Argument Essay Final Draft Copy

The influence of education In a school in China, a principle once went to a class to observe a teacher’s interaction with students. At the end of lesson, the teacher asked students: “Are you following me?” “Yes” said students. “If anybody still have problem, please raise your hand.” said the teacher. The whole class was quiet, but one student raised his hand. The teacher saw it, and patiently explained again to this student. Then the teacher said to this student: “Now do you understand it? You must listen carefully next time.” After the class, the principle tried to talk to the student. The student thought that the principle would criticize him, so he whispered quietly: “I will listen carefully next time.” But the principle said: “I just want to praise you because you dared to tell the truth. You are brave. Next time, if you don’t understand something, you should raise your hand again. Don’t be afraid.” The student was very happy and said: “Yes, I will do that!” Let’s think if the principle didn’t encourage the student, would he dare to raise his hand next time? He would very likely not be willing to do that. This is because when the teacher warned him to listen carefully he implied that the student only asked questions because he did not pay good attention. So method of education is very important, and it can influence student’s creativity in positive or negative ways. A good educational system can encourage student’s imagination and give them the background knowledge to be creative. On the other hand, a poor educational system will limit and take away student’s confidence to think creativity. So what is creativity? My understanding of creativity is not to do the same thing over and over again. It is to have new ideas, to dare to break away from convention and to create things using original ideas. I think that creativity can be divided into two categories. One is people’s ability to imagine, and the other is the ability to develop new skills and new solutions with a certain amount of existing knowledge.
Imagination is very precious. It is the basis for creative activity. But people cannot develop their imagination in any environment. A good educational system is one that can provide the conditions in which young people feel encouraged to think freely, even make mistakes. Only when young people dare to think for themselves, they will be able to do things creatively. Just like Kie Ho wrote in his article, entitled “We Should Cherish our Children’s Freedom to Thinking,” about how his son was encouraged to study Shakespeare by using his own imagination. “In his English class, my son was assigned to write a love letter to Juliet, either in Shakespearean jargon or in modern lingo. He picked the latter; his Romeo would take Juliet to an arcade for a game of Donkey Kong” (P113). In this case, the teacher gave the assignment that allowed students to be creative. That was why Ho’s son could think freely. I have a similar experience. My reading class teacher asked students to think about the evolution of smart phones so far and to imagine what it would be in the future. I imagined that future smart phone may be made of completely transparent materials. My teacher said it was interesting. I was very happy and feel that this is the kind of exercise that encouraged me to development the power of imagination.
To have good imagination is only the beginning of being creative. The harder and increasingly more important kind of creativity is to be able to think out of the box—to develop new skills and new solutions for problems. Now in many areas, especially in high technology, creativity is the key to solve new problems. But to be creative in these areas one can not merely have the imagination of a child. One will first needs to have a certain amount of training in these areas before he or she can understand the problems and think about ways to solve them. Like it says in the author’s opinion featured in the article titled “Teach Knowledge, Not “Mental Skills”” by E.D. Hirsch. He thought “Problem-solving skills are necessary but they depend on a wealth of relevant knowledge.” (P116) A good educational system can provide people with such background knowledge so that they can work and be creative in such areas. The internet is a good example. The technology involved in internet is very complicated and one cannot really understand it without studying the relevant knowledge. Although many people are using the internet to chat or to play games, they don’t necessarily know why they can do that. In order for young people to have the ability to work and be creative in this field, they need to be taught the basic skills such as programming. Only after one learned the language of programming, one can hope to go from just a game player to software developer or game designer. So, studying the existing knowledge should not be in conflict with creativity. But it is important that an educational system is designed to teach knowledge for the purpose of helping people to be more creative. On the other hand, a poor education will limit and kill creativity. To be creative often means one have to take risks and be willing to make mistakes. Of course mistakes do not equal creativity, but it is often the path to final success. To create something new, people often have to experience many mistakes or failures. If an educational system does not allow people to make mistakes, then it will not give people the chance to figure out things in creative ways. If young people are made to only remember the correct answer, how can they be creative? Kie Ho gives us a good example of the educational system in Indonesia that had negative effect on young people. That educational system was focused on high marks and required students to obey. He only answered when he was one hundred percent sure that he would give the correct answer. “Even when studying word forms, there were no alternatives. In Similes pretty lips were always as red as sliced pomegranates, and beautiful eyebrows were always like a parade of black clouds.” (P113) We can see that such a way of teaching limited students’ ideas. They were taught that there was only one right answer for a question. I have the same experience like Ho’s when I was in China. In class, we were not allowed to make mistakes and can only say the correct answer. When I just started learning English, I once wrote a wrong answer in a test. My teacher required me to copy out the right answer 100 times. She might think that I would remember the answer this way, but it only made me hate this teacher and lose interest in learning English. Just like Kei Ho’s system in Indonesia, the Chinese education also have fixed correct answers that will limit children’s imagination. In Chinese children’s books and cartoons, wolf, fox or snake are always bad animals, on the contrary, rabbit, monkey or sheep are always good. After been influenced by Chinese children’s books and cartoons, I have a hard time image wolf being good or rabbit being bad.
Overall I truly believe that the method of education can influence student a lot. We live in this new information age, new problems and new needs appear in everyday. To solve new problems and satisfy new needs, we must come up with unconventional solutions. As creativity become more important for our society, it needs to be given a major position in our educational system. Schools should find good methods to nurture and encourage creativity from earlier on. Children’s imagination should be cherished. In addition to protecting young people’s ability to think freely, education should also prepare people by teaching them the knowledge needed for future creative work. Knowledge must be the basis of problem solving skills and not to work against it.