that women are mysterious creatures-airy goddesses, more like book-illustrations to a fairy-tale, than human don’t grow up imagining that men are romantic of living together at school dispel illusions of this are no goddesses with freckles, pigtails, piercing voices and inky are no romantic heroes with knobbly(粗糙的)knees, dirty fingernails and unkempt awkward stage of adolescence brings into sharp focus some of the physical and emotional problems involved in growing can better be overcome in a co-educational ated schools sometimes provide the right conditions for sexual is hardly possible under a co-educational the time comes for the pupils to leave school, they are fully prepared to enter society as well-adjusted have already had years of experience in coping with many of the problems that face men and g is the ideal way of spending a holiday

there was a time when camping was considered to be a poor way of spending a holiday: ok for boy scouts and hard-up students, but hardly the thing for sophisticated, comfort-loving adults have at last discovered that the boy scouts havereally been on to a good thing all these you go camping, it no longer means that you will be bitten to death by mosquitoes;suffocate or freeze in a sleeping-bag;hump gargantuan weights on your g has become the great pursuit of motorists the world the discomforts associated with it have been miraculously whisked a modest outlay, you can have a comfortable, insulated a not-so-modest outlay, you can have an elaborate affair which resembles a portable bungalow, complete with three bedrooms, a living-room, a kitchen and a portable furniture is light and comfortable;the gas stove brews excellent coffee or grills a tender steak;the refrigerator keeps the beer and ice-cream cold;and as for a good night’s rest, well, you literally sleep on more could you want?

no wonder the great rush is see, camping has so much to enjoy absolute have none of the headaches of advance hotel booking or driving round and round a city at midnight looking for a are no cold hotel breakfasts, no surly staff to a ludicrously small sum, you can enjoy comforts which few hotels could camping sites are well equipped with hot and cold running water and even shops and dance floors!low-cost holidays make camping an attractive above all, you enjoy tremendous you don’t like a place, or if it is too crowded, you can simply get up and sely, you can stay as long as you ’re the then there’s the sheer fun of it—especially if you have a around a stuffy hotel room wondering what they are going to give you for dinner is a tedious comparison, it’s so exciting to arrive at a camp site, put up your tent and start getting a meal are active all the time and you are always close to e yourself beside some clear stream with mountains in the is falling, everything is peaceful—except for the delightful sound of chops sizzling in the pan!camping provides you with a real change from everyday get up earlier, go to bed earlier, develop a hearty have enormous opportunity to meet people of various nationalities and to share your pleasures with are so friendly when they are remote the strained world of hotels seems when you are camping!how cold and unfriendly the formal greetings that are exchanged each day between the residents!for a few precious weeks in the year, you really adopt a completely different way of that’s the essence of true recreation and real fashions in clothing are created solely for the commercial exploitation of women

whenever you see an old film, even one made as little as ten years ago, you cannot help being struck by the appearance of the women taking hair-styles and make-up look dated;their skirts look either too long or too short;their general appearance is, in fact, slightly men taking part in the the other hand, are clearly is nothing about their appearance to suggest that they belong to an entirely different illusion is created by changing the years, the great majority of men have successfully resisted all attempts to make them change their style of same cannot be said for year a few so-called’ top designers’ in paris or london lay down the law and women the whole world over rush to decrees of the designers are unpredictable and year, they decide in their arbitrary fashion, skirts will be short and waists will be high;zips are in and buttons are year the law is reversed and far from taking exception, no one is even mildly women are mercilessly exploited year after year, they have only themselves to e they shudder at the thought of being seen in public in clothes that are out of fashion, they are annually blackmailed by the designers and the big s which have been worn only a few times have to be discarded because of the dictates of you come to think of it, only a woman is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to ng fashions are nothing more than the deliberate creation of women squander vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been who cannot afford to discard clothing is this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they -lines are taken up or let down;waist-lines are taken in or let out;neck-lines are lowered or raised, and so one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to n designers are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, providing they look can hardly be a man who hasn’t at some time in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shivering in a flimsy dress on a wintry day., or delicately picking her way through deep snow in dainty comparing men and women in the matter of fashion, the conclusions to be drawn are the constantly changing fashions of women’s clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of fickleness and instability? men are too sensible to let themselves be bullied by fashion their unchanging styles of dress reflect basic qualities of stability and reliability? that is for you to should all grow fat and be happy

