WORDS: 593 TIME: 0:45:00 DATE: 2007-7-26
According to the title of the statement, education will not be regarded as truly effective until it is specifically designed to match the individual needs and interests. Undeniably, it is quite appealing staying at a normative position, and I consent insofar as education could be quite effective if each student's needs and interests have been satisfied. Nevertheless, not all the students know their real needs and interests all the time. In addition, we can't just try hard to fulfill the goal of making everyone content but do not care for an appropriate method.
It's true that the speaker's assertion that education catering to individual needs and interests has many merits. Needs and interests are part-and-parcel of the studying progress. They two are always referred to as the best instructors. The more useful and interesting a student finds a course, the more time and efforts he/she is willing to devote; the more time and efforts he/she devotes, the more progress he/she is likely to make in the course; the more progress he/she makes in a course, the more interested he/she is in the course. Therefore, needs and interests serve a vital part, as expected in the studying progress, as ink is to a pen or wheels are to a car. Were they removed from our educational system, how can you imagine that our students would learn by heart a number of disciplines every day which they cannot find any interest in; how can you imagine that test-takers would remember everything they have recited after the examination is over; and how can you imagine that our teachers' feelings would not be hurt when they see their pupils just doodle the class away?
Beyond this concession, however, I cannot totally agree with the statement because it seems to recommend that every student are quite aware of their needs and interests all the time and without exception.
Consider, for example, a pupil once wrote in his/her diary that his/her dream is to be an eminent composer like Beethoven but is very likely to find afterward himself/herself really interested in literature but not in music at all. Even celebrities may not be so sure about their interests, like Pasteur, who was a chemist at the very start, then had extreme interest in microorganism and made more contributions in biology rather than in chemistry. In short, people's interests and needs are not invariable. Consequently, if we force our education to trace everyone's satisfaction in a headless way, it will surely get into confusion. Additionally, consider a naughty boy who claims that his favorite and real dream is playing computer games day and night, can our education be "specifically designed" to meet such "needs and interests"?
