作者：北美考试教学中心 托福写作组 崔国花
Education is one of the most effective and accessible ways to guarantee social mobility and personal well-being. Therefore, people have been delving increasingly deeper into both schooling and parenting, in hope of perfecting the education system. The strange part of such devotion is that the majority of essays and speeches on this area are about learning ability as if it were the ultimate goal of education. Personally, however, I believe educators should give higher priorities to mental growth.
Admittedly, self-learning ability is vital in one’s life, especially for adults who have few chances to be full-time students. Some people insist that it is indispensable for one to acquire the skills to keep searching for information and updating his or her knowledge because we are living in a fast-paced society where numerous existing jobs are and will be replaced by new ones sooner or later. Under such circumstances, those who are capable to educate themselves are more likely to secure a brighter career life.
However, the ability to educate oneself is not the panacea for all social and individual issues. After all, human beings are social creatures supporting and relying on each other. Therefore, education has a higher goal: character building. Today, the Internet and jet aircrafts have closely connected people around the world in an unprecedented way. Consequently, people from different cultures are more likely to be exposed to each other. If one is taught to be empathetic and concerned about others, especially the least advantaged ones, greater missions can be achieved. For instance, people in developed countries set a number of programs to help women and children in impoverished areas. It is not self-learning ability but ethics that drive the former to spare time and effort for the latter’s good. To conclude, compared with competitive learners, moral citizens are more beneficial to society.
Furthermore, nurturing curiosity is also essential for one’s future development. Some teachers and parents focus so much on what a kid has or hasn’t acquired that they pay little attention to what drives that kid to learn. In the long run, students will gradually be bored with schoolwork. Worse, once there are no exams nor assigned tasks, people with less willingness to explore the world will stop learning, whether they are equipped with strong self-educating abilities or not. Gradually, such employees get consumed in their work while having no interest or passion in other fields. On the contrary, however, those who are eager to probe the new territories will have fun in study, work, and daily life. Even if some of them find it difficult to learn by themselves, they could turn to online and offline courses or study groups, which are prevalent in modern society.
Education should focus more on people instead of pieces of knowledge. If a school gives higher priority to the preparation for future workers rather than the cultivation of responsible citizens, it is confusing the means of education with the ends of this undertaking.
