分类： 赛事资讯

如果您一直在关注我们举办学生社论大赛的九年，您就会知道，每年春天，我们都会邀请世界各地的初中和高中学生就他们喜欢的任何主题撰写意见文章——只要他们能用 450 字或更少的字数提出论点。

感谢许多接受这一挑战的老师，每年我们都会收到数千篇论文。然而，今年是记录簿上的一年：收到了16，664份提交，比以往任何时候都多了约5，000份。为了考虑所有这些，我们招募了68名评委，他们工作了两个多月和六轮阅读，以选择我们在下面和通过这个列出所有决赛入围者的PDF来表彰的200多名学生。

与往常一样，这些文章提供了一个窗口，让我们了解一代人对他们最关心的问题的看法——无论是影响我们所有人的气候变化和政治功能失调等问题，还是学校着装要求和在当今互联网文化中成长的青少年特定现实。

但是，与往常一样，它们也向我们介绍了新的想法和解决方案。今年的获奖者解释了多代人生活的好处，为什么Z世代应该将农业视为职业，模因如何让年轻人加入全球对话，以及为什么学校需要更加关注数百万混血学生进入课堂。

我们将在下周的专栏中发布最高获奖者和亚军的作品，每个上学日三件。我们希望他们能帮助您以新的方式看待世界。请通过留下您的评论让这些学生知道您的想法。

感谢所有参与的人——我们希望您能参加我们的夏季阅读比赛，该比赛从现在开始一直持续到 8 月 19 日。

（学生注意：我们已经公布了我们获得许可的学生的姓名、年龄和学校。如果您希望发表您的文章，请写信给我们 LNFeedback@nytimes.com。

学生社论比赛获奖者

按字母顺序排列，按作者的姓氏排列。

Endangered Languages Are Worth Saving

Every summer evening at 8 p.m. sharp, my grandma and I plant ourselves in front of the TV. Our next hour is filled with on-screen bouts of amnesia, plotting mothers-in-law, and tearful declarations of love in the rain. But what may seem like ordinary soap opera scenes are far more than melodrama and theatrics: Dialogued entirely in Taiwanese Hokkien, they’re artifacts of a once-dying language.

Linguists expect 90 percent of languages to become obsolete in the next century — and this mass extinction is no accident. Under colonial rule, learning or speaking my grandma’s native Hokkien, along with dozens of indigenous languages, was illegal by law. Schools were forbidden to teach using local dialects; formal institutions shifted to operate by the dominant Mandarin; and homegrown languages, stigmatized as coarse and improper through decades of repression by hegemonic language policies and imperialism, became a marker of backwardness. Today, more than half of native Hokkien speakers no longer use the language at home.

Unfortunately, this tragic silencing isn’t a rare practice. In the 1950s, thousands of Native American children were forced to surrender their mother tongues in boarding schools designed to eradicate indigenous identities. Even now, languages are vanishing at the hands of economic and social power struggles in which smaller communities are pressured to adopt the dominant language that governs work, entertainment and daily life. In fact, California repealed a law requiring “English-only” instruction just four years ago.

But shouldn’t we feel relief that we don’t live in the madness of a Tower of Babel society? While lingua francas undoubtedly streamline global communication, language isn’t solely a tool for business negotiations or celebrity gossip. Steeped in history and heritage, it’s a pillar of culture that built ancient empires, immortalized sacred religious texts, and stockpiled centuries of natural and medicinal wisdom. Records of past civilizations, together with poetry, music and folklore, hinge on a language’s grammatical and syntactic quirks.

The impact of language also spills beyond the past to influence ways of thinking in the present. Have you ever wondered why “death” is feminine in some paintings but masculine in others? It turns out that the gendering of nouns in an artist’s native language plays a role in how he or she decides to bring abstract concepts to life. Beyond art, researchers have also found links between language and perceptions of time, color and emotion.

Documentation projects and protective laws are already on the front lines in the battle against language death — but they won’t have a fighting chance until we realize that pruning a language tree kills more than just words. And if we don’t? Then, our rich forests of linguistic diversity will be flattened into barren wastelands, unable to support the cultures and peoples that once thrived within.

Works Cited

Boroditsky, Lera. “How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?” Edge.org, 11 June 2009.

Casey, Nicholas. “Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One.” The New York Times, 26 Dec. 2017.

