DAY7

前天和昨天又堕落了，期间做了一些GRE的练习题，看了一些数据库的知识。今天写了不少文章。 PO一个Issue和Argument吧~

Issue: 

Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields ofstudy in which they are unlikely to succeed.

To some extent, Iagree with the speaker that educational institutions like colleges,universities should play a crucial role in guiding students to somewhere they havepotential and may succeed. Also, it is these institutions’ responsibility topoint out students’ errors in their way of pursuing dreams, and also to makesure that what they do won’t be detrimental to our society.

Nevertheless, weshould ask, is it wise or plausible to pull a student out of some field justbased on the present judgments about him? If so, then we must make sure thatthe assessment about the student is one hundred percent correct and he or shewill never be successful in this field. However, it is impossible for us tomake such assertion or find a universal approach to predict a student’s future.In addition, no one is able to succeed in a field without great efforts andlong time devoted to it. Thus it is too arbitrary and hasty to say someone canget success in some field or not, especially for the educational institutions.

Besides, today’sworld is driven by ever-changing technology. Specifically, any fields andindustries are frequently changed and developed thanks to the acceleration ofadvances in science and technology. Thus it would be difficult to predict thefuture of some field or industry. And also the knowledge and the skills popularin today’s industries may be obsolete tomorrow. For instance, no one could tellor foresee the tremendous influence of computer and network 40 years ago.Computers were only considered as some quixotic stuff played and used byelectronic geeks but today, you can see different types of computers with fascinatingfunctions and applications emerging from the electronic industry. Therefore,whether a field will boom after some years is hard to tell, not to mentionwhether the student can stand out in some field in ten years.

Furthermore, evensome fields like pure mathematics and theoretic physics, are very hard to studyand there are not sufficient job opportunities offered, educationalinstitutions also cannot dissuade students from devoting to it simply becausehe or she are possibly failed. Conversely, these fields need more talented andhardworking students to develop them. Thus, educational institutions shouldplay a role in looking for suitable and potential students in these fields andencourage them to learn more and try more about these fields. Only in this waycan the educational institutions exert its initial purpose as enlightenment.

Admittedly,educational institutions do have the responsibilities to guide students whenthey choosing their careers, but more freedom and space should be left forstudents themselves to decide what they want to do in the future based on theirown interests and abilities.

Argument:

The author claimed that so-called Palean baskets didn’t uniquely belong to Palean people based on the discoveryof similar basket in Lithos. To justify thisconclusion, the author pointed out that Lithos and Palea were separatedby the Brim River and no Palean boats were found. As aresult, it seems reasonable at the first glance that this basket wasmade by people outside of Palea. However the claim is full of holes and the evidence lends little credibility to the author’s statement. 

Firstly, as pointed out above, theauthor assumed that the Brim River separatedPalea and Lithos since it is very deep and broad. Nevertheless, the author didn’tprovide any information about the river in prehistoric time when Pleans lived.So there are considerable possibilities that the Brim River was shallow andnarrow then and easy to cross by foot, or even that the river didn’t exist atthat time and the two villages were connected by land. Therefore, the author’sclaim cannot hold water unless more resources about the river are given.

Moreover, even we admit theexistence of the river then and the only way to cross it is using a boat forthe moment, but we cannot therefore arbitrarily concluded that Paleans couldn’thave crossed it simply relying on lack of evidenceabout Palean boats. Obviously, none evidence of Palean boats found doesn’tmean there were no boats at that time. Besides, the author overlooked the possibility that people in Lithos might have the ability to construct boats, and thenthey could cross the Brim River and get the basket from Paleans easily.

Finally, even though it is truethat Paleans didn’t have any boats then and the river was too hard for them tocross, there are still explanations for the discovery of the basket in Lithos.For instance, this “Palean” basket was floated on the river and then crossed itfrom Palea to Lithos. Or perhaps there may besome travellers outside Palea brought this basket and took it to Lithos byother land routes. In other words, either scenariowould explain how the Palean basket arrived at Lithos from Palea, so wecannot exclude these possibilities to reach the author’s conclusion. 

In sum, theargument made by the author is unconvincing as it stands. To strengthen it, theauthor must rule out tremendous possibilities of the appearance of the “Palean”basket in Lithos. To better evaluate the argument, we woud need moreinformation about the prehistoric people in Palea and Lithos, as well as theBrim River during that period.