153. "Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."
无论学生们学习什么都应该带着一定的疑问。学生们应该质疑老师教授的东西而不只是被动的接受。
In the process of study, two main methods should be taken by the students in order to attain an authentic education. One is to accept other people's knowledge and absorb their experience, the other is to be confident and brave enough to challenge the authorities and keep a skeptical attitude towards what they study.
Knowledge is epitomized and distilled by the forerunners in all sorts of fields, representing the essence of all the previous experience. Therefore, learning to accept these knowledge could shorten students' way to success and diminish the possible mistakes at the same time. On the other aspect, accepting what we learn can broaden our sights of various things while altering our illiberal attitudes towards some matter, because of the reason that every single person is limited in a certain area. Besides, in a more practical way, keeping skeptical about everything taught by professors would make us difficult to get a high mark of examination in such a society where the marks are regarded as the only assessment of students’ ability.
However, on the other hand, if a student keeps swallowing what he has learnt but without any careful thoughts and analysis, his boat of studying would sure be submerged in the deep ocean of messes and finally lose his original intention of learning. The fact that there's no Chinese native who has ever won a Nobel Prize can obviously reveal the passive way of study among Chinese students is doubtable. Without any skepticism about what they learn and why they learn it, the value of study would be undermined, even lost.
Skepticism, to some degree, can not only benefit students but also the whole world. It is natural law that every step of improvements is built on the basis of weeding through the old to bring forth the news. Without wondering why the lid of pot would go up and down along with the steam spouting out of it, how could Watt give the world the amazing steam machine and consequently a significant revolution in human history; without Newton's curiosity about why an apple would fall onto the earth, how could the law of gravity come into being; without Copernicus's skepticism, how could the famous heliocentricism emerge? All the facts point out that skepticism could advocate a person to further and deeper study and even give the society an inspiring impetus.
Both passively accepting all one learns and continuously skepticizing everything would usher a students into a wrong direction of learning. Only combining the both would bring them a widely open world where exits more available opportunities of a prosperous success.