Gantt, Amy. “Native Language Revitalization: Keeping the Languages Alive and Thriving.” Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

Sandel, Todd L. “Linguistic Capital in Taiwan: The KMT’s Mandarin Language Policy and Its Perceived Impact on Language Practices of Bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi Speakers.” Language in Society, 22 Oct. 2003.

Segel, Edward, and Lera Boroditsky. “Grammar in Art.” Frontiers in Psychology, 13 Jan. 2011.

Tesch, Noah. “Why Do Languages Die?” Encyclopedia Britannica.

How Fast Fashion Became Faster — and Worse for the Earth

The spring dance is in two weeks, and my friend needs help choosing a dress. She beckons me to her phone where an endless mosaic of elegant dresses, not one over $20, dances before my eyes. After much deliberation, she settles on a glamorous sapphire gown with pleated details lining the bodice. Another two weeks later, the dress carpets the bottom of a landfill, worn only once.

Welcome to the world of fast fashion.

Fast fashion is a relatively recent phenomenon. During the 1990s, retailers began to introduce trendy, cheaply-priced, poorly-made clothes on a weekly basis, intending to match the breakneck pace at which fashion trends move. Style became cheap, convenient and consumable.

Fast fashion, however, is ultimately a privilege. It is a privilege to buy clothes solely for their style, and it is a privilege to ignore the environmental consequences of doing so. In reality, the aggressive cycle of consumption perpetuated by fast fashion means that the clothes we wear are now more likely than ever to end up as part of the 92 million tons of textile waste produced annually.

During the pandemic, as stores closed, consumers ditched fast fashion staples such as H&M and Zara, instead opting to order from e-commerce social media sensations such as Shein and Asos. (Shein is now valued at $100 billion, more than H&M and Zara combined.) These brands represent an escalation of both fast fashion and its environmental toll.

These fast fashion newcomers thrived during the pandemic because of their unique business models. They exist entirely online, allowing them to ship the thousands of new styles they release daily to consumers directly from their warehouses, avoiding supply chain snags and U.S. import duties in the process. Meanwhile, a reliance on cheap overseas labor and synthetic textiles keeps prices irresistibly low.

These practices, however, are hurting the Earth more than ever before. Because these retailers rely solely on international shipping to move their products, they only exacerbate the annual billion tons of greenhouse gasses released by shipping. Virtually all of these brands sell clothes that contain petroleum-based, resource-intensive synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon. During their lifetime, these fibers are responsible for 35 percent of the microplastics contaminating our oceans and can subsequently take centuries to decompose in landfills.

Though fast fashion represents an understandably alluring combination of style and savings, now, more than ever, we simply cannot quantify the true cost of our clothing with a price tag. When consumers want to update their wardrobe, they can do so sustainably by thrifting, reworking old garments or researching environmentally-conscious brands.

For now, I’ll be at my next school dance rocking the same dress I did last year.

Works Cited

Beall, Abigail. “Why Clothes Are So Hard to Recycle.” BBC Future, 12 July 2020.

Monroe, Rachel. “Ultra-Fast Fashion Is Eating the World.” The Atlantic, 6 Feb. 2021.

Nguyen, Terry. “Shein Is the Future of Fast Fashion. Is That a Good Thing?” Vox, 13 July 2021.

Okamoto, Katie. “Your Laundry Sheds Harmful Microfibers. Here’s What You Can Do About It.” The New York Times, 21 April 2021.

Saul, Jonathan. “Shipping’s Share of Global Carbon Emissions Increases.” Reuters, 4 Aug. 2020.

Williams, Lara. “Rise of Shein Tests an Industry’s Go-Green Commitments.” Bloomberg, 10 April 2022.

Megaconstellations: ‘Stars’ You Don’t Want to See in the Sky

During hot summer nights, my neighbors and I would peer eagerly through our telescope, eyepieces whizzing from blurry stars to the luminescent moon. Like generations before me, I dreamed of galactic battles, Martian populations and meeting Hans Solo. For thousands of years, the seemingly untouchable space has captivated the collective human imagination.

Now, vast networks of satellites that form “megaconstellations” are changing the game. Space has become the lucrative new frontier for the corporate world, with operations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper taking center stage in an effort to provide a global broadband internet service.

The Union of Concerned Scientists reports there are currently over 4,000 satellites in lower Earth orbit, with over tens of thousands to come. Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned with the problem of satellites “photobombing” astronomical observations. As the satellites orbit around Earth’s view, vast captures of distant stars are marred by bright streaks. Polluted images must be thrown out, potentially costing millions of dollars and devastating astronomical observations.