here’s a familiar version of the boy-meets-girl situation.a young man has at last plucked up courage to invite a dazzling young lady out to has accepted his invitation and he is is determined to take her to the best restaurant in town, even if it means that he will have to live on memories and hopes during the month to they get to the restaurant, he discovers that this ethereal creature is on a mustn’t eat this and she mustn’t drink , but of course, she doesn’t want to spoil his him by all means eat as much fattening food as he wants: it’s the surest way to an early spend a truly memorable evening together and never see each other a miserable lot dieters are!you can always recognize them from the sour expression on their spend most of their time turning their noses up at are forever consulting calorie charts;gazing at themselves in mirrors;and leaping on to weighting-machines in the spend a lifetime fighting a losing battle against spreading hips, protruding tummies and double wage all-out war on dieting is not y exhaust themselves doing exercises, sweating in sauna baths, being pummeled and massaged by weird really wealthy diet-mongers pay vast sums for ’health cures’.for two weeks they can enter a ‘nature clinic’ and be starved to death for a hundred guineas a ’t think it’ s only the middle-aged who go in for these fads of these bright young things you see are suffering from chronic malnutrition: they living on nothing by air, water and the goodwill of s undertake to starve themselves of their own free will so why are they so miserable? well, for one thing, they’re always can’t be hungry and happy at the same the horrible concoctions they eat instead of food leave them permanently dissatisfied.‘ wonderfood is a complete food,’ the advertisement says.‘ just dissolve a teaspoonful in water…’ a complete food it may be, but not quite as complete as a juicy , of course, they’re always miserable because they feel so just proves too much for them and in the end they lash out and devour five huge guilt-inducing cream cakes at a who can blame them? at least three times a day they are exposed to utter torture it is always watching others tucking into piles of mouth-watering food while you munch a water biscuit and sip unsweetened lemon juice!

what’s all this self-inflicted torture for? saintly people deprive them selves of food to attain a state of tly people do so to attain a state of sill be a great day when all the dieters in the world abandon their slimming courses;when they hold out their plates and demand second helpings! younger generation knows best

old people are always saying that the young are not what they same comment is made from generation to generation and it is always has never been truer than it is young are better have a lot more money to spend and enjoy more grow up more quickly and are not so dependent on their think more for themselves and do not blindly accept the ideals of their which the older generation remembers vividly are nothing more than past is as it should new generation is different from the one that preceded the difference is very marked old always assume that they know best for the simple reason that they have been around a bit don’t like to feel that their values are being questioned or this is precisely what the young are are questioning the assumptions of their elders and disturbing their take leave to doubt that the older generation has created the best of all possible they reject more than anything is hours, for instance, are nothing more than enforced ’t people work best if they were given complete freedom and responsibility? and what about clothing? who said that all the men in the world should wear drab gray suits and convict haircuts? if we turn our minds to more serious matters, who said that human differences can best be solved through conventional politics or by violent means? why have the older generation so often used violence to solve their problems? why are they so unhappy and guilt-ridden in their personal lives, so obsessed with mean ambitions and the desire to amass more and more material possessions? can anything be right with the rat race? haven’t the old lost touch with all that is important in life?

these are not questions the older generation can shrug off record over the past forty years or so hasn’t been exactly ionally, the young have turned to their elders for , the situation might be old—if they are prepared to admit it—could learn a thing or two from their of the biggest lessons they could learn is that enjoyment is not ‘sinful’.enjoyment is a principle one could apply to all aspects of is surely not wrong to enjoy your work and enjoy your leisure;to shed restricting is surely not wrong to live in the present rather than in the past or emphasis on the present is only to be expected because the young have grown up under the shadow of the bomb: the constant threat of complete is their glorious we be surprised that they should so often question the sanity of the generation that bequeathed it? stricter traffic laws can prevent accidents from the health point of view we are living in a marvellous are immunized from birth against many of the most dangerous diseases.a large number of once fatal illnesses can now be cured by modern drugs and is almost certain that one day remedies will be found for the most stubborn remaining expectation of life has increased though the possibility of living a long and happy life is greater than ever before, every day we witness the incredible slaughter of men, women and children on the versus the motor-car!it is a never-ending battle which man is nds of people the world over are killed or horribly mutilated each year and we are quietly sitting back and letting it has been rightly said that when a man is sitting behind a steering wheel, his car becomes the extension of his is no doubt that the motor-car often brings out a man’s very worst who are normally quiet and pleasant may become unrecognizable when they are behind a swear, they are ill-mannered and aggressive, willful as two-year-olds and utterly their hidden frustrations, disappointments and jealousies seem to be brought to the surface by the act of surprising thing is that society smiles so benignly on the motorist and seems to condone his hing is done for his are allowed to become almost uninhabitable because of heavy traffic;towns are made ugly by huge car parks;the countryside is desecrated by road networks;and the mass annual slaughter becomes nothing more than a statistic, to be conveniently is high time a world code were created to reduce this senseless waste of human regard to driving, the laws of some countries are notoriously lax and even the strictest are not strict enough.a code which are universally