- UID
- 860160
- 在线时间
- 小时
- 注册时间
- 2013-2-25
- 最后登录
- 1970-1-1
- 主题
- 帖子
- 性别
- 保密
|
112. Requiring university students to take a variety of courses outside their major fields of study is the best way to ensure that students become truly educated.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
The statement above claims that the best way to ensure students become truly educated is requiring them to take a variety of courses outside their major fields of study. Although the speaker may seem too affirmative with the claim and fail to consider feasibility and possible negative influences of the policy, I fundamentally agree with the idea that interdisciplinary can benefit students in numerous ways and that it can satisfactorily fulfill the goal of education.
To begin with, the concept of “truly educated” should be examined since it is the criterion to evaluate different ways of learning. In general, education is a form of learning in which knowledge, skill and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to another. The ultimate goal of education is to train students into informed and active citizens with the ability to sustain and develop human civilization instead of disciplined and productive workers with skills of certain area. Thus, knowledge from various fields do seem essential to build a truly educated person since its complexity help to enrich ones’ personality.
Secondly, the advantages of this claim is obvious. Interdisciplinary can surly enlarge the volume of ones’ knowledge, improve ones’ ability both aesthetically and logically, and even bolster one’s major field. For instance, Da Vinci, who is widely admired as a great Italian painter, was actually a polymath. The vividness and precise of the characters in his painting own much to his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light and geology. The knowledge of nature is an interrelated whole, and the boundaries between them are casted by human. Different fields of area overlaps with each other and development in relevant areas can certainly help to one’s own major.
However, ignoring the negative effect of taking various courses outside major fields vitiate the speaker’s claim. There is no doubt that a person’s time and stamina is limited and consequently the knowledge he can attain is limited as well. If too much time is devoted into other courses, the time left for the major course may be even less. The well-known German physicist Roentgen who produced and detected X-ray, earned the scientific field’s recognition after nearly thirty years of hard-working as a professor of physics. So it is also important for students stay focus on their own major while absorbing nutrient from other areas.
In sum it is of great significance to encourage students to go outside of their majors to become truly educated. Although there might be some concerns of distraction, the benefits which include enrich one’s spirit as well as inspire one’s major clearly outweigh the drawbacks. |
|