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发表于 2005-10-11 22:26:14
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Issue232 Revised again!
Topic:
Issue 232-"The purpose of education should be to create an academic environment that is separate from the outside world. This kind of environment is ideal because it allows students to focus on important ideas without being held back by practical concerns."
Revised version:
Nowadays schools, as one ingredient of society are subject to its influence. Most often, they have to be responsive to economical upswing or downturn, to social and political movements and to scientific and technological breakthroughs. The impact of the changes in society is so prominent that some raise the concern of isolating schools from them, creating an environment in which students can concentrate on important ideas without being held back by practical concerns. However, I assert that education should be open to the society, the practical world. Studying in such an isolated environment as someone have suggested is either infeasible or disadvantageous.
Frequently, schools are likened as ivory towers, in which students only pay attention to their study. This is derived from the misconception that the important ideas students are supposed to learn has nothing to do with the outside world. Nevertheless, one can easily discover the rebuttal to this narrow-mindedness. In fact, some of the newly established branches of study originate from the practical need of the outside world, bioinformatics being one epitome. The study of bioinformatics came into being because of the information need of the society. Facing the boom of biology which leads to the abounding of experimental results, an effective way of organizing, storing and communicating these valuable data are in great demand for the utilization of them in both research and production and that is the genesis of bioinformatics. Another example is the network security, one of the most popular branches of computer engineering. With some established findings in the field being unable to find their immediate application in the practical world, network security was nevertheless introduced to address the realistic problem of hacking, which has resulted in billions of loss in business sector and imposed a direct threat on national security. Thus many important subjects students learn in schools are directly related to the practical concerns.
In addition, even for students in fields without immediate connection with the outside world, they can still benefit from practicing thus enhance what they have acquired through education. For instance, literature students can participate in social activities and be exposed to the oral literature--the creation of ordinary "wordsmiths" from different social classes and occupations, which they may never have access to via books and formal education. The application of those original expressions may add to the strength of their compositions at a later time. Such exposure may turn out to be a distinguishing feature of their work at a later time. So do arts students, for whom the exposure to the outside world can provide themes and inspirations for their artistic composition. Therefore even though it is not necessary for them to be involved in the outside world, students can, to some extent, benefit from such involvement.
Furthermore, for some fields of study with the ultimate goal of producing PRACTITIONERS like doctors, accountants and business managers for the society, the association with the outside world is a necessity. For example, by interning in hospitals, students majoring in medicine can discover what their future workplace look like, which is far from the ideal environment provided by schools. They have to cope with the constraints, which have been eliminated or at least minimized in schools’ laboratories. Besides, being unable to solely rely on the textbooks any more, they have to make diagnosis for patients with atypical and complex syndromes. Only through field practice, can medicine students obtain the skills and experiences that are necessary for pursuing their future careers. For business schools, such practice in the real situation is not just a requirement but also a criterion for granting admission to MBA applicants since without such exposure it is meaningless to discuss how to relate the management principles with the practice as well as how to identify and classify the practice with reference to the doctrines held by the business sector.
In sum, education should provide students with access to the society outside campuses, only through which can they acquire the necessary skills of pursuing their future professions as well as those cannot learn from lucubrating in libraries and laboratories.
Word Count: 680
[ Last edited by bayern_science on 2005-10-12 at 20:04 ] |
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