51"Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student."
The speaker asserts that education will be ineffective unless it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student, the perspective, be it seemly justified in addressing that students’ demands and requirements must come first, suffers a severe lack of consideration of feasibility and practicality, which I will argue as follow.
I concede that the speaker is on the reasonable philosophical side of the issue. After all, it is universally acknowledged that the purpose of education is to help individuals become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and the power to create valuable things, and it is our education systems that offer professional teaching stuff and appliances to satisfy people’s needs and interests. Since everyone has different inclination. Our schools, throughout the nation and history, should try their best to establish various subjects and elaborate classification to fulfill the destination. Yet, concerning the possibility of erecting such ideal education which can “meet the individual needs and interests of each student”, several criticisms can be pointed out.
In the first place, the implicit rationale behind the speaker’s statement seems that education exactly designed to every individual is feasible or at least attainable. However, to the best of my belief, there are no such two human beings who behave in the same way in every aspect such as values, world views, aesthetic sense and etc. In another word, people are different from each other. Considering the complexity and variation of people’s demands, It is unlikely that the blueprint for this “perfect designed” education will be put into caution. Furthermore, if one man interests in nothing but playing computer games or even worse, should we still meet his addiction blindly? The answer is clear.
Further rumination on these themes could climax in the necessary understanding of some essential subjects--mathematics, physics, arts and philosophy—which are required as compulsory courses in most of primary and high schools. Someone may argue that the courses, like arts, should be canceled if they are not welcome to our students. Although different country has different forms of education, such idea above has not been responded warmly all over the world. Why? Because we humans live in a society based on lots of common sense, and understanding this common sense is the cornerstone of living, even success in today’s complex and rapidly changing world. Mathematics helps us form correct quantitive concepts which could be useful in analyzing certain stuffs like planning a trip, preparing a proposal and etc; arts helps people appreciate others’ work and the beauty of nature more profoundly; while philosophy helps us constitute sound perspectives on status quo of society and makes us embrace our life enthusiastically. Those above courses exert great influence on our human history and automatically shape cultures and cognition of ours. One will find himself/herself isolated from mainstream by virtue of lacking basic understandings of those spheres, and those knowledge turns to be so indispensable in this case.
To sum up, the speaker’s assertion that education should be designed to meet every student’s needs begs the question, in my opinion; the author assigns too great a role in the interests while ignoring the feasibility and justice of such education. After thinking over those arguments above, the speaker’s education merely amounts to utopian scheme.
[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-6 at 22:51 ]