Talking of making an important change in my school, I'd like to suggest that our education system
put more emphasis on the development of learning skills and applications of theories into practice
instead of simply learning knowledge from books. The proposal is based on the reasons as follows.
For one thing, overemphasis on academic learning poses a threat because of confusing the purpose
of learning. As school credit is usually considered the major criteria of academic learning, in a
credit-driven school, one may try hard to learn simply for learning's sake. In other words, college
students tend to blindly cram their brains with numerous texts and formulas while do not have a
clear idea of what they really want to learn, why they need to learn, not to mention how the things
they are learning are useful to the reality. An example is way that common ESL students learn
English: they may spend several years in reciting grammar rules, but can hardly utter an English
word in front of a foreigner.
Another reason that causes me to make the suggestion is the requirement of today's ever-changing
knowledge economy time. With the increasingly accelerated pace of information explosion, one can
hardly depend on knowledge from books that he or she has learned at school. Mastering learning
skills and knowing how to apply the skills into practice are becoming indispensable than ever
before. A recent survey conducted by educators shows that most students in our country lack the
ability of using tools and solving problems compared with their counterparts in the United States.
This informs us to take a serious look at our book-knowledge based education pattern.
In sum, it's high time for us to give a touch on our education pattern concerning the narrowness of
book knowledge learning as well as the necessity of practical learning required by the contemporary
world.