accepted could only have a dramatically beneficial effect on the accident are a few examples of some of the things that might be driving test should be standardized and made far more difficult than it is;all drivers should be made to take a test every three years or so;the age at which young people are allowed to drive any vehicle should be raised to at least 21;all vehicles should be put through stringent annual tests for the smallest amount of alcohol in the blood can impair a person’s driving t drinking and driving laws(where they exist)should be made much m and minimum speed limits should be imposed on all ments should lay down safety specifications for manufacturers, as has been done in the advertising stressing power and performance should be measures may sound inordinately harsh, but surely nothing should be considered as too severe if it results in reducing the annual toll of human all, the world is for human beings, not s are too permissive with their children nowadays few people would defend the victorian attitude to children, but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not and company did away with all that and parents have been bewildered ever child’s happiness is all-important, the psychologists say, but what about the parents’ happiness? parents suffer constantly from fear and guilt while their children gaily romp about pulling the place apart.a good old-fashioned spanking is out of the question;no modern child-rearing manual would permit such trouble is you are not allowed even to knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? the poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic it is that parents bend over backwards to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago hadn’t even been heard nly a child needs love, and a lot of the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than logists have succeeded in undermining parents’ confidence in their own it hasn’t taken children long to get wind of the addition to the great modern classics on child care, there are countless articles in magazines and so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don’t know what to do any the end, they do nothing at , from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents’ lives are regulated according to the needs of their the little dears develop into teenager, they take complete authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more the young people are going to have a party, for instance, parents are asked to leave the presence merely spoils the else can the poor parents do but obey? children are hardy creatures(far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe)and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is the normal condition in the modern a great many do spread of juvenile delinquency in our own age is largely due to parental , believing that little johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little johnny roams the dividing-line between permissiveness and sheer negligence is very fine psychologists have much to answer should keep their mouths shut and let parents get on with the if children are knocked about a little bit in the process, it may not really matter too least this will help them to develop vigorous views of their own and give them something positive to react s there’s some truth in the idea that children who’ve had a surfeit of happiness in their childhood emerge like stodgy puddings and fail to make a success of iers perform a useful service to the community advertisers tend to think big and perhaps this is why they’re always coming in for critics seem to resent them because they have a glair for self-promotion and because they have so much money to throw around.‘it’s iniquitous.’ they say, ‘that this entirely unproductive industry(if we can call it that)should absorb millions of pounds each only goes to show how much profit the big companies are don’t they stop advertising and reduce the price of their goods? after all, it’s the consumer who pays…’

the poor old consumer!he’d have to pay a great deal more if advertising didn’t create mass markets for is precisely because of the heavy advertising that consumer goods are so we get the wrong idea if we think the only purpose of advertising is to sell r equally important function is to inform.a great deal of the knowledge we have about household goods derives largely from the advertisements we isements introduce us to new products or remind us of the existence of ones we already know ing you wanted to buy a washing-machine, it is more than likely you would obtain details regarding performance, price, etc., from an of people pretend that they never read advertisements, but this claim may be seriously is hardly possible not to read advertisements these what fun they often are, too!just think what a railway station or a newspaper would be like without you enjoy gazing at a blank wall or reading railway bye-laws while waiting for a train? would you like to read only closely-printed columns of news in your daily paper? a cheerful, witty advertisement makes such a difference to a drab wall or a newspaper full of the daily ration of must not forget , either, that advertising makes a positive contribution to our pers, commercial radio and television companies could not subsist without this source of fact that we pay so little for our daily paper, or can enjoy so many broadcast programmes is due entirely to the money spent by think what a newspaper would cost if we had to pay its full price!another thing we mustn’t forget is the ‘ small ads.’ which are in virtually every newspaper and a tremendously useful service they perform for the community!just about anything can be accomplished through these instance, you can find a job, buy or sell a house, announce a birth, marriage or death in what used to be called the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ columns;but by far the most fascinating section is the personal or ‘agony’ other item in a newspaper provides such entertaining reading or offers such a deep insight into human ’s the best advertisement for advertising there is! stars certainly earn their money pop stars today enjoy a style of living which was once the prerogative only of er they go, people turn out in their thousands to greet crowds go wild trying to catch a brief glimpse