issue范文

TOPIC: ISSUE50 - "In order to improve the quality of instruction at the college and university level, all faculty should be required to spend time working outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses they teach."

WORDS: 572 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 8/6/2009 3:52:41 PM

The speaker asserts that all faculty should spend time working and learning outside the academic world to improve their instruction quality. I basically agree with the speaker's opinion as for the goodness it will bring to the teaching and the students if the works are just controlled properly.

First of all, to spend time outside the academic world in professions relevant to the courses the teachers teach will be good to their teaching. It is often common that a professor in some field should know nothing about the newest development in this field and one just teaches what is in the books, which is of great harm to the development of students. However, are the teachers provided opportunities to go out of the classes and schools to learn the current situations in related field, they would broaden their views and thus know how to proceed their courses better, which in turn will be beneficial to the students. For example, in the field of journalism, a teacher who knows nothing about how the news are collected and conveyed in the real world could only tell his students some rigid knowledge in the books but could not tell them how to use them in reality. Nevertheless, a teacher who has worked in the field would teach more things than books. Obviously, the teaching quality of these two situations is dramatically different.

Further, the students will benefit more from a teacher who has taken outside works and they can be more informative about how to use what they have learned and thus setting up the suitable study ways and goals. A typical example is about the students in the design majors. For an image design major students, one will know more about the factors that would influence the image designed just by professional knowledge and will be better at his major. For an industrial mould design student, one will learn more about how to design a beautiful and practical mould and how to avoid problems in reality one would meet. For an architect design student, one will learn more about the tendency and fashion now and can perform better. By learning experience and knowledge teachers got from real related work, students can learn with a more clearly goal which can help them to have a better career.

Nevertheless, the teachers should not spend undue time and energy on the work outside the academic world. If a teacher is so enthusiastic about his work that he just engages in working all the time and do nothing to prepare for the class, the quality of his class cannot be ensured and the students won't be taught in a good condition. So the teacher must focus on his teaching mainly. Besides, paying too much attention on how to prepare for a good career may be harmful to the advance and innovation in academics. Take the artificial intelligence for example, a qualified student should not only know how to made and use a robot, but also try to advance the function of it. A student who is practical won't likely make contribution to the evolvement of the technology.