我什么时候能够写成这样哎....

51. "Education will be truly effective only when it is specifically designed to meet the individual needs and interests of each student." 教育只有被专门设计来满足每一个学生个人需求和兴趣的时候才是真正有效率的。 少数和多数 Three hundred years ago, an English poet, Alexander Pope, wrote the lines: Nature, and Nature’s laws Lay hid in sight; God said, let Newton be! And All was light. This momentous epitaph came as an encouraging torch to mankind who had wandered in the valley of ignorance. It came as an exciting aurora leading to the “Age of Reason”. Three hundred years later, however, some essential reasons are now still blowing in the wind, rather than taking root in all men’s hearts. Among them is the crucial idea-the individual needs and interests of students in the process of education. Genuine education, demonstrated by Descartes, Newton and Maxwell in the way of their own times, should be live to this Montaignesque motto:” We are born to seek and quest after truth.” That is to say, the individual desire and interest is the part-and-parcel in the process of inculcation. There is no normative way to instill knowledge, because each student starts from different background, possesses different aptitude, and bounds to different destination. However, we have to face the tragic fact that mankind, to some extent, are losing their vigor, little by little, before the formulated education. One need no further to look at the so called” obedient education”, which pervades in the Asian countries such as China and Japan, imparting the absolute authority of teacher while relegating students to passive recipients. It is indisputable that this asymmetrical teacher-student relationship will loom to profane the quintessence of education by rendering it to information cramming. Without interest, students were forced to swallow innumerable facts, confess their validity and forget them after exams. Without interest, learners were bereft of the freedom to imagine, the ability to ask questions and the chances to modify the old theories. Without interest, how could our civilization, the Age of Reason, make progress? Nonetheless, it is impossible to meet all the needs and interests of each student but relatively actualize a significant proportion. Education, like other mundane objects, is subject to the limited resources in the form of funding, locality, the competence of both the faculty and the learner, the development of culture and event religious belief and ideology. Moreover, supposing if a student has no interest in the field of moral study, should he school abolish all the morality courses? Or if the student is obsessed just with technical learning, should the school revolves around only the job-oriented courses while ignores the liberal arts which teachers the basic life skills such as critical thinking, comprehensive analysis and selective absorption. Therefore, over-emphasizing on individual interests will forfeit the original purpose of education. Francis Bacon once put it:” Histories make men wise, poems witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.” This lends strong credence to justify the rights for school to require students to dabble the kaleidoscopic inquires by virtue of espousing to designed curriculum rather than arbitrarily decide what they would like to exclusively delve into merely on the basis of their visceral impulses. Otherwise, education is by no means to make a full man but a crippled mind. Given the paramount role education plays on individual as well as society, good teaching accompanied with synergies of parents and community, will undoubtedly bring significant implications of students’ adult life and function them decently in society. To name a few, the process of identifying gifted children, the animated class abounded in free discussion, offering a excess of optional curriculum and extra-curriculum including fraternity, sorority, sports, volunteers in social activities, all these conduce to satisfy the coveted appetites and individualism of students. In sum, striking a balance between constraint conditions and personal interests, education will stretch out the antennae of human creation to explore a sage world. At that time, mankind will be conveying new meanings of Shakespeare’s lines:” beauty of the world, paragon of animals!”

The absence of choice is a circumstance that is very, very rare.

以上是今天的issue题目，拿到题目的时候我就觉得，在这个时候谈选择，真的是再合适不过。我们一生要面对无数次的选择，每一次的选择都会把我们带向不同的人生道路。没有选择的情况就像题目所说，very,very rare。 然而，在我们已经迈入了20岁的时候，我们不妨自己问问自己，到底有多少的选择是自己决定的呢？详细的审视下自己的一生，你会发现从出生开始，你就有了无从选择的性别、父母；在成长的过程中，或许很多人并不是自愿而是遵循了大众化的成长之路“上学——工作——成家立业——抚育后代”，你的后代或许也会和你走着一样的人生之路。这样看来，似乎并不存在着选择，然而，就是在这个已经被确立的道路上，人们正在努力的通过自己的努力改变生活环境，进入理想的学校，选择自己喜欢的专业，从事感兴趣的职业，和自己爱的人组建家庭。

其实我们面临着很多的选择。

比如现在，我们需要面临着选择是工作还是考研。而这次选择，其实只是以后人生无数的选择中的一个罢了。而这个决定，将或多或少的改变我们未来的人生道路。

我们为什么感到迷茫？因为从小到大，我们走的几乎是一条单行道，所谓的选择至多就是考入一个更好的更高等级的学校。在潜意识里，我们认为只有升学这一条路，离开这条路以后是什么样子？没有人知道。

这是我们某种意义上第一次真正意义上自己做出选择。我想，无论你选择什么，无论结果怎样，其实都无所谓。

我想，

不妨，把所有世俗的想法全抛开，不要考虑——钱，房子，汽车，结婚，生子——因为这些都不是你的生活。

不妨，安静下来，听一听自己内心的想法。

只有你自己的内心深处，知道自己应该选择什么，而那一定会引领你进入到一个幸福快乐的生活。

TOPIC: ISSUE184 - "It is a grave mistake to theorize before one has data."

WORDS:375          TIME: 0:50:00          DATE: 2009-2-16

 

According to the title statement, it is a grave mistake to theorize before one has data. While I agree that data is very important to stabilize one's theory, I insist that sometime we can put forward a theory before we have data. In order words, scientists should not wait to theorize until they obtain too much data, this phenomenon is equally leads to grave consequences.