of their smiling, colourfully-dressed stars are transported in their chauffeur-driven rolls-royces, private helicopters or executive are surrounded by a permanent entourage of managers, press-agents and raphs of them appear regularly in the press and all their comings and goings are reported, for, like royalty, pop stars are they enjoy many of the privileges of royalty, they certainly share many of the inconveniences as is dangerous for them to make unscheduled appearances in must be constantly shielded from the adoring crowds which idolize are no longer private receive for this sacrifice cannot be calculated, for their rates of pay are shy not? society has always rewarded its top entertainers great days of hollywood have become legendary;famous stars enjoyed fame, wealth and adulation on an unprecedented today’s standards, the excesses of hollywood do not seem quite so spectacular.a single gramophone record nowadays may earn much more in royalties than the films of the past ever competition for the title’ top of the pops’ is fierce, but the rewards are truly is only right that the stars should be paid in this ’t the top men in industry earn enormous salaries for the services they perform to their companies and their countries? pop stars earn vast sums in foreign currency-often more than large industrial concerns-and the taxman can only be grateful for their massive annual contributions to the who would begrudge them their rewards? it’s all very well for people in humdrum jobs to moan about the successes and rewards of who make envious remarks should remember that the most famous stars represent only the tip of the every famous star, there are hundreds of others struggling to earn a living.a man working in a steady job and looking forward to a pension at the end of it has no right to expect very high has chosen security and peace of mind, so there will always be a limit to what he can a man who attempts to become a star is taking enormous knows at the outset that only a handful of competitors ever get to the very knows that years of concentrated effort may be rewarded with complete he knows, too, that the rewards for success are very high indeed: they are the recompence for the huge risks involved and if he achieves them, he has certainly earned ’s the essence of private s and dangerous sports should be banned by law when you think of the tremendous technological progress we have made, it’s amazing how little we have developed in other may speak contemptuously of the poor old romans because they relished the orgies of slaughter that went on in their may despise them because they mistook these goings on for may forgive them condescendingly because they lived 2000 years ago and obviously knew not are our feelings of superiority really justified? are we any less blood-thirsty? why do boxing matches, for instance, attract such universal interest? don’t the spectators who attend them hope they will see some violence? human beings remain as blood-thirsty as ever they y only difference between ourselves and the romans is that while they were honest enough to admit that they enjoyed watching hungry lions tearing people apart and eating them alive, we find all sorts of sophisticated arguments to defend sports which should have been banned long ago;sports which are quite as barbarous as, say, public hangings or really is incredible that in this day and age we should still allow hunting or bull-fighting, that we should be prepared to sit back and watch two men batter each other to pulp in a boxing ring, that we should be relatively unmoved by the sight of one or a number of racing cars crashing and bursting into us not deceive talk of ‘ the sporting spirit’ is sheer take part in violent sports because of the high rewards they tors are willing to pay vast sums of money to see violence.a world heavyweight championship match, for instance, is front page ns of people are disappointed if a big fight is over in two rounds instead of feel disappointment because they have been deprived of exquisite pleasure of witnessing prolonged torture and should we ban violent sports if people enjoy them so much? you may well answer is simple: they are centuries man has been trying to improve himself spiritually and emotionally-admittedly with little at least we no longer tolerate the sight madmen cooped up in cages, or public floggings or any of the countless other barbaric practices which were common in the s are no longer the grim forbidding places they used to welfare systems are in operation in many parts of the efforts are being made to distribute wealth changes have come about not because human beings have suddenly and unaccountably improved, but because positive steps were taken to change the law is the biggest instrument of social change that we have and it may exert great civilizing we banned dangerous and violent sports, we would be moving one step further to improving would recognize that violence is degrading and unworthy of human stor radios should be prohibited in public places we have all heard of the sort of person who drives fifty miles into the country, finds some perfectly delightful beauty spot beside a quiet lake and then spends the rest of the day cleaning his ed with those terrible fiends, the litter-bugs and noise-makers, this innocent creature can only be an object of interferes with no one’s from it: after all, cleanliness is said to be next to is the noise-makers who invade the quietest corners of the earth that must surely win the prize for announce their arrival with a flourish that would put the royal heralds to g music(never classical)seems to emanate mysteriously from their persons and their you travel up the remotest reaches of the amazon, surviving attacks by crocodiles and vicious piranha, don’t be surprised if you hear cheering crowds and a football commentary shattering the peace of the is only one of our friends with his little transistor transistor radio, that great wonder of modern technology, often no bigger than a matchbox, must surely be the most hideous and diabolic of all human are arrested, fined, imprisoned, deported, certified as insane or executed for being public can’t loiter outside a shop for five minutes or sing the opening bars of figaro in public without arousing the suspicion of every policeman in the you can walk on to a