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本帖最后由 crazyjoo 于 2010-7-18 11:41 编辑
TOPIC: ISSUE51 - "Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student."
WORDS: 626
Would you like to have class which is specially designed to meet your need? Most of people, including the speaker, would say yes without hesitation. In most case, I concede that such strategy would benefit the students' personal development, however, over emphasized on individual needs would be counterproductive to education.
Over nations and history, it has characterized education as a means of establishing correct value system, teaching practical living skills, and more importantly, preparing eligible citizenry for society. In my observation, today's truly effective education is a sort of education which is aimed to endow students with the ability to learn as well as the desire to learn. Lifelong study, which is based on the desire for learning, is crucial for everyone since we are living in a complex and rapid changing society. No longer can one person who focus in one academic discipline, and is unwilling to know many other things, meet today's demand. No longer can one student who lose the desire to learn any new things after his graduation, avoid being left behind. In other words, to find out where the students' interest lie and try to incite their desire for learning is the very right thing ,which effective education should manifest.
It is not uncommon to see that the traditional teacher-centered teaching prevailing today impede the development of education, considering its ignorance of the students' need and individual interest cultivation. One apt illustration of this point involves the winners of disciplines Olympics competition. In China, students who win a golden medal in such competitions can advance to undergraduate study directly without any university or college entrance exam---a grueling task for most Chinese high school students. Paradoxically, most of these elites refuse to choose the discipline which bring them honor and "effortless" matriculation as major. Why this strange thing happen? Weren't they interest in these discipline? If so, how could one person do a great achievement in the boring discipline as he or her regard? In fact, the true answers to this paradox lie in their high school ,where teachers ignore the student's individual interest and pour knowledge into them in the purpose of chasing reputation, such as "the award of the best teacher in the 2009", "the award of the teacher who cultivates the most winners of discipline Olympics competition" and so forth. As a result, these elites gradually lose their original desire for the discipline because the learning process is becoming a chasing for reputation rather than a exploration for truth. Understandably, this sort of education is ineffective and it risks preventing a real talent from being a Nobel Prize winner. And it is possible due to this very reason that China has not got a Nobel Prize winner yet.
However, over emphasized on interests of each students would make things move in the opposite direction. Since a school's curriculum is designed by educational experts who are trained to deal with such things. Thus, it is impolitic to revise the curriculum in order to cater the students since students have not got a clear notion of education and do not know what they should learn. It is easy to imagine how chaotic and ridiculous a school would be when all the boys refuse to attend the arts class for its abstractness and all the girls refuse to learn math for its complexity. In addition, the opportunity cost of this strategy is significant in the terms of how the money will be applied to extracurricular activities, scientific research, improvement of facilities and so forth.
In sum, the speaker correctly assert that effective education should take interests of each student as concern. Otherwise, people's desire for learning would be ruined by the ignorance of individual needs. Accordingly, on balance the speaker is fundamental correct. |
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