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re:中国作文要求中心思想，美国作文要求bal...
中国作文要求中心思想，美国作文要求balance，越有争议的话题，越好写文章，最后还要客观无结果。
范文一则，选自yeeyan(http://article.yeeyan.org/view/92700/112219?from=index_cate_article)
童年时代没有密友更好吗？(A Best Friend? You Must Be Kidding)
FROM the time they met in kindergarten until they were 15, Robin Shreeves and her friend Penny were inseparable. They rode bikes, played kickball in the street, swam all summer long and listened to Andy Gibb, the Bay City Rollers and Shaun Cassidy on the stereo. When they were little, they liked Barbies; when they were bigger, they hung out at the roller rink on Friday nights. They told each other secrets like which boys they thought were cute, as best friends always do.
罗彬施里斯夫和彭妮的友谊始于她们的幼儿园时代，从那时起一直到她们15岁，两人都是糖粘豆：一起踩单车，在街上玩儿童足球，整个夏天都一起游泳。她们在收音机上听安迪吉布，湾市摇滚乐队、还有肖恩卡西迪。小时候，两个女孩子都喜欢芭比娃娃；长大后，周五晚上她们会一起泡在滚轴旱冰场。像所有的好朋友一样，她们会交换彼此的小秘密：比如说觉得哪个男孩子可爱之类的。
Today, Ms. Shreeves, of suburban Philadelphia, is the mother of two boys. Her 10-year-old has a best friend. In fact, he is the son of Ms. Shreeves’s own friend, Penny. But Ms. Shreeves’s younger son, 8, does not. His favorite playmate is a boy who was in his preschool class, but Ms. Shreeves says that the two don’t get together very often because scheduling play dates can be complicated; they usually have to be planned a week or more in advance. “He’ll say, ‘I wish I had someone I can always call,’ ” Ms. Shreeves said.
今天的施里斯夫女士住在费城郊区，是两个男孩子的妈妈。她10岁大的儿子有个好朋友，恰好也就是她的好朋友彭妮的儿子。但她8岁的小儿子没有好朋友。他最喜欢的玩伴是一起上学前班的一个男孩子，但施里斯夫女士说，为这两个孩子安排游戏约会是件蛮复杂的事，一般需要提前一周或者更多，所以两个孩子一起玩的时间并不多。“他会说，‘要是有个随时可以打去电话的朋友就好了。’”施里斯夫女士说道。
One might be tempted to feel some sympathy for the younger son. After all, from Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, the childhood “best friend” has long been romanticized in literature and pop culture — not to mention in the sentimental memories of countless adults.
大家或许会觉得小儿子值得同情。毕竟，汤姆索亚有哈克费恩，哈利波特有荣恩卫斯理，在文学作品以及通俗文化中，童年时代“最要好的朋友”已经被浪漫化了，更别提在无数成年人多愁善感的回忆中了。
But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend?
但是越来越多的老师和儿童工作者开始提出这样一个令家长感到意外的问题：究竟一个孩子该不该有最要好的朋友？
Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.
多数孩子会自然而然地找到密友。哈里斯互动公司去年做的调查显示：在大约3000名年龄在8到24岁的美国人当中，百分之九十四的人拥有至少一个密友。传统意义上来讲，最要好的朋友意味着可以分享秘密以及成绩的伙伴，操场上一起玩，每天放学后都一起离开学校。但对于学校的管理者而言，他们并不喜欢孩子们这些排斥他人的表现，如此紧密的联系可能预示着麻烦：比如形成小圈子、欺负其他同学等等。
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”
克里斯汀雷克波是玛丽学院和圣路易斯主日学校的辅导主任，她表示：“我觉得孩子们更喜欢拥有密友，结伴而行。大人们—老师和辅导员们—则试图阻止他们这么做，我们会劝说孩子们不要有占有某个朋友的想法，并设法安排他们和一大班朋友一起玩。”
“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
“家长们有时会说约翰尼需要那个最要好的朋友，”她说，“我们则会告诉她，他不需要。”
That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years. The days when children roamed the neighborhood and played with whomever they wanted to until the streetlights came on disappeared long ago, replaced by the scheduled play date. While in the past a social slight in backyard games rarely came to teachers’ attention the next day, today an upsetting text message from one middle school student to another is often forwarded to school administrators, who frequently feel compelled to intervene in the relationship. (Ms. Laycob was speaking in an interview after spending much of the previous day dealing with a “really awful” text message one girl had sent another.) Indeed, much of the effort to encourage children to be friends with everyone is meant to head off bullying and other extreme consequences of social exclusion.
