issue51 为我所用第十二次作业

jenniferganUID: 2443583

TOPIC: ISSUE51 - "Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student."
WORDS: 758          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2008-4-8 11:04:30

Education is an important problem which makes people and society pay more and more attention on it. A lot of educators contribute all their lives to education for the sake of finding an effective way to teach students. The speaker claims that education will be effective when it is specially designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student. However, as far as I am concerned, designed courses for each student’s demand and interest is truly a good way, but it is also an idea way because it is even cannot achieve.

First of all, it is a deniable fact that individual needs and interests indeed play a significant role in the process of learning. As a student, he cannot learns for learn only, there must be something that attracts him or forces him, it will be represent by personal needs and interests.

On a realm of personal needs, it is an aspect which cannot be overlooked; even it is more important than interest. Students, as human, they have their desire to live in the world; and education is such a kind of tool to enable them to survive in the world through what they have learned in the school. The knowledge they learn is used to work and earn money to satisfy their material demands such as warm house and food. They are social demand of human. Only after survive in the world can they talk about other things. In short, a student cannot refer to his interests or contribution to the society when he feels cold and hungry.

On a realm of interests, we should not neglect the effect of it. There is an old saying "interest is the best teacher", from which we can come to the conclusion that how important interest is. Every one can learn well when he or she pays interests on the knowledge. For example, Newton created his law of gravity due to the interest of many natural phenomenon, an apple fell down the tree intricate his inspiration. And, Edison was interested in his invention of light bulb, after more than 1800 times experiments, he succeeded. It is the persistence of interest makes him did not give up after failures. So, interest can motivate inspiration, confidence and efforts. All these ethics are the most essential ones in the process of learning, which are the keys to success.

However, it is not a simple work to satisfy all the student’s individual needs and interests, there are many reasons. Firstly, the resource of education is limited. Faculties, classrooms, video TVs, computers and the like are the causes make the thought cannot be realized. Take a common phenomenon as example, in the Class 5 of NO.4 High School in Beijing; there are 40 students and only three teachers. Jennifer, who is a pretty girl likes piano, but there is no piano in the school because it is expensive. Tom, who is good at computer, but he cannot play it frequently because other students will perform on it, too. There are not enough computer in the school. Thus, financial causes limit the development of their needs to some extent. Secondly, it is impossible for education designed to satisfy the students whatever they need or interest in. If one student is addicted in computer games, can teachers satisfy his demand without any restrictions? If a student is full of passion in music, can teachers teach him songs every day without any other courses? The answer is absolutely no. Education should first teach students basic knowledge such as theories of science and technology, or the students cannot live by themselves without those knowledge. Even they have needs and interests, we should to examine whether the needs and interests is right. So, there are some restrictions to meet the students’ needs and interests all the time.

In addition, education can solve the problem with some effective policies. The most representative one is the major courses plus the courses which students can choose by them according with their needs and interests. For instance, the student who is interested in music can choose music as his second major; a student who is interested in computer can choose computer science as his second major. As we know, many schools has such a policy. Therefore, education can be effective with these solutions, too.

In sum, education needs to separate the major courses and interested courses, students should seek a balance between what needs to learn and what their interests are, and spend proper time on both the courses.