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TOPIC: ISSUE153 - "Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."
WORDS: 714 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 2007-8-9 13:04:46
Should students question whatever they are taught? I agree with the author that skepticism is a good quality of inquiry and can benefits us a lot if we should restrict it in a rational realm.
What is skepticism? Simply speaking it is doubt and question-doubting whether the knowledge is true and questioning your teacher or finding the answer yourself. Then the result has two alternatives: one is that what your are questioning is true, the opposite is that your doubt is wrong and you were thinking in a wrong way. In fact no matter the result of skepticism is, they can both benefit us in the progress of society or in the progress of ourselves, as we discuss below.
In the history, when skepticism of a certain knowledge turned to be true, most of the time it indicates a new era of science and technology. Galileo, the father of modern experiment, argue the opinion about motion that was provided by Aristotle. To further prove his ideas he does a series of experiments to check whether his question is right. This benefits us in two ways. One is that during the process his creation of experimental methods has greatly advanced the pace of modern science afterwards. the other benefit is, through his opinions, Newton set the three laws of classical physics, which enable people to describe the world and the motion in a more exact way. In fact since then, the experimental methods and the three laws has caused a booming in the modern science. When time passed by, the Newton's laws of motion, the rules once thought to be the truth, were argued and questioned again. Einstein, one of the greatest scientists in the twentieth century, found the unsolvable contradiction in Newton's laws and use his new weapons-theory of relatively; successfully explained the phenomenon that the classical physics laws can not. And since then, science has started its another age of booming. Through these discoveries and skepticisms, we found that the question is a great impetus to the development of our science. Students who have made the right skepticism will has the equal chance to contributes to the glorious of science.
But someone might argue, students, with the relatively less knowledge, might have little chance to reveal the truth through skepticism, most of the time they are wrong. Yet I agree this is the truth. But even if we students questioned a lot that finally proved to be wrong, we benefit ourselves. When we are questioning, it is actually a course of persuading and proving. Merely say that " teacher, this theorem is wrong!" does not make sense. Typically the teacher would then ask : " well, why do you say so?" Then you might offer you reasons and proof. When you are demonstrating it, you should first check the proofs of the theorem in the textbook. Then by arranging your knowledge, you should give your own proofs. In this way, even the finally result turned to be wrong. Actually you would master the subject much better and have a deeper understanding about it. In this way, even if the skepticism turned out to be wrong, we can also learn a lot.
But we should also notice, even if skepticism benefits a lot no matter it turns out to be right of wrong it has limitations and disadvantages, The most inefficiency of it is that the process of skepticism is time-consuming. As we discussed above, no matter one is a well learned scholar like Einstein or Galileo or a common student as I am and you are; skepticism takes him great effort and require enough time, for he have to check the seemingly right theories and give his own reasons and evidences. Unluckily in the modern society we have so much to learn: from elementary school to university, from math to calculus, from basic physics to quantum theory; they take up much of our energy and time. So only when we limit
To sum up, just as what we've discussed above, analysis from the two result of skepticism, we can find that they benefit us a lot. But, as the burden of students is so heavy and it is a time consuming work, viewing from the pragamatic, we should restrict it in a rational realm.
[ 本帖最后由 norns 于 2007-8-11 00:57 编辑 ] |
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“何必为衣裳忧虑呢?
你想野地里的百合花,怎么长起来;它也不劳苦,也不纺线;
然而我告诉你们,就是所罗门极荣华的时候,他所穿戴的,还不如这花一朵呢!”
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