ISSUE51，求猛拍！谢谢各位！

sky3721UID: 2566862

TOPIC: ISSUE51 - "Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student."
WORDS: 597          TIME: 00:55:00          DATE: 2010/8/13 17:15:10

The needs and interests of students are two of the important factors that have great influence on education. Insofar as students usually would be more willing and faster to grasp knowledge if the classes accord with their individual needs and interests, the speaker claims that only by meeting the students' needs and interests can education be truly effective. As far as I am concerned, I partially disagree with this statement.

Admittedly, no one can deny that vital and irreplaceable roles needs and interests play in education.
To support this point of view, let us take Hanhan, one of the most famous writers in China, as an example. During the high school time, Hanhan was unusual student who failed in almost all science subjects and had never passed the final examination, thus rendering he forced to drop out of the school. However, he found himself enthusiastic for composing and car racing and hence determined to devote himself to these two fields. Then now, as we see, he becomes a most outstanding composer as well as excellent racing diver. Therefore, as the saying goes, interest is the best teacher to the learners.

Nevertheless, it is unnecessary and also unwarranted to cultivate each child completely according with the individual needs and interests. The first and foremost reason lies in the social condition, which not allows the recommendation. As we know, there should be a great cost to assign a special teacher and an individual syllabus for each student. It is also not realizable for a teacher to cater to the all requirements from every student, some of which are usually contradictory and unreasonable. Were this to happen, how many schools and instructors would the society need? The answer should be uncountable.

Apart from this, meeting all the requirement of each student may conflict with the objective of education in some special cases. The primary purpose of education is to cultivate people who can take advantage of his knowledge to benefit all the mankind and finally promote the development of human society.
For a child who is interest in cheat and crime, it would be harmful and dangerous to cater the needs of him. As for such misdirected students, what we need to do most foremost is to convert his view of world and revise his distorted interest.

Last but not least, interest is neither necessary nor sufficient condition of the quality of education. On one hand, for those fundamental subjects, such as basic mathematics and some common sense, there is no choice but compulsorily include them into the curriculum, no matter whether the students accept them. This is because people can achieve little things without these foundational knowledge and skills. On the other, the quality of education is usually influenced by many subjective and objective factors such as the family and the environment. With an irresponsible teacher and some misleading teaching material, hardly can a learner have a good understanding on the knowledge even if he has a great passion for the subject. Consequently, interest and need are neither necessary nor sufficient for education.

In the final analysis, the speaker has overrated the roles of need and interest play in education even though need and interest really improve the quality of education in some cases. We must realize the fact that need and interest are not the only factors affecting education and also not the ones essential to education. Therefore, what we need to do is not to meet all needs and interests of each student but partially take the advantage of them to achieve a better quality of education.