But the problems don’t end there. Miscalculations and the harsh space environment make the satellites especially prone to collisions and degradation, breaking into debris and “space junk.” Thousands of pieces of debris float around the atmosphere, triggering the Kessler Syndrome, where debris causes collisions, causing more debris, and increasing exponentially. As Professors Aaron Boley and Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia report, a “single major fragmentation event from one satellite could affect all operations” in lower Earth orbit. Like a catastrophic domino chain, megaconstellations may eventually render space inaccessible.

While faster internet is undoubtedly a convenience, it shouldn’t come at the cost of keeping our celestial space pristine. Ironically, the current hustle to monetize space closely resembles our own planet’s environmental predicament. When faced with new frontiers, our society tends to adopt an attitude of over-accumulation, especially in competitive markets. This spatial fix ultimately hinders our ability to benefit from these precious environments, as we focus too much on extraction, too little on preservation.

Our collective inheritance of space also means we must act as responsible stewards. Instead of scrambling to fix an irreparably damaged environment, it’s critical to take action now. One proposed buffer explained by The New York Times is a robust international regulatory regime to guide and manage the appropriation of outer space. While it’s unrealistic and ultimately stifling to halt innovation in space, modeling a convention similar to the Air Convention would enable us to harness benefits while ensuring sustainable use.

The age of space commercialization has only just begun. This great “global common” provides a unique space for contemplation, inspiration and celebration across ages and generations. For the sake of aspiring astronauts, astronomy fanatics and Solo fans, let’s keep space clean.

Works Cited

Boley, Aaron C., and Michael Byers. “Satellite Megaconstellations Create Risks in Low Earth Orbit, the Atmosphere and on Earth.” Scientific Reports. 20 May 2021.

Ferreira, Becky. “Amazon Satellites Add to Astronomers’ Worries About the Night Sky.” The New York Times. 10 August 2020.

Sutter, Paul. “Megaconstellations Could Destroy Astronomy and There’s No Easy Fix.” Space.com. 6 October 2021.

Stolen Art: Why We Need Repatriation

The legacy of imperialism is scarred with suffering. After millions of deaths and treaties forged through blood, that’s not a particularly controversial statement. Yet in the softly illuminated halls of museum exhibits, Western countries flaunt their imperialist history by displaying plundered art.

A couple of years ago, I visited the Summer Palace in Beijing. Glazed towers rose above a lush forest, painted against the blue sky and the even bluer Kunming Lake. However, as my mother told me then, this complex was a shadow of the old Summer Palace, which was sacked by British and French forces in 1860. Led by the British commander Lord Elgin, pieces were taken to be auctioned, and the fallen palace was burned to the ground.

Now, regal scepters and shining jade from the old Summer Palace grace the Royal Collection and other British museums. Each unreturned artifact is a reminder of the century of humiliation that Western nations imposed upon China. As Chinese nationalism grows, this resentment festers in the already tense political relations between the East and West.

But the issue extends beyond China. In the world of art history, Elgin is an infamous name. Starting in 1802, Lord Elgin’s father and his men carved intricate friezes and metopes from the famous Athena Parthenon in Greece and shipped them to London, where they are now kept in the British Museum. The Greek government has since demanded the return of these artifacts, known as the Elgin Marbles.

If the Elgin Marbles were repatriated, they would be displayed in the Acropolis Museum. Here, in the exhibit where plaster molds of the Elgin Marbles stand in lieu of the real ones, soaring windows offer a panoramic view of the Acropolis. Only here, where the viewer is free to envision how these artifacts once decorated the Parthenon, can their full historical context be appreciated in all its antique glory.

However, some fear that repatriation would cause the downfall of encyclopedic museums. Referring to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a gem taken from the Sikh Empire following the colonization of India, the former British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that “if you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty.”

But perhaps some museums should be emptied.

The British Museum’s founder, Sir Hans Sloane, funded his collection through imperial networks and backbreaking Jamaican slavery. In Belgium, the Africa Museum — where Congolese were once exhibited like zoo animals — was constructed with profits from King Leopold’s cruel Congo.

No matter what renovations are made, history cannot change. These museums, built on the foundations of colonialism, serve as modern shrines to oppressive imperial ideals, and refusing to return stolen art is an insult to all those who suffered under them.

