issue153求拍必回

TOPIC: ISSUE153 - "Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively." WORDS: 639 TIME: 0:44:42 DATE: 2007-3-16 Should students bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study, as the speaker asserts? In my view, I am firmly confirmed that students should accept anything that they are taught passively. Yet, undue skepticism may do harm to the education. Admittedly, questioning plays an important role in education. The job of education is to cultivate students to all-rounded developed citizens which can serve the society in the future. In order to attain this purpose, the students should learn well in the classroom. Yet, if the students only accept anything passively, they may only know the superficial fact and it is hard for them to know the trends and the principle of the fact, which is important for students to apply what they have learned flexibly. In addition, it has been pointed by the psychologists that when students are only taught something in the classroom, especially for a long time, students may feel dizzy and can not pay attention to the educators. So an effective for students to keep up with the thoughts of the teachers is to ask some questions about what they are taught. Another fact which adds further credibility to point that students should learn to question is the fact that in many inquiring field, questioning is the main factors that lead to the success. No one is saint. Neither are those great scholars in the past time. So at sometime, the theory promoted by these scholars, who have been considered by the public as truth, may be not correct. Therefore, at this time, only when people question these theories, they can really find the truth behind them. History is replete with examples that illustrate this point. Consider Mendeleev, one of the most famous Russia chemists, for example. When he was studying in the chemical college, he was taught there were many elements in the field of chemistry and the job of them is to discovery new elements. Yet, he did not accept it passively. On the contrary, he asked his teacher whether there were any relationship among those elements. Although he did not get any answers from his teacher, he never give up his question. Ultimately, after endeavoring for nearly twenty years, he found the periodic table of elements, which is considered as the most outstanding discovery in the chemistry field. However, if Mendeleev had not questioned what has was taught, how could he have made such a significant contribution and perhaps the major job of chemistry now is to find some elements which have been proved unstable by the table. However, if we overemphasize on questioning, then it may impede the process of learning. In fact, many theories and principle students are taught now have been proved by numerous scholars and are nearly perfect. If the students question those theories and use a critical attitude toward those theories and ask some unique questions, then it may be difficult for the teachers to answer these questions. For example, if elementary students ask their teachers why one plus one equates two, then how can educators give answer to such a easy question since it is the definition and foundation of calculation. Moreover, the principles of many facts are much more complicated than themselves, so if students question on those fact, it is hard for teachers to explain to them. For instance, if a chemical student wants to know why objects are composed with molecules and atoms, then what they should learn first is the complicated quantum chemistry. And it is hard for teachers to tell them the reason before these advanced courses. All in all, from what has been discussed above, we can easily draw our conclusion that proper questioning is conducive for students to learn the knowledge. Also questioning can help the students to make some contribution in the future. However, undue questioning on some principles is needless and even harmful to the education.