SAO stands for The Standard Application Online.
美国传统寄宿高中250所有余，其中近200所高中都可以通过SAO系统申请。SAO系统申请需要学生完成学生文书（Student Statement）及部分学校（10所左右）需要完成自己的补充文书（Supplement）。
这篇我们主要针对SAO系统文书的第四篇进行讲解。
What are the reasons you want to attend an independent school? What do you believe you will contribute to a school community?
你为什么想在私立学校就读？你相信你可以为学校所在的社区贡献什么？
这是一个特别好的问题，要学生成熟地思考去美高读书这个重大的决定。
这是一个关于学生教育经历和教育认同感的问题；看看学生是做好足够的功课有很强的欲望才申请美高还是只是盲目逃避国内的学业。
对社区的贡献是一个基本的概念，需要学生了解他们可以做和愿意做什么。这个问题很好地展示了学生未来美国学校和社会融入度的问题。
📌 思考：何为好的国家？
👉 high economic productivity
👉 high social equality
👉 high social trust
👉 high levels of personal happiness
经济生产率高、社会平等、社会互信、个人幸福
路不拾遗知政肃，野多滞穗是时和。
——《入境寄集贤林舍人》（米芾）
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Progressives say it’s because they have generous welfare states.
Some libertarians point out that these countries score high on nearly every measure of free market openness.
Immigration restrictionists note that until recently they were ethnically homogeneous societies.
🔑
What really launched the Nordic nations was generations of phenomenal educational policy.
📌 思考：何为好的教育？
They realized that if their countries were to prosper they had to create truly successful “folk schools” for the least educated among them. They realized that they were going to have to make lifelong learning a part of the natural fabric of society.
他们意识到，要想国家繁荣，他们就必须为其中受教育程度最低的人创办真正有效的“民间学校”，并将终身学习变成社会的一种常态。
fabric of society
社会结构
Unhappiness was woven into the natural fabric of people's lives.
It means the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person. It was based on the idea that if people were going to be able to handle and contribute to an emerging industrial society, they would need more complex inner lives.
它指的是一个人在道德、情感、智力和公民性方面的彻底转变，基于的理念是：如果人们想要适应一个新兴工业社会并为其做出贡献，他们需要更为丰富的内心世界。
学道之士，不必向外求玄妙。苟于日用一切境界，不被所瞒，从着衣吃饭处一眼看破，便是真实向上工夫。
——《憨山老人梦游集》卷第四 （憨山大师）
Education is devised to change the way students see the world. It is devised to help them understand complex systems and see the relations between things — between self and society, between a community of relationships in a family and a town.
教育旨在改变学生们看待世界的方式，帮助他们理解复杂的体系，了解事物之间的关系。
👉 be devised to do sth. 被设计用来做某事
devise vt. 巧妙设计，发明（to invent a plan, system, object, etc., usually using your intelligence or imagination）
The umbrella was ingeniously devised to fold up into your pocket. 这把伞的设计很巧妙，可以叠放进口袋。
Education is the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself ever bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying ever bigger personal, moral and existential freedoms.
“That which a person did not burn for in his young days, he will not easily work for as a man,” Christopher Arndt Bruun wrote. The idea was to create in the mind of the student a sense of wider circles of belonging — from family to town to nation — and an eagerness to assume shared responsibility for the whole.
📌 思考：你能做什么？
【拓展】
1. 拓展阅读：
The Nordic educators also worked hard to develop the student’s internal awareness. That is to say, they helped students see the forces always roiling inside the self — the emotions, cravings, wounds and desires. If you could see those forces and their interplay, as if from the outside, you could be their master and not their slave.
Their intuition was that as people grow, they have the ability to go through developmental phases, to see themselves and the world through ever more complex lenses. A young child may blindly obey authority — Mom, Dad, teacher. Then she internalizes and conforms to the norms of the group. Then she learns to create her own norms based on her own values. Then she learns to see herself as a node in a network of selves and thus learns mutuality and holistic thinking.
The purpose of bildung is to help people move through the uncomfortable transitions between each way of seeing.
That educational push seems to have had a lasting influence on the culture. Whether in Stockholm or Minneapolis, Scandinavians have a tendency to joke about the way their sense of responsibility is always nagging at them. They have the lowest rates of corruption in the world. They have a distinctive sense of the relationship between personal freedom and communal responsibility.
High social trust doesn’t just happen. It results when people are spontaneously responsible for one another in the daily interactions of life, when the institutions of society function well.
If you have a thin educational system that does not help students see the webs of significance between people, does not even help students see how they see, you’re going to wind up with a society in which people can’t see through each other’s lenses.
When you look at the Nordic bildung model, you realize our problem is not only that we don’t train people with the right job skills. It’s that we don’t have the right lifelong development model to instill the mode of consciousness people need to thrive in a complex pluralistic society.
2. 向往的生活：
扬帆载月远相过，佳气葱葱听颂歌。
路不拾遗知政肃，野多滞穗是时和。
天分秋暑资吟兴，晴献溪山入野哦。
便捉蟾蜍共研墨，彩牋书尽剪江波。
——《入境寄集贤林舍人》（米芾）
3. 掷地有声：
教育是一个国家最廉价的国防。
——任正非
📃 文书：
Through my life-changing experience in the boarding program, I learnt the values of responsibility and independence. I know an independent boarding school is where I can continue to grow as I reach for my dreams and create a better, more positive campus atmosphere.
Boarding school life will offer me the opportunity to explore multiple interests simultaneously for the first time. From sports and art to community service and music, I am excited to try new activities and build on my interests in ice hockey, violin, and student leadership. Academically, I love the variety and flexibility of courses, especially physics and engineering related topics. Being able to select courses on robotics and other STEM subjects will most definitely push me towards my dream to become an engineer.
During my years in Singapore, I discovered the importance of community and the role I play in creating a positive environment. As an extremely optimistic and positive person, I am hyper enthusiastic about community service, so I will participate and initiate efforts to help people on and off campus. At school, I also work to create a passionate and caring environment through my leadership in the dorms and on the sports fields as well as organizing helpful brain games through my Memory Ark Club.
Over the next three years, I hope to learn and grow in a supportive and uplifting environment while pursuing my dreams and sharing my passion for art, music, sports, and memory games.
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