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TOPIC: ISSUE 153 - "Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."
WORDS: 497 TIME: 0:45:00 DATE: 2006-2-7
With the development of modern science, some crucial qualities, such as skeptism, creation, etc. have been highly focus on when cultivate future scientists or technologists. In my opinion, skepticism is always indispensable in learning knowledge and doing research, but the questioning of existing knowledge should be well-founded and reasonable.
Admittedly, skepticism plays a significant role in breaking through old theory and the establishment of new ones, and also functions as impetus to deep exploration in scientific field, therefore finally leading to the truth. Through the suspicion of geocentric theory, Copernicus established heliocentric theory to replace the old one. Although the new theory still suffered some flaws, it strided forward to the final truth. Also, when people tried to prove the fifth postulate in geometry, the skepticism through the way in which people demonstrate this postulate induced the birth of other alternatives, and it was through these means, the mathematician draw the conclusion that the fifth postulate cannot be proved, therefore the non-eulidean geometry coming into birth. When turning to daily studies in schools or universities, students suspect what they are taught and develop deep and close exploration and at last get better and deeper comprehension. Compared from the passive acceptance, which means little active thinking, certain skepticism does benefit the effectiveness of education.
However, to keep a certain suspicion does not mean to disbelieve anything without any scrutiny, in other words, the conception of real skepticism and the false suspicion exist in studing knowledge. The true and meaningful skepticism is based on the comprehension of what students learned as well as their own analysis and deduction. Without those process, the skepticism is nonsense in development of scientific theories or technology. It is seems more like the work in the pipelining, whenever recieving a product named knowledge, students perform as workers, printing a mark "suspicious", without examination about the content and the facticity. But the most important meaning of skepticism for us is that it urge us to do more research to find the hidden truth, in other words, skepticism showssome exisiting flaws, and then indicates some clues for us to go further. So, to suspect just for the purpose of questioning everything is not the waste of time and energy but also the failure of education.
So, when coming into the practice, the school education, educators and teachers should promote students to develop their independent thinking and analizing ability as well as doubting the established theories and facts. Only through this way can students really master the powerful tool of skepticism as a weapon in the exploration on the way to the truth. The skepticism will exert its strongest effect accompanied by other elements as comprehensive understanding of knowledge and the recognition of the shortcomings or problems in current theories or conclusions. The task of education is to let students understand the real meaning of skepticism and instruct them the right way.
In conclusion, skepticism is of paramount significance in scietific research and the acquirement of knowledge |
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