beach or into a park and let all hell loose with your little transistor and no one will turn a hair-no one in authority, that of the people around you will be writhing in agony, but what can they do about it? have you ever tried asking the surly owner of a transistor to turn it off? this is what will happen if you do: you will either be punched on the nose for your impertinence, or completely that you can be sure that the radio will be turned up louder than ever is one of the most unpleasant features of modern knows what it invisibly contributes to irritability and stress? governments everywhere go to tremendous lengths to reduce c sounds are carefully measured in decibels;levels of tolerance are recorded and statistics produced to provide the basis for future ate and expensive tests are conducted to find out our reactions to supersonic is all very commendable, but surely the interest in our welfare is adjusted to the more obvious sources of noise ages a is the less obvious sources that need the transistor radio is foremost among is impossible to adjust to the transistor radio because the noise it produces is never the same: it can be anything from a brass band to a news inconsiderate is not a interfering with other people’s pleasure certainly should is ridiculous that the law should go on allowing this indecent assault on our only thing people are interested in today is earning more money once upon a time there lived a beautiful young woman and a handsome young were very poor , but as they were deeply in love, they wanted to get young people’s parents shook their heads.‘you can’t get married yet,’ they said.‘wait till you get a good job with food prospects.’ so the young people waited until they found good jobs with good prospects and they were able to get y were still poor, of didn’t have a house to live in or any furniture, but that didn’t young man had a good job with good prospects, so large organizations lent him the money he needed to buy a house , some furniture, all the latest electrical appliances and a couple lived happily ever after paying off debts for the rest of their so ends another modern romantic live in a materialistic society and are trained from our earliest years to be possessions, ‘ mine’ and ‘yours’ are clearly labeled from early we grow old enough to earn a living, it does not surprise us to discover that success is measured in terms of the money you spend the whole of our lives keeping up with our neighbours, the we buy a new television set, jones is bound to buy a bigger and better we buy a new car, we can be sure that jones will go one better and get two new cars: one for his wife and one for most amusing thing about this game is that the joneses and all the neighbours who are struggling frantically to keep up with them are spending borrowed money kindly provided, at a suitable rate of interest, of course, by friendly banks, insurance companies, is not only in affluent societies that people are obsessed with the idea of making more er goods are desirable everywhere and modern industry deliberately sets out to create new are the days when industrial goods were made to last wheels of industry must be kept turning.‘ built-in obsolescence’ provides the means: goods are made to be get tinnier and no sooner acquire this year’s model than you are thinking about its materialistic outlook has seriously influenced and fewer young people these days acquire knowledge only for its own course of studies must lead somewhere: a bigger wage demand for skilled personnel far exceeds the supply and big companies compete with each other to recruit students before they have completed their ng salaries and ‘fringe benefits’ are offered to ting tactics of this kind have let to the ‘brain drain’, the process by which highly skilled people offer their services to the highest wealthier nations deprive their poorer neighbours of their most able mammon is worshipped as never before, the rich get richer and the poor, sory military service should be abolished in all countries believe it or not, the swiss were once a warlike is still evidence of this day, the guards at the vatican and the swiss discovered long ago that constant warfare brought them nothing but suffering and adopted a policy of neutrality, and while the rest of the world seethed in turmoil, switzerland, a country with hardly any natural resources, enjoyed peace and rest of the world is still not ready to accept this simple and obvious countries not only maintain permanent armies but require all their young men to do a period of compulsory military ody has a lot to say about the desirability of peace, but no one does anything about obvious thing to do would be to abolish conscription would be the first step towards universal countries, like britain, have already abandoned peace-time unately, they haven’t done so for idealistic reasons, but from a simple recognition of the fact that modern warfare is a highly professional the old days, large armies were was strength in numbers;ordinary soldiers were cannon in these days of inter-continental ballistic missiles, of push-button warfare and escalation, unskilled manpower has become a mere two years or so, you can’t hope to train conscripts in the requirements and conditions of modern why bother? leave it to the professionals!there are also pressing personal reasons to abolish is most unpleasant in times of peace for young men to grow up with the threat of military service looming over their are deprived of two of the best and most formative years of their careers and studies are disrupted and sometimes the whole course of their lives is spend at least two years in the armed forces engaged in activities which do not provide them with any useful experience with regard to their future can’t even be argued that what they learn might prove valuable in a national they leave the services, young men quickly forget all the unnecessary information about warfare which they were made to is shocking to think that skilled and unskilled men are often nothing more than a source of cheap labour for the people argue that military service’ does you good’.