辉煌！小组issue50 by tong

qqwwzynUID: 2639175

TOPIC: ISSUE50 - "In order to improve the quality of instruction at the college and university level, all faculty should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach."
WORDS: 465
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-2-27 22:01:05

I agree with the speaker's broad assertion that the quality of instruction at the college and university level would generally be improved if faculty could spend more time working in professions relevant to the courses they teach. However, the speaker unnecessarily expands the assertion to the entire faculty, which makes it to a specious claim as discussed below.

I concede that in some subjects, faculty's experience in workshop would help improve the quality of their courses. While people with different value system would argue about what the genuine purpose of college education is, in my opinion college education should aim to help students make adequate preparations to begin their career. After all, today's American society is a career-oriented one. For example, subjects like electronic engineer, computer science, economic science etc all emphasize work experience to a high degree. Then teachers of such subjects with rich experience are considered to be more qualified in terms of students' need.
A compelling example is one teacher of computer science in my college. Aside from academic researches, he also acts as a CEO of a famous IT company. And there is no doubt his students can usually get more offers after graduation compared to those who have not been taught by the professor. It is very clear that the work experience of the professor makes a big difference.

However, the speaker's claim is too extreme because some purely theoretical subjects do not need the teachers' participating in work relevant to the courses, for the reason that there is no such work at all. A typical example is the study of history, whose purpose is to record and explain the past events. Thus as a history teacher, what he or she should do is to read as much history documentation as possible and do some purely academic work related to a certain history event. Only through this way can he or she bring about good students. Other examples like mathematics and humanity are the same case.

My second contention with the speaker is that working outside the academic world can sometimes do harm to the teaching. As we know professors' life in college is especially busy. No one can ensure that the quality of teaching would be improved if professors are forced to spare time to do work outside academic world. There is very possibility that the professors can neither improve their teaching quality nor make breakthroughs in my research.

In sum, the speaker's claim is too extreme. Though the recommendation could be sound especially to some subjects, the consequence it may cause needs more consideration. There is not only one way to improve the quality of instruction at college or university and we should require all faculty spend time working outside the academic world regardless the difference between individuals.





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