In academic physics field, scientists tend to thought experiments in the form of imaginary, some time they use mathematics method to derive a new formula without using any data. Like Albert Einstein when he first put forward his principle of relativity, it is pure mathematics formula in his paper and has a few support data. Because, at that time, the start of the 20's century, the experiment technique and condition is not highly develop. However, to validate his theory with data, the experiment must be set up precisely. Until now, some deduces of his relativity has not been approved with data yet.

Therefore, in many time, scientists use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct, in fact, it was never carried out, but this unique use of scientific thought experiment led to a successful theory that was proven by other empirical means.

In addition, scientist also use proxy experiments which they conduct prior to a real physical experiment, and the result of the proxy experiment will often be so clear that there will be no need to conduct a physical experiment at all. In medical fields, a newly-develop medicine should not be used on human beings before it test hundreds more times on the experimental animals. Scientist uses these animals to validate their theory and collect the relative data to confer its effects.

However, after one's theory is established, the support data become very important to stabilize a theory and it makes it appear to lend more credence to the theory than the theory actually does. And in common sense it is impossible to theorize in the first place without at least some data.

To conclude, there is no easy solution to such a complex issue. However, taking into account all the dimensions discussed in the above analysis might be a decisive step out of this dilemma.

 

字数不够，感觉没什么可写的，论证过于宽泛..真的得努力了！

要不就完了.....

70 "In any profession—business, politics, education, government—those in power should step down after five years. The surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership."

 

 

The speaker asserts that in any profession, those in power should step down after five years, and it is the surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership. In my opinion, one does not have to go very far to see the truth of this statement.

 

It is unfortunate but true, that there is no flawless individual in this world. Great success, fame and wealth, awe and respect from subordinates can seduce an initially wise and cool-minded leader. This possibility of long-term leadership makes things worse by granting these leaders sufficient time and power to abuse success.

 

One of the famous piece in the Declaration of Independence says "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security". To avoid such harmful phenomenon, we need to introduce a periodic change mechanism which will lead to a quite different result. By maintaining proper competitive mechanisms, the enterprise is always able to replenish itself with fresh blood and new leading ideologies. Newly emerged leaders bring new ways of leading and managing, and they are more likely to keep in better touch with the changing times as well.

 

However, a proper competitive mechanism is sometime very hard to constitute. The key problem is how to identifying and preparing suitable employees. In addition, to avoid many gusty affairs, an internal candidate also must be prepared well.  Nevertheless, a frequently change to the key players of one organization may create instability. Thus, an organization must insure the key person so that funds are available if she or he dies and these funds can be used by the business to cope with the problems before a suitable replacement is found or developed.

 

A five-year period is proper tenure in most cases. Longer terms would ossify the enterprise while shorter ones may create instability.

 

In summary, while some people may remain unconvinced by my argument, the reasons I have analyzed so far should at least make them aware of the complexities of the issue under discussion. There is little doubt that more and more people will come to realize that any profession will be benefited by a periodic change mechanism.

212. "If a goal is worthy, then any means taken to attain it is justifiable."

The speaker asserts that if a goal is worthy then any means of attaining that goal is justifiable. In my point of view this extreme position misses the point. In fact, we need to weight a goal by take into consideration both the benefits and costs, or harm. If the goal is really worth and benefit for both personal and societal, we can do our best to achieve it.

However, although some goals are worthy indeed, it does not mean that one can attain it by any means. In the process of attaining these goals, people such as political leaders and others should root in their minds that they can do nothing to harm the welfare of other people. That means we cannot do as the adage says "One general achieves renown over the dead bodies of ten thousand soldiers".

In business, the goal of maximizing profits and minimizing costs and expenses cannot be attained by illegal means or at the expense of social well beings. For example, it is unjustifiable for an enterprise to improve its profitability by releasing poisonous water into rivers.

Although I disagree that any means taken to attain it is justifiable, it doesn’t means that we cannot sacrifice or endure highly cost to achieve a goal. Believe it or not, sacrifice or endure highly cost sometimes is the only way to achieve the benefit goal. It just like the proverb said "one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs”. When we playing chess, we know that our final goal is to win the game, therefore, some time we need to sacrifice our chessman to establish a better situation. Since sacrifice a chessman is a highly cost during playing, but if the goal is worthy and it can lead to a victory situation, we can sacrifice it, because this means is justifiable. It is the same principle in our life.

For example, during World War II, German booming destroyed the center of the city Coventry. On the night of 14-15 November 1940, rather than compromise a decisive source of intelligence, Winston Churchill left the city of Coventry to the mercies of the German Air force. Winston Churchill and colleagues had cracked the Inigma code at Bletchley House and knew that Coventry was to be bombed. Winston Churchill said and did nothing because it was too late to start any preparations and if the Nazi knew their Inigma code had been decrypted and changed the encrypt method, much more valuable information might lost. Churchill knew his goal was to achieve the victory and brought the world peace. Therefore, we can forgive his decisions to sacrifice the city of Coventry.

In addition, when we try to cut down the let of CO2 to stop the global warming, many governments must pay much money and may harm a lot of people's benefit. But it is surely benefited for the world, and also, our offspring. 

In sum, the speaker begs the question. The worthiness of any goal, whether it is personal or societal, can be determined only by weighing the benefits of achieving the goal against its costs -- to us as well as others.