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GRE AW issue "Student should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study" [NEW]
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153"Students should bring a certain skepticism to whatever they study. They should question what they are taught instead of accepting it passively."
Every considerable progress made in the process of social development could be somewhat ascribed to skepticism. In every field of human society, people overthrow the old theories and establish new ones or make any inventions by the way they ask questions and bring skepticism. Thus, I strongly agree with the speaker's assertion. Additionally, students should not only be aware of the importance of skepticism, but also build up a systematical style of thinking.
From contradictive examples of how societies will operate under different attitudes towards skepticism, we can further understand the significance of the query. One example is, in the benighted Middle Ages, people's minds were deeply shackled under the arbitrary ruling of the Roman Catholic Church in West Europe. The person who brought up new ideas that disaccorded with the ideological system would be regarded as heterodoxy and even be sentenced to death, such as the Italian philosopher Bruno, was burned at the stake because his cosmic theory of an infinite universe offended the religion. We can also see the similar situation of the Qin dynasty in China ruled by Qin Shi Huang, who ordered to burn the books and bury the scholars alive and do not allow people to have any chance to question the governing system. Both the mentioned social morphology finally resulted in disasters of its people, poor culture, low level of productivity forces and social retrogression, and they ultimately went to decadency and death. However, another example on the contrary is the social formation during renaissance. With minds unfettered, people were brave to use their critical eyes and rational thoughts to judge the country, the power, the law, and the religion. And the theocracy was totally subverted and would be finally replaced by enlightened political system. No era would create more notable figures than this period of time considering the great achievements in almost every domain of the world. In the field of science, there are Copernicus, Galileo, and Cardano; In art, there are Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci(who was also a scientist); In philosophy, Dante and Desiderius Erasmus. Elements of skepticism may be found in every details of their accomplishment, which brought about a brand-new epoch and exerted profound impact on the modern society.
In terms of education, the more a student asks questions and brings skepticism to what he studies, the more he involves himself in real learning. Not all information provided in books or by teachers is absolutely infallible, thus, being somewhat a skeptic will not only help you truly understand and effectively absorb knowledge, but also help to perfect or rectify the current theories, which will consequently benefit others and descendants. Accordingly, the teachers should be open to the skepticism brought by their students, and always update themselves by moderate self-denial.
There is an old saying goes, "we can never reach the truth but simply get closer to it". Hence, by constantly question and answer, subversion and construction, we push the world forward. For example, we all accept the principle that the sum of the angles of every triangle equals 180 deg. However, the German mathematician, F-K-Schweikart, questioned this seemed undoubtedly correct principle. And then Riemann, another mathematician, inspired by his skepticism, finally established the non-Euclidean geometry, which was then used by Einstein, whose relativity theory was largely on the ground of Riemannian geometry.
However, undue or blind skepticism might be counterproductive in educating students. Youngsters should first establish a foundation of experiential knowledge and develop a healthy style of systematical thinking habits before asking critical questions about what they are learning, otherwise it will reduce efficiency in learning by constantly bringing about meaningless questions. Therefore, the destination of education is not to instill all information into students' head, and is not to unconditionally answer students' questions, but to help students form a healthy mode of thinking, by which students will have the capacity to create, to distinguish the right from the wrong, and to reach a new level of human intellect by standing on the shoulders of giants.
In conclusion, skepticism is of great benefit to the progress of both individuals and collective, and thus students should be brave to question what they are learning on the condition that they had formed a healthy way of thinking.
