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Walden and Chinese College Education
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau is written in first person about the events and ideas that came to the author during his time living at Walden Pond in the eighteen hundreds.Henry David Thoreau was a poet and a philosopher who lived a life of simplicity in order to make a direct connection between people, God, and nature.His writing in Walden focused on many different themes, including the relationship between light and dark, the ideas and importance of nature, the meaning of progre, the importance of detail, and the relationship between the mind and body.He also developed many philosophical ideas concerning knowing yourself, living simply and deliberately, and seeking truth.Next, I will talk about the Chinese college education system from Walden’s point of view.Nowadays, Chinese college students may find it more and more difficult to get a satisfying job in the job market.As a result, they often complain what they have learned from college is rubbish, and the degrees they get are usele.Some people blame them what they say is angry youth like.But from my point of view, what they say is real under nowadays’ Chinese college education system.For most college students, they lack the ability and the basic individual thinking when they graduate.Look at what Thoreau wrote in his Walden.“If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue
the common course which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some profeor, where survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye;to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned;to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself;or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all round him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.” As a result, “while he(the college student)is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”(Economy, Walden)
Above paragraph talks about the problem in college education, where “anything is profeed and practiced but the art of life ”.What Thoreau criticized more than 100 years ago is still true to the Chinese college education system.In this system, various exams are the centre.To pa the exams, college students just learn what they are taught in the claroom, they don’t have to learn others.They don’t know what they like to learn while they don’t like what they are learning.As a result, they become book worms, lack of the individual thinking.On the other hand, as a college student, I often feel what I have learned in the claroom is too far away from the reality of life.And we have so many claes to attend, that means we have to spend most of our time to study something usele.Just as Thoreau said, “Those things for which
the most money is demanded are never the things which the students most want”.How to solve this problem? Thoreau viewed knowledge as an “intuitive force rather than a set of learned, logical proofs.” From my point of view, actually the “intuitive force” is the individual thinking.In order to obtain the “intuitive force” or develop the individual thinking, students should spend more time self-studying.Through self-studying, students can obtain knowledge actively.They can learn what they are interested, and interest is the best teacher.Teachers only need to give students inspiring lectures.Maybe we should learn some experience from the American college education system.After more than one hundred years of development, nowadays’ American college education system is much better than it was in Thoreau’s time.In the United States, students will find from the beginning, their profeors expects them to find and evaluate information on their own, rather than providing the students with the specific facts to remember in lectures and course materials.Students’ academic succe at a college will to a large extent depend on their competence in using the library.Students generally spend a good deal of their time in college libraries either completing course aignments or pursing research in connection with the preparation of required written work.US students learn actively and thus they learn it very well.They acquire the basic
knowledge they need and develop their individual thinking at the same time.It’s time for us to change our minds and encourage our Chinese college students to learn actively and develop their individual thinking as well.Just as Thoreau wrote “I desire that there maybe as many different person in the world as poible;but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.”