‘ two years in the army,’ you hear people say, ‘ will knock some sense into him.’ the opposite is usually the would resent being pushed about and bullied for two ears, all in the name of ‘discipline’.the military mind requires uniformity and who do not quite fit into this brutal pattern suffer terribly and may even emerge with serious personality are many wonderful ways of spending two g in the armed forces is not one of them!ood is certainly not the happiest time of your life it’s about time somebody exploded that hoary old myth about childhood being the happiest period of your ood may certainly be fairly happy, but its greatest moments can’t compare with the sheer joy of being an ever asked a six-year-old for an opinion? children don’t have opinions, or if they do, nobody choose the clothes their children will wear, the books they will read and the friends they will play and father are kindly but absolute is an adult world and though children may be deeply lover, they have to be manipulated so as not to interfere too seriously with the lives of their elders and essential difference between manhood and childhood is the same as the difference between independence and all the nostalgic remarks you hear, which adult would honestly change places with a child? think of the years at school: the years spent living in constant fear of examinations and school movement you make, every thought you think is observed by some critical adult who may draw unflattering conclusions about your of the curfews, the martial law, the times you had to go to bed early, do as you were told, eat disgusting stuff that was supposed to be good for er how ‘gentle’ pressure was applied with remarks like ‘ if you don’t do as i say, i’ll…’ and a dire warning would so, these are only part of a child’s matter how kind and loving adults may be, children often suffer from terrible, illogical fears which are the result of ignorance and an inability to understand the world around g can equal the abject fear a child may feel in the dark, the absolute horror of childish can share their fears with other adults;children invariably face their fears the most painful part of childhood is the period when you begin to emerge from it: ers may rebel violently against parental authority, but this causes them great is a complete lack of self-confidence during this cents are over-conscious of their appearance and the impression they make on feel shy, awkward and gs are intense and hearts easily ers experience moments of tremendous elation or black through this turmoil, adults seem to be more hostile than a relief it is to grow ly you regain your balance;the world opens up before are free to choose;you have your own place to live in and your own money to do not have to seek constant approval for everything you are no longer teased, punished or ridiculed by heartless adults because you failed to come up to some theoretical if on occasion you are teased, you know how to deal with can simply tell other adults to go to hell: you are one people are not nice to know you don’t have to be a genius to spot men of the species are often uncombed;their ties never knotted squarely beneath their women of the species always manage to smear lipstick on their faces as well as their lips;in one hand they carry handbags which are stuffed full of accumulated rubbish;with the other, they drag a horde of neglected children behind a sort of happy unconcern, both the male and female species litter railway stations, streets, parks, etc., with sweet wrappings, banana-skins, egg-shells and cast-off are they? that great untidy hand of people that make up about three-quarters of the human unending trail of rubbish pursues them wherever they is most unwise to call on them at their homes-particularly if they aren’t expecting are liable to find socks behind the refrigerator, marbles in the jam and egg-encrusted pers litter the floor;ashtrays overflow;withered flowers go on withering in stale g-desks have become dumping grounds for piles of assorted, indescribable as for the bedrooms, well, it’s best not to looking in their cars, too, because you are likely to find last year’s lolly sticks, chewing-gum clinging to the carpets and a note saying’ running in’ on the rear window of a ten-year-old , but what are they really like? definitely not nice to are invariably dirty, scruffy, forgetful, impatient, slovenly, slothful, unpunctual, inconsiderate, rude, irritable and(if they’re driving a car)positively ness and these delightful qualities always seem to go together, or shall we say that untidiness breeds these ’s hardly you are getting dressed and can only find one sock, you can only end up being irritable and after a visit to a lovely beauty spot you think that other people will enjoy the sight of your orange peel, you can only be inconsiderate and you can’t find an important letter because you stuck it between the pages of a book and then returned the book to the library, you can only be you live in perpetual, self-imposed squalor, you must be slothful-otherwise you’d do something about a delightful minority tidy people are by comparison!they seem to have a monopoly of the best human are clean, neat, patient, hard-working, punctual, considerate and these gifts are reflected in their homes, their gardens, their work, their personal are radiant, welcoming people whom you long to meet, whose esteem you really crux of the matter is that tidy people are kind and generous, while untidy people are mean and best proof of this is that tidy people, acting on the highest, selfless motives, invariably marry untidy happens after that is another story! only way to travel is on foot the past ages of man have all been carefully labeled by ptions like ‘palaeolithic man’, ‘neolithic man’, etc., neatly sum up whole the time comes for anthropologists to turn their attention to the twentieth century, they will surely choose the label ‘legless man’.histories of the time will go something like this:’ in the twentieth century, people forgot how to use their and women moved about in cars, buses and trains from a very early were lifts and escalators in all large buildings to prevent people from situation was forced upon earth-dwellers of that time because of their extraordinary way of those days, people thought nothing of traveling hundreds of miles each the surprising thing is that they didn’t use their legs even when they went on built cable railways, ski-lifts and roads to the top of every huge the beauty spots on earth were marred by the presence of large car parks.’

