Claim: Colleges and universities should specify all required courses andeliminate elective courses in order to provide clear guidance for students.
Reason: College students—like people in general—prefer to followdirections rather than make their own decisions.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree ordisagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.
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Should all the colleges and universities have the same curriculum andeliminate elective courses? The speaker thinks we should do that as aconsequence of not requiring students to make choices, which might berecognized to be hard to decide. It's sometimes true that some people haveso-called "decision-making-phobia", however, I don't reckon it shouldbe the reason for not allowing students to choose the courses they want.Furthermore, whether we should require all colleges and universities specifysame required courses needs to be reevaluated.
For the reason part, surely some people are always afraid of makingdecisions by themselves; nevertheless, it is always the big decisions which mayinfluence a lot including other people that make people feeling nervous.Choosing courses to take doesn't seem to be that important neither to studentsthemselves nor to others. Deciding what course to take is always quite easy forstudents. For example, a hypothetical college student is confronting with thesituation that he has to choose one course from art, history, math andeconomics. What he is willing to do is just thinking about which of them canarouse his interest and which of them are helpful to his life or job in thefuture. Even if he registered a course that he doesn't like, he will still havechance to drop it in the beginning of the semester. To say the least, grantedthat he takes it for the whole semester, it will not influence too much to him,at least less than taking lots of mandatory courses which are boring for him.
When the claim part of the statement is evaluated excluding the reason thespeaker wants to exert to it, I still cannot concur with him. From my point ofview, there is no doubt that general education is necessary to some extent.Some basic common sense in law, economics, history and principles in math,physics as well as biology will make students develop in an all-around way andhave an integrated personality. Imagine a student who is major in literature,and he displays even not a little bit interest in natural science likemathematics and physics. If none of courses in these areas is mandatory forhim, he is likely to be a total idiot in natural subjects. He’ll not know thebasic laws of heat so he may be fooled by others or get hooked by some commercialproducts whose principle is obvious apocryphal science. In addition, elites innearly all fields are equipped with broad knowledge and widen outlook in thestatus quo.
Conversely, a license to arrange some courses that they are interested inwill embody respect for human rights. Students who are respected and allowed totake courses they like can be much more efficient in studying, because doingthings they want to do is sometimes kind of relax so they can have fun in theclass. Therefore, a combination of some mandatory courses with freedom inchoosing elective courses seems quite a good way to benefit students in oursociety.
A better, effective and promising education system is definitely neededfor us, and some changes might be necessary to make in colleges oruniversities. To require students to take some same mandatory courses isindispensable; however, some freedom in choosing classes they are interested inis still lubricant for education system. | 
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发表于 2013-1-17 15:51:21
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