Issue Topic 013
本帖最后由 fiona_young 于 2012-1-29 20:24 编辑Issue Topic 013
Some people believe that universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student's field of study. Others believe that universities should not force students to take any courses other than those that will help prepare them for jobs in their chosen fields.
Most of Chinese Universities require students to take some selective courses outside the students’ field of study. For example, a student majored in mechanical engineering should attend some selective coursed such as music, English writing or electronics, which are not within the curriculum of his major. Usually we have a great variety of choices. As far as I am concerned, I took a lot of arts and music classes in the university although I was majored in industrial design, which was affiliated to engineering school. Some of my classmates complained a lot about that compulsory requirement of the university. They thought it was wasting their time to learn the knowledge outside their field, which would do no help to their future career. Contrary to their mind, I would love to take some courses outside my major. I believe that it worth studying in an all round way.
Universities, as advanced educational institutions, are different from the vocational schools and junior colleges, which teach people how to work. Universities should be the incubators for talents, who will probably make due contribution for the society and human progress. That is why university is so call “university”, which means that students there should receive universal education rather than the skills for a job. Those who can pass the college entrance examination and get enrolled into the advanced educational institutions should do their utmost to acquire the wisdom accumulated by our ancestors. In the universities, we learn the knowledge and in the future career, we can apply what we learn in our practical work. Some students insist that they just want to take some courses which will prepare them for jobs in their chosen fields. That idea only made sense when every student would find a job that was directly related to his or her major in the university. But how many people turn out to work in the fields they once chose when they are young and innocent? We’d better learn the way of learning rather than the specific skills in the advance educational institutions. Otherwise
it will really be a huge waste to have all the professors to cultivate the job hunters.
University is preparing talents for human progress rather than job hooker.
Many universities begin to offer multi-disciplinary courses as many educators have realized that knowledge is interconnected. The theoretical mathematic logic, mostly dealing with numbers, once combined with electronics, there come the huge invention----computer, which takes full advantage of simple logics “0” and “1”. Bio-engineering is also a vivid example of the perfect combination of different fields of knowledge. That’s why I hold the opinion that students should learn something outside the field of studying. That doesn’t mean you may change your choice or waste of time but rather learn a different way of thinking. Even Einstein would love to draw some aspiration from violin when he was stuck into the difficulty in his work.
Universities may ask students to take some extra courses outside the students’ field. But meanwhile students should have a full right to decide what they want to learn. And professors may provide some ideas about the selective courses if the students are daunting about what to choose. One word, we would love to see universal education talents rather than the skills for worker are fully developed in higher educational institutions.
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