Works Cited

Bernhard, Meg. “Belgium Confronts Ugly Colonial Past, but African Museum Changes Don’t Please Everyone.” Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2019.

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “The British Museum Was a Wonder of Its Time — but Also a Product of Slavery.” Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Oct. 2017.

Bowlby, Chris. “The Palace of Shame That Makes China Angry.” BBC, 2 Feb. 2015.

Nayeri, Farah. “Remembering the Racist History of ‘Human Zoos.’” The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2021.

Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “The New Acropolis Museum: A Dialogue With Antiquity.” The New York Times, 30 Oct. 2007.

Tweedie, Neil. “The Koh-i-Noor: Diamond Robbery?” The Telegraph, 29 July 2010.

High on Helping: The Dangers of Voluntourism

As an Asian student in the United States, I’ve faced my share of cringe-inducing cultural insensitivity and casual imperialism. But in the summer of 2020, ironically, I was guilty of the exact same.

A group of peers and I had traveled to Myanmar, ostensibly to create a musical to promote and preserve the Wa people’s artistic culture. The fact that none of us had any background in anthropology, musicology or production was strangely irrelevant. “Hi! I’m here to protect your heritage by publicizing your customs to the world,” I announced shamelessly to the Wa chief.

Welcome to the rapidly growing industry of voluntourism, which markets itself as a seamless blend of charity and leisure. Organizing trips for over 10 million people annually, voluntourism agencies reap billions from their clients’ good intentions. The seemingly benevolent nature of the activity has made it a top choice extracurricular for students who can afford it.

Unfortunately, most participants (including my past self) are blind to its disturbing consequences. In the words of a New York Times article, voluntourists assume that “simply by being privileged enough to travel the world” they “are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills.”

The idea that voluntourism is based in egotism, not altruism, may be a tough pill to swallow. But voluntourists’ actions are often fruitless due to the volunteers’ limited involvement and expertise. Put bluntly, many of these trips serve no purpose other than to pad resumes and fuel social media posts. It is up to universities, at whom much of this business is aimed, to point out explicitly how superficial — or downright detrimental — these efforts can be.

Voluntourism implicitly teaches students to develop a “white savior” complex toward the regions they visit. More insidiously, residents of host communities can become dependent on foreign influence — financial influence, that is, because none of the voluntourists’ other impacts typically last longer than their trip. As Pippa Biddle illustrates in the book “Ours To Explore,” once one group “[finishes] building bathrooms at a local school and [leaves] for home, the structures [will be] demolished to make way for a new project, built by a fresh set of volunteers.” She even documented how children in Uganda learned to “rub dirt on themselves before running toward arriving volunteers.”

Many students don’t realize that to better the world, they don’t have to leave their own neighborhoods, let alone their continent. While helping seniors set up grocery deliveries may not sound as exciting as building schools for impoverished children, it demonstrates what colleges really want to see, without the hefty price tag and overtones of imperialism. As I learned myself, all that matters is having a long-term positive impact — there’s no need to make a song and dance.

Works Cited

Bansal, Sarika. “Do No Harm: The Dark Side of Voluntourism.” Driving Change, 8 Dec. 2021.

Biddle, Pippa. “Ours To Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism.” Potomac Books, an Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

Kushner, Jacob. “The Voluntourist’s Dilemma.” The New York Times, 22 March 2016.

To Meme or Not to Meme

Sometime in late February, I go about my usual routine: homework, short respite on TikTok, repeat. As I mindlessly swipe past dance trends and makeup tutorials, the unexpected catches my eye: shaky footage showing solemn soldiers marching, weapons drawn.

Immediately, I open the comment section to find users just as dumbstruck as I am. One proclaims, “I can’t believe I found out about a war on this app,” and thousands “like” the comment in agreement.

With that, most teenagers, including myself, first became aware of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the social media platform TikTok.

For today’s adolescents, consuming news via social media is second nature; memes, in particular, are used to keep up with ever-evolving world affairs. With fast-paced production, easy-to-understand lingo, and laugh-out-loud humor, memes have connected an entire generation through a common language.

However, criticisms have arisen, claiming memes trivialize serious subjects. The Russia-Ukraine war has been no exception, with jokes being shared about World War III drafts and how Marvel’s Avengers would react in such a scenario. In the spur of online frenzy, memes have homogenized real-life tragedies with humor.

Social media has led to a point where “the trivial follows the dire, the personal appears alongside the public,” according to Hayley Phelan in a guest essay for The New York Times. “War starts to blend with entertainment.”