the future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our our hurry to get from one place to another, we failed to see anything on the travel gives you a bird’s-eye view of the world-or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the drivers, in particular, are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on: they never want to it the lure of the great motorways, or what? and as for sea travel, it hardly deserves is perfectly summed up in the word of the old song:’ i joined the navy to see the world, and what did i see? i saw the sea.’ the typical twentieth-century traveler is the man who always says ‘ i’ve been there.’ you mention the remotest, most evocative place-names in the world like e1 dorado, kabul, irkutsk and someone is bound to say ‘ i’ve been there’—meaning, ‘ i drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else.’

when you travel at high speeds, the present means nothing: you live mainly in the future because you spend most of your time looking forward to arriving at some other actual arrival, when it is achieved, is want to move on traveling like this, you suspend all experience;the present ceases to be a reality: you might just as well be traveler on foot, on the other hand, lives constantly in the him traveling and arriving are one and the same thing: he arrives somewhere with every step he experiences the present moment with his eyes, his ears and the whole of his the end of his journey he feels a delicious physical knows that sound, satisfying sleep will be his: the just reward of all true ations exert a pernicious influence on education we might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and anxiety-makers, examinations are second to is because so much depends on are the mark of success or failure in our whole future may be decided in one fateful doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother things like that don’t count: the exam goes one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and we wonder at the increasing number of ‘ drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students? a good education should, among other things, train you to think for examination system does anything but has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to ations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading;they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all rs themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they most successful candidates are not always the best educated;they are the best trained in the technique of working under results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous ers are only hu get tired and hungry;they make they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of y work under the some sort of pressure as the their word carries a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’ must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? this is what it boils down to in the last analys best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on the wall: ‘ i were a teenage drop-out and now i are a teenage millionaire.’ ,plays and films should be censored let us suppose that you are in the position of a you allow your children to read any book they wanted to without first checking its contents? would you take your children to see any film without first finking out whether it is suitable for them? if your answer to these questions is ‘ yes ‘, then you are either extremely permissive, or just plain your answer is ‘no’, then you are exercising your right as a parent to protect your children from what you consider to be undesirable other words, by acting as a censor yourself, you are admitting that there is a strong case for , of course, you will say that it is one thing to exercise censorship where children are concerned and quite another to do the same for en need protection and it is the parents’ responsibility to provide what about adults? aren’t they old enough to decide what is good for them? the answer is that many adults are, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that all adults are like ship is for the good of society as a civilized people might find it possible to live amicably together without laws of any kind: they would just rely on good sense to solve their imagine what chaos there would be if we lived in a society without laws!like the law, censorship contributes to the common people think that it is disgraceful that a censor should interfere with works of is this person, they say, to ban this great book to cut that great film? no one can set himself up as a superior we must remember two y, where genuine works of art are concerned, modern censors are extremely liberal in their views—often far more liberal than a large section of the ic merit is something which censors clearly secondly, we must bear in mind that the great proportion of books, plays and films which come before the censor are very far from being ‘works of art’.when discussing censorship, therefore, we should not confine our attention to great masterpieces, but should consider the vast numbers of publications and films which make up the bulk of the entertainment censorship laws are relaxed, unscrupulous people are given a licence to produce virtually anything in the name of ‘art’.there is an increasing tendency to equate ‘artistic’ with ‘pornographic’.the vast market for pornography would rapidly be of the great things that censorship does is to prevent certain people from making fat profits by corrupting the minds of argue in favour of absolute freedom is to argue in favour of y would really be the poorer if it deprived itself of the wise counsel and the restraining influence which a censor should be rewarded according to ability, not according to age and experience young men and women today are finding it more and more necessary to protest against what is known as the ‘establishment’: that is , the people who wield power in our s with the authorities are reported almost daily in the tension that exists between old and young could certainly be lessened if some of the most obvious causes were particular, the establishment should adopt different attitudes to work, and the rewards it ’s young people are are equipped with fine educations and are understandably impatient to succeed as quickly as want to be able to have their share of the good things in life while they are still young enough to enjoy establishment, however, has traditionally believed that people should be rewarded according to their age and y counts for the establishment controls the pursestrings, its views are inevitably imposed on ers pay the smallest sum consistent with keeping you in a join the hierarchy and take your place in the you are young, you go to the very end of the queue and stay there no matter how brilliant you you know is much less important than whom you know and how old you you are able, your abilities will be acknowledged and rewarded in due course—that is, after twenty or thirty years have that time you will be considered old enough to join the establishment and