Issue50

jacky.j.6UID: 2636430

"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."

Generally, I do not bolster the speaker's assertion. Although the faculty's working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses theyinstruct seems to be necessary in some specific fields, the speaker has over-emphasized the importance of such practice, ignoring the fact that outside practice might be not an indispensable experience in all academic areas, and the merits of the faculty's working outside can be bring about also can be realized by other alternative better methods.

To begin with, it is undoubtedly true that the faculty's working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach is indispensable in some fields. Take, for example, the Journalism study, which mainly deals with how to inform people about what is going on currently, adresses more on pratice rather than simply commanding theories. In order to arm the students in Journalism with the quality of "living with the society" which is necessary in their later career, the professors themselves must be exposed to the latest information at every second, exchanging ideas about the lastest issues with their students, instead of sticking to the so-called "journalism theories" which would not change in a century. Consider, if all the journalists only received their college education by learning stubborn theories from professors who lived the whole lives in academic world without touching the society, these journalists would inevitably be isolated, and there would be no journalist who was able to win the "Pulizer Prize"( which is awarded to the journalists who "lives, records, and reveals in our society".

However, in some academic areas, working outside the academic world seems to be not so necessary as the above stated. Consider the academic fields like the literature, musics, and philosophy. Those who study literature deals with the masterpieces of literature everyday, feeling those author's feel, analyzing those author's skills, and more importantly, trying to get some rules about what the world was like in the time those authors lived, all of which can be carried out without the help of practice outside its academic world. The same applied to the musics------stuff in music can get the inspiration in school, and to them, staying in school enables them to reach the original scores of the music greats, which may does more good to their staying ourside. Philosophy also does the same. For the stuff in philosophy, helping the students to think is the most important, moreover, think do not necessarily occurs only outside the academic world. Put the literature, musics, and philosophy examples together, we also find that provided with the opportunity of working outside the academic world, there is no most suitable positions for their stuff. And this is a cogent fact which shows that stuff in such fields can do better job within academic fields.

The last point I want to make is that to get the merits of sending stuff into the outside world can also be reached by other methods, for exmaple, introducing the great figure in related field into our campus. A lot of school hire those moguls in related fields as the guest speakers, imparting students of the latest information in the outside industry every month. This is also a effective way to keep students informed of the newest information. Another method we can take is by sending students to pratice in the outside industry every several month, for example, during the summer holiday.

In the end, requiring the stuff to go outside the world is not necessary, for this is needed in some fiedls while not in others. And other methods could be taken into consideration if a school want to get the alike effects.