Issue11 [Jet小姐]第11次作业

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11. "All nations should help support the development of a global university designed to engage students in the process of solving the world's most persistent social problems."

Today's world, although out of world-wide war for the time being, is still suffering the distress of a series of persistent social problems, with no big progress been made, some people are crying for an establishment of a global university in order to join the students to the process of solving these problems. In my opinion, though the idea behind this urge is, at some extend, perspective and it does intend to address the cause to these problem, the goal of a global university is hard to achieve and, what is more importantly, the effect is limited.

Social problems are frequently thought of as the disagreement, conflict and disharmony between people or nations, although they differ in form, the underlying causes are almost the few. Of the few reasons, the lack of mutual understanding ,respect and trust is a common one. We are often informed of some intense conflict between Israel and Palestine which are mostly caused by the disparity deeply lies in the cultures of the two countries and disrespect of each nations showed in the form intense wrath. Another reason which may lead to the outburst of social problems is the conflicting interest of the two sides, which are well illustrated by the continuous trade conflicts between two countries. In addition, when people or nations fail to see the world as a whole, a more wide and serious problem could come into existence such as the energy crsis, the environmental protection and so on. All these reasons contribute, more or less, to the persistence of world's social problem.

Admittedly, the idea of a global university does offer a good opportunity to gather the students all over the world to study, discuss, and hopefully come up with a solution to these lasting social problems of the world. The university is able to provide a civilized, peaceful, and most of time equal atmosphere in which the students could exchange their opinions on some specific issues freely and unrestrainedly. In this sense, the global idea is much like a international conference like United Nations, while the usually tragedy before the conference could be avoided. In addition to providing necessary environment which makes possible a peaceful, equal and friendly international talk, the global university, as a education institute, can also encourage its students to develop a common ground when they are trying to solve the social problems, which is the prerequisite for reaching a solution to problems of the present. Taking advantage of the diversity of the students around the world, the teachers could present these hot world problems such as global warming to the students and require them to solve the problem on their perspective first. After collecting the various solutions proposed and having the students to evaluate these solutions, the teacher could provide the students with the sight that without the realization of the urgency and globalization of the environmental problems, they could be solved.

However, despite the constructiveness and great intent of the idea of global university, its practical effects is susceptible to doubt for several reasons. One problem of this idea is the unclear or even gloomy roles these graduates of the global university would play in the process of solving the problems. Through which way these "global" students could inform their global solution to the decision makers of one nations, by which means they could persuade one country to adopt their solutions at the expense of interest lost, and how they advertise the global solution to the general public. All these untold questions greatly weaken our confidence in these students. The America's refusal to join the Kyoto treat is a good example to show nearly zero effect of an international pressure in persuading a super nation to join a generally accepted action. Another example is the gloomy development of the global language. Despite the genuine efforts made by the scholars around the world, the global language, with the ostensible support of governments, comes to its end. Moreover, building a qualified and effective world-wide university, like the other world wide persistent problems, is a great challenge due to the same reasons mentioned above. The founder of this global university must guarantee the equality is always maintained such as the equal proportion of students from developed countries and developing countries, equal balance of the issues for discussion and so on. All of these requirements are indeed hard to achieve.

To sum up, the idea of building such a global university does have some positive effects on encouraging more people to join the force of tackling the world's persistent social problem, but their contribution to the solving of these problem is largely depends on their role and influence in the entire process of problem solving.