you will be expected to adopt its help you if you don’ seems to be a gigantic conspiracy against young on the one hand society provides them with better educational facilities, one the other it does its best to exclude them from the jobs that really are exceptions, of young people do manage to break through the barrier despite the restrictions, but the great majority have to wait patiently for years before they can really give full rein to their means that, in most fields, the views of young people are never heard because there is no one to represent important decisions about how society is to be run are made by people who are too old to remember what it was like to be ent kennedy was tone of the notable of the most tragic aspects of his assassination is that mankind was deprived of a youthful ment is the cause of a great deal of young resent the old because they feel deprived of the good things life has to old resent the young because they are afraid of losing what they have.a man of fifty or so might say, ‘ why should a young rascal straight out of school earn more than i do?’ but if the young rascal is more able, more determined, harder-working than his middle-aged critic, why shouldn’t he? employers should recognize ability and reward it would remove one of the biggest causes of friction between old and young and ultimately it would lead to a better tourist trade contributes absolutely nothing to increasing understanding between nations the tourist trade is all this coming and going, you’d expect greater understanding to develop between the nations of the a bit of it!superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other’s countries at a moderate was once the ‘grand tour’, reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody’ package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old days couldn’t have dreamed what’s the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other? many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the local modern tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered lives at international hotels, where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a ted tours to places of interest are carefully tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers want him to see and no more.a strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own;and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this its very worst, this leads to a new and hideous kind of summer quarters of the inhabitants of the cite universitaire: are temporarily re-established on the island of ool is recreated at torremolinos where the traveler goes not to eat paella, but fish and sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of national don’t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they can test this for five nationalities, say, french , german, english, american and in your mind, match them with these five adjectives? musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, na? from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, ‘anglo-saxons are hypocrites’ or that ‘latin peoples shout a lot’.you only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic face—how trite it sounds!---that all people are are all similar to each other and at the same time all a madman would choose to live in a large modern city ‘avoid the rush-hour’ must be the slogan of large cities the world it is, it’s a slogan no one takes the least notice a day, with predictable regularity, the pot boils er you look it’s people, people, trains which leave or arrive every few minutes are packed: an endless procession of human sardine streets are so crowded, there is hardly room to move on the queues for buses reach staggering takes ages for a bus to get to you because the traffic on the roads has virtually come to a when a bus does at last arrive, it’s so full, it can’t take any more whole crazy system of commuting stretches man’s resources to the smallest unforeseen even can bring about conditions of utter chaos.a power-cut, for instance, an exceptionally heavy snowfall or a minor derailment must always make city-dwellers realize how precarious the balance extraordinary thing is not that people put up with these conditions, but that they actually choose them in preference to anything modern cities are too big to impose their own living conditions on the people who inhabit -dwellers are obliged by their environment to adopt a wholly unnatural way of lose touch with the land and rhythm of is possible to live such an air-conditioned existence in a large city that you are barely conscious of the seasons.a few flowers in a public park(if you have the time to visit it)may remind you that it is spring or summer.a few leaves clinging to the pavement may remind you that it is that, what is gong on in nature seems totally the simple , good things of life like sunshine and fresh air are at a buildings blot out the c fumes pollute the the distinction between day and night is flow of traffic goes on unceasingly and the noise never funny thing about it all is that you pay dearly for the ‘privilege’ of living in a demand for accommodation is so great that it is often impossible for ordinary people to buy a house of their tant rents must be paid for tiny flats which even country hens would disdain to live odation apart, the cost of living is very about everything you buy is likely to be more expensive than it would be in the addition to all this, city-dwellers live under constant crime rate in most cities is very are burgled with alarming breed crime and violence and are full of places you would be afraid to visit at you think about it, they’ re not really fit to live in at anyone really doubt that the country is what was born for and where he truly belongs? ty of opportunity in the twentieth century has not destroyed the class system these days we hear a lot of nonsense about the ‘ great classless society’.the idea that the twentieth century is the age of the common man has become one of the great clichés of our same old arguments are put forward in are some of them: monarchy as a system of government has been completely monarchies that survive have been deprived of all political ted wealth has been savagely reduced by taxation and, in time, the great fortunes will disappear a number of countries the victory has been people rule;the great millennium has become a political has it> close examination doesn’t bear out the is a fallacy to suppose that all men are equal and that society will be leveled out if you provide everybody with the same educational opportunities.(it is debatable whether you can ever provide everyone with the same educational opportunities, but that is another question.)the fact is that nature dispenses brains and ability with a total disregard for the principle of old rules of the jungle,’ survival of the fittest’, and ‘might is right’ are still with spread of education has destroyed the old class system and created a new s are based on ‘aristocracy’ read ‘meritocracy’;in other respects, society remains unaltered: the class system