这一思考模式直接导致成年人在近年来越来越多地干涉孩子们的社交生活。以前孩子们在街区自由自在地闲逛，想和谁玩就和谁玩，街灯亮起了才肯回家。这样的好日子早已经一去不返啦。取而代之的是安排好的游戏约会。过去，后院游戏时的冷落怠慢很少会在次日引起老师的关注。而今天，一个中学生发给同学的令人不安的短消息常常会被转发给辅导员，辅导员们则感到干涉这段关系是自己的职责所在。（雷克波女士正在和学生谈话，她刚刚在前一天花了大量时间来处理一个女孩发给另一个女孩的一则“相当糟糕”的短信。）事实上，鼓励孩子们和所有人为友就是要阻止校园小霸王的出现，以及避免拉帮结派导致的其它不良后果。
For many child-rearing experts, the ideal situation might well be that of Matthew and Margaret Guest, 12-year-old twins in suburban Atlanta, who almost always socialize in a pack. One typical Friday afternoon, about 10 boys and girls filled the Guest family backyard. Kids were jumping on the trampoline, shooting baskets and playing manhunt, a variation on hide-and-seek.
对于很多育儿专家来说，最理想的情形是这样的：12岁的双胞胎马修和玛格丽特盖斯特住在亚特兰大郊区，他们总是和一群孩子一起玩。通常在周五下午，大概10多个男孩、女孩聚在盖斯特家的后院，孩子们在蹦床上跳来跳去，射篮，玩追捕游戏（和躲猫猫类似的一种游戏）。
Neither Margaret nor Matthew has ever had a best friend. “I just really don’t have one person I like more than others,” Margaret said. “Most people have lots of friends.” Matthew said he considers 12 boys to be his good friends and says he sees most of them “pretty much every weekend.”
玛格丽特和马修都没有最要好的朋友。玛格丽特说，“我真不觉得自己特别喜欢和某个人玩，大家都差不多。”马修则表示：“很多人都有很多朋友。”他把12个经常一起玩的男孩子当做自己的好朋友，还说他们“几乎每个周末”都一起玩。
Their mother, Laura Guest, said their school tries to prevent bullying through workshops and posters. And extracurricular activities keep her children group-oriented — Margaret is on the swim team and does gymnastics; Matthew plays football and baseball.
劳拉盖斯特是双胞胎的妈妈，她说学校试图通过专题讨论会和海报来防止小霸王的出现。而课外活动则帮助她的孩子们适应群体活动：玛格丽特参加了游泳队和体操队；马修踢足球，打篮球。
As the calendar moves into summer, efforts to manage friendships don’t stop with the closing of school. In recent years Timber Lake Camp, a co-ed sleep-away camp in Phoenicia, N.Y., has started employing “friendship coaches” to work with campers to help every child become friends with everyone else. If two children seem to be too focused on each other, the camp will make sure to put them on different sports teams, seat them at different ends of the dining table or, perhaps, have a counselor invite one of them to participate in an activity with another child whom they haven’t yet gotten to know.
夏天到了，学期结束了，但这并不意味着对孩子们友谊的管理也结束了。纽约腓尼基的廷柏湖露营中心组织男、女生都可以参加的露营活动。近年来露营中心开始雇佣 “友谊教练”，他们和露营组织者一起帮助孩子和所有的孩子都能成为朋友。如果两个孩子太亲近了，露营中心会安排他们参加不同的体育活动小组，吃饭时坐在餐桌分开的两头，并由辅导员邀请其中的一个孩子去和另一个还不太认识的孩子一起活动。
“I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for a child to rely on one friend,” said Jay Jacobs, the camp’s director. “If something goes awry, it can be devastating. It also limits a child’s ability to explore other options in the world.”
“我觉得如果孩子依赖某个朋友，这可不太健康，”露营中心的主任杰伊雅各布斯说：“如果中间出了什么岔子，后果会很严重。同时，总是和某个孩子一起玩也会限制孩子们去探索其他的可能性。”
But such an attitude worries some psychologists who fear that children will be denied the strong emotional support and security that comes with intimate friendships.