This, in turn, begs the question: Can crises be memed?

The majority of meme content has been fueled by teenagers whose coming-of-age has been accompanied by generation-defining events. As the digital media strategist Joshua Chapdelaine said in an article for Teen Vogue, memes create the “perfect vessels for high-anxiety moments when words may be difficult to find.” Processing emotions through unprecedented times can be complex, but memes alleviate that difficulty through their ability to transcend emotional boundaries.

Moreover, memes allow teenagers to openly participate in discussions regarding political and social developments. With their less intimidating nature, memes ease the process in which opinions are shared and formed. “As the memes and their narratives travel and spread, they help shape the larger cultural narrative … just as all memes, from toxic to wholesome, help create cultural narratives,” writes Aja Romano in Vox. Accessible by anyone, memes serve as the youth’s entry into becoming well-informed citizens. At a time of undeniably high sociopolitical tension, it is crucial that youth are aware of global issues; memes facilitate exactly that.

Despite seemingly lacking sophistication, memes are effectively raising awareness for a teenage audience. Just as the generation before had political cartoons, today’s youth have memes to engage in political discourse. Through this revolutionary method of communication, memes are shaping the way teens interact with the world.

Works Cited

Colombo, Charlotte. “Westerners, Please Stop With the Memes and Hot Takes on the Ukraine Crisis.” HuffPost, 7 March 2022.

Colombo, Charlotte. “Memes and War: Why People Turn to Jokes During Times of Crisis.” Teen Vogue, 3 March 2022.

Phelan, Hayley. “Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and the Insidious Meme-Ification of War.” The New York Times, 26 March 2022.

Romano, Aja. “Reckoning With the War Meme in Wartime.” Vox, 25 Feb. 2022.

How ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Diminishes Same-Sex Parents and Their Children

As a rosy-cheeked nine-year-old, I beamed as I walked down a grassy aisle blanketed with flower petals. Serving as a ring bearer for my two dads’ wedding in 2014, I had spent months crafting handmade ring pillows to celebrate my parents. I felt proud to be a part of history.

But today, trouble is brewing. Stories like mine could become off-limits in schools in light of a recent wave of hateful legislation. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed House Bill 1557 — dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents — on March 28. The bill stipulates that classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity “may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students,” according to The New York Times. Similar bills have been introduced in more than a dozen states.

These bills’ vague language calls into question how they will be applied: Who gets to decide what is “appropriate” for a particular age group? Opponents of Florida’s bill have rightly pointed out the danger this ambiguity poses to L.G.B.T.Q. students. But less discussed is how the children of same-sex parents will fare as a result of “Don’t Say Gay.”

Kids with L.G.B.T.Q. parents may grow up without their teachers acknowledging their families. It’s not far-fetched to imagine lawsuits from bigoted parents seeking to use these laws to shut out any L.G.B.T.Q. presence in the curriculum. Even progressive teachers may steer clear of recognizing same-sex parents in class out of fear of losing their jobs. Paula Stephens, a first-grade teacher in Florida, said she now does not know how to proceed with her usual curriculum. This is probably the most sinister aspect of “Don’t Say Gay”: In trying to navigate such deliberately vague language, teachers may have to choose between their own livelihoods and treating their students humanely.

Some same-sex parents have already taken a stand against this injustice, including Lourdes Casares and Kimberly Feinberg, a Floridian couple who mounted a legal challenge to “Don’t Say Gay” on March 31. If laws are passed in other states, other families should follow their lead. We must also compel state and local officials and their corporate supporters to take a stand against this hate.

Advocates of “Don’t Say Gay” claim they support the rights of families; they hid behind “Protect Children” and “Support Parents” signs next to Gov. DeSantis when he signed the bill. But this begs the question: Which families are we protecting? Certainly not ones like mine. I remember the day my parents were given the right by the Supreme Court to get married. I shudder to think about children who have to watch their parents have their rights taken away.

Works Cited

Block, Melissa. “Teachers Fear the Chilling Effect of Florida’s So-Called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law.” NPR, 30 March 2022.

Carlisle, Madeleine. “‘I Hope This Law Is Obliterated.’ Plaintiffs in the First Lawsuit Challenging ‘Don’t Say Gay’ in Florida Speak Out.” Time, 31 March 2022.

Nierenberg, Amelia. “What Does ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Actually Say?” The New York Times, 23 March 2022.