成年人应该向孩子们学什么?

据报道，华裔女童邹奇奇生活在美国华盛顿州西雅图市，她的母亲邹灿来自中国，父亲约翰是一名捷克裔美国人。尽管邹奇奇的外表和其他同龄孩子没啥两样，但她的知识和成就却远非同龄孩子可比。

邹奇奇爱看法国哲学家的书籍，一天能读3本小说，自4岁以来，她用笔写下了400多篇故事和诗歌，她去年出版的故事集《飞扬的手指》，包含的300多篇故事大多以中世纪为背景，从古埃及写到了文艺复兴，文中透露出的政治、宗教和教育见解，思想深刻，文思严谨，令人难以相信这是一名8岁女孩的作品。

邹奇奇不仅是"文学天才"，还是一名女权运动和世界和平的倡议者，她的网站上将她描述为"作家、诗人和人道主义者"。8岁的邹奇奇在美国已经成了名人，包括著名主持人奥弗拉、美国广播公司"早安美国"节目等都采访过她，"早安美国"的节目主持人更将她称作"美国文坛小巨人"。

Now, I want to start with a question: When was the last time you were called childish? For kids like me, being called childish can be a frequent occurrence. Every time we make irrational demands, exhibit irresponsible behavior, or display any other signs of being normal American citizens, we are called childish, which really bothers me. After all, take a look at these events: Imperialism and colonization, world wars, George W. Bush. Ask yourself: Who's responsible? Adults.

Now, what have kids done? Well, Anne Frank touched millions with her powerful account of the Holocaust, Ruby Bridges helped end segregation in the United States, and, most recently, Charlie Simpson helped to raise 120,000 pounds for Haiti on his little bike. So, as you can see evidenced by such examples, age has absolutely nothing to do with it. The traits the word childish addresses are seen so often in adults that we should abolish this age-discriminatory word when it comes to criticizing behavior associated with irresponsibility and irrational thinking. (Applause)

Thank you.

Then again, who's to say that certain types of irrational thinking aren't exactly what the world needs? Maybe you've had grand plans before, but stopped yourself, thinking: That's impossible or that costs too much or that won't benefit me. For better or worse, we kids aren't hampered as much when it comes to thinking about reasons why not to do things. Kids can be full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking, like my wish that no one went hungry or that everything were free kind of utopia. How many of you still dream like that and believe in the possibilities? Sometimes a knowledge of history and the past failures of utopian ideals can be a burden because you know that if everything were free, that the food stocks would become depleted, and scarce and lead to chaos. On the other hand, we kids still dream about perfection. And that's a good thing because in order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first.

In many ways, our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries of possibility. For instance, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, my home state -- yoohoo Washington -- (Applause) has a program called Kids Design Glass, and kids draw their own ideas for glass art. Now, the resident artist said they got some of their best ideas through the program because kids don't think about the limitations of how hard it can be to blow glass into certain shapes. They just think of good ideas. Now, when you think of glass, you might think of colorful Chihuly designs or maybe Italian vases, but kids challenge glass artists to go beyond that into the realm of broken-hearted snakes and bacon boys, who you can see has meat vision. (Laughter)