Topic:
Present your perspective on the issue below, using relevant reasons and/or examples to support your views.
"It is important for higher education to challenge established traditions and values."
Your Answer (Score: 5)
We are all granted supreme talent and the ultimate goal of self-improvement is to reach our full potential and make best use of our talent. To achieve this, we have paid much attention to education, especially to higher education.
This a controversial issue. In our education experience we emphasize our intellectual achievements. That is, we spare no effort to absorb and digest as much concrete knowledge as possible. A pursuit in intellect is nothing wrong. But educators should not simply pour truths and untruths into the minds of students. Students should also be taught how to develop interpersonal skills, how to collaborate with others, how to build self-confidence, how to stand up and draw lessons from failures, and the most important, how to think critically and independently.
In modern times we find this world filled with conflicts almost in all aspects. A person who fails to think independently and critically can hardly get on well in the society. There are established traditions and values. Most people just accept and adhere to them passively. Few have courage and confidence to challenge them. Human beings have created unprecedented material civilization but fall ragged in spirit. If we just follow exactly the same traditions as our forefathers did, dare we say that we have made much progress? I am afraid not.
Admittedly, modern traditions and values are established through the long history of human beings. They have their merits since they have laid the moral and ethic foundations of the society. But a close and thorough examination reveals that in all times of human history, there were conflicts between established traditions and new ideas. Just think of abortion. One century ago it was generally considered as ignoble and immoral. But in modern society an increasing number of people do not think so, although it is still controversial. Actually conflicts between establish values and new ideas come into being as a result of the improvement in material civilization and the lagged intellectual civilization. To settle these conflicts, the best way is to resort to education.
The true value of higher education lies in that it equip people professional skills and indispensable courage and confidence to challege traditions and values. Thus people can make their own choice. Take my personal experience as an example. When I was a university student, I was specialized in biology. In the class of genetics my teacher always talked about genetic technology. The most impressive thing was that once he raised such a question (and I paraphrase) :" Do you think the development and application of genetic technology conflict with human morality?" We had discussed about this for a whole class, and finally almost all of us agreed that although it was difficult to predict the consequences of genetic technology, it seemed that the benefits outweighed the costs. And so long as we could make rational use of this magic power, we could benefit much from it and avoid trouble. But restrictions on some areas, such as human cloning, should be established. Our idea conflicted with the established value that it is wrong to develop and make use of genetic technology, but we all believed that we were right.