但这样的论调也引起了一些心理学家的担忧，他们害怕这样一来，孩子们就得不到亲密友谊所带来的情感支持和安全感。
“Do we want to encourage kids to have all sorts of superficial relationships? Is that how we really want to rear our children?” asked Brett Laursen, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University whose specialty is peer relationships. “Imagine the implication for romantic relationships. We want children to get good at leading close relationships, not superficial ones.”
“我们真心想鼓励孩子们只发展这些肤浅表面的友谊关系吗？我们真想孩子们这样成长吗？”布雷特劳尔森说，“设想一下这对浪漫爱情的影响。我们希望孩子们擅长处理亲密关系，而不是表面化的肤浅关系。”劳尔森是佛罗里达大西洋大学研究伙伴关系的心理学教授。
Many psychologists believe that close childhood friendships not only increase a child’s self-esteem and confidence, but also help children develop the skills for healthy adult relationships — everything from empathy, the ability to listen and console, to the process of arguing and making up. If children’s friendships are choreographed and sanitized by adults, the argument goes, how is a child to prepare emotionally for both the affection and rejection likely to come later in life?
很多心理学家认为，亲密的童年友谊不仅能增强孩子的自信心，还会帮助孩子学到维护健康人际关系的基本技能：比如同情心，聆听和安慰的能力，如何应对闹别扭和随后的和解等。如果孩子们的友谊打从一开始就由成年人设计，并使之安全无害，试问孩子们如何在将来的生活中应对爱慕和拒绝？
“No one can teach you what a great friend is, what a fair-weather friend is, what a treacherous and betraying friend is except to have a great friend, a fair-weather friend or a treacherous and betraying friend,” said Michael Thompson, a psychologist who is an author of the book “Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children.”
“没人能告诉你什么是诤友，什么是酒肉朋友，或小人朋友，除非你有这样的一个朋友，”《最好的朋友 最糟的敌人：了解孩子们的社交生活》一书的作者，心理学家迈克汤普森说。
“When a teacher is trying to tone down a best-friend culture, I would like to know why,” Dr. Thompson said. “Is it causing misery for the class? Or is there one girl who does have friends but just can’t bear the thought that she doesn’t have as good a best friend as another? That to me is normal social pain. If you’re mucking around too much in the lives of kids who are just experiencing normal social pain, you shouldn’t be.”
“在老师们试图扼杀密友文化时，我很想知道为什么要这么做？”汤普森博士说道：“好朋友会给班集体带来麻烦吗？或者有女孩子无法忍受自己的好朋友没有其他人的好朋友那么好？在我看来，这不过是正常的社交痛苦。如果你们不过是在干扰正在体验社交痛苦的孩子们，那么你么不该这么做。”
Schools insist they don’t intend to break up close friendships but rather to encourage courtesy, respect and kindness to all. “I don’t see schools really in the business of trying to prevent friendships as far as they are trying to give students an opportunity to interact socially with other students in a variety of different ways,” said Patti Kinney, who was a teacher and a principal in an Oregon middle school for 33 years and is now an official at the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
校方则表示他们并不是要拆散好朋友，但更鼓励孩子们对所有同伴都客气、尊重和友好。“我认为学校并没有阻止孩子们交朋友，校方不过是为孩子们创造更多的机会来和更多的孩子们互动。”在俄勒冈中学执教并担任校长33年的派蒂金尼说。派蒂现在是全美中学校长联合协会的官员。
Still, school officials admit they watch close friendships carefully for adverse effects. “When two children discover a special bond between them, we honor that bond, provided that neither child overtly or covertly excludes or rejects others,” said Jan Mooney, a psychologist at the Town School, a nursery through eighth grade private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “However, the bottom line is that if we find a best friend pairing to be destructive to either child, or to others in the classroom, we will not hesitate to separate children and to work with the children and their parents to ensure healthier relationships in the future.”
不过，学校的管理人员也承认他们时刻关注着亲密的友谊关系可能带来的不良后果。“当两个孩子建立了特别的情感纽带，只要他们不明里暗里地排斥其他人，那么我们就会尊重他们的友谊。”简穆尼说，“但是，我们的底线是密友关系不能够对其中的任何一个孩子带来伤害，也不能影响到班级中的其他孩子。否则我们会毫不犹豫地分开他们，并和这个孩子及其父母沟通，以确保他能够建立更健康的朋友关系。”
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