本帖最后由 T_K 于 2010-7-20 23:17 编辑
Issue 51
| | "Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student."
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The speaker would prone for the education being specifically focus on every student’s own interests and needs, not a universal and imprecise one. I agree insofar that education based on individual level is helpful to some degree in tapping each student’s potential and nature of creativity and individualism. At the same time, merely satisfying the needs and interests of individuals is neither guaranteeing the education effectiveness with necessity nor easily carry into practice.
Before discussing the justifiability of this statement, it is essential for us to re-examine what is the final purpose of education and how to judge the relatively effectiveness of education. From my perspective, the aim of education consists of two parts: keeping with the nature of the human personality and cultivating creative intelligence required for adaption to changes in the social development.
Just an old saying goes, ‘not two leaves are the same complete in this world’, every student’s interests and hobbies are never all the same. For the purpose of keeping with the nature of the human personality, it is crucial for educators provide various curriculums and courses for different students with diverse talent and interests. As is known to all, interest is the foundation upon which one relies to learn the knowledge and skills about a certain field most effectively. Granted some students may have a good score in the subjects that they do not like; for the majority, the subject in accordance with their interests are more likely to galvanize their inner passion and motivation to learn as harder as they can. Their learning initiative and subject willingness is much more intense, so their proficiency of absorbing that type of knowledge enhanced.
However, establishing an individual-centered system would at the same time pose certain problems, which might weaken the benefits, noted above.
Firstly, the feasibility of taking every student’s needs and interests into consideration is open to doubt. People may take it for granted that the more specifically the education designed in related to students’ interests and needs, the more effective it may turn out to be. Reasonable as it may seem, such an education system does not make full use of the current educational resources. Compared with the large sum of students, the scarcity of education resources limits the implement of such conception, since by doing so, it might bring chaos to the whole structure of education for its inconvenience to manipulate and distribute available educational resources with the utmost fairness and efficiency.
Even assuming that this method can be carried out and run smoothly, no schools and students can take the risk of ignoring the vital importance of basic knowledge and skills that a cultivated person should possess, such as math, literature, and logical thinking. Especially in today’s modernized and globalized society, no longer can a person who is steeped in one realm without knowing about anything in other fields is capable of surviving and adapting to variations along with the social development. For instance, a student specialized in biochemistry should not abandon the study of liberal arts such as history and music; otherwise, he may have trouble of mastering a strong communication skills, or even worse, fails to formulate a correct view of life and a healthy outlook on society.
To sum up, individual-centered education would amount to a double-edged sword. However, although complete liberty in designing education is not available to all students, schools can try to offer more choices and autonomy to students under the precondition that the basic general knowledge which is also important for individuals as part of a society have been well acknowledged.
几个月前写的第一篇。。有点干瘪。。 |