GRE Issue 题库第3篇

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

Educational institutions do not have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed.

First, although a student may show no talent in a certain field of study at school, he may become a master in this field in the future. Thus, it is impossible for instructors to foretell whether a student will succeed or not in a field of study. For example, when Albert Einstein was still a child and studied in elementary school, he was not very good at learning Math. Furthermore, he was very bad at expressing his ideas clearly to his teacher, and his teacher even thought that Einstein might be retarded. If Einstein's teacher had dissuaded him from pursuing any field of study in the future, Einstein would not have become a prestigious physicist and this would have been a huge loss for the entire human kind. 

Second, although a student chooses a field of study in which he is unlikely to succeed, he may still be able to make great achievements outside his field of study. The most important knowledge a student could learn at school is not things related to his field of study but the communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills. Therefore, after graduation, the student will be well-qualified for a job even outside his field of study because he is fully capable of dealing with the challenges he might encounter at work, even though his job has nothing to do with his field of study. For example, Jack Ma, the richest person in China and the founder of Chinese most valuable company Alibaba, was an English major student at university. By taking literature courses, Jack Ma need to empathize with the author or the characters in the book and understand the contents from different perspectives, helping him develop the ability to communicate efficiently with other people and address real-world problems from different perspectives. After graduation, he used the knowledge and skills he had learned at university to articulate his business proposals in a clear and coherent way to venture capital investors, secure the investments from large companies like Softbank and Yahoo, and successfully found Alibaba, the first e-commerce company in China. Hence, although his field of study at university has nothing to do with the e-commerce and information technology industry, Jack Ma still uses the knowledge and skills he has learned at university to successfully found Alibaba and make great achievements outside his field of study.

Finally, there is no universal standard to assess whether a person is successful or not, and it's biased to use fame and money as the only criteria. The students may not end up making a fortune but they can consider themselves successful because they will do what they love. Thus, it is the responsibility of students to decide what field of study they want to pursue in the future and educational institutions only have the responsibility to provide students with various opportunities to help them develop their interests and find what they really love to do. Schools could increase the range of teaching subjects and offer students a wide selection of elective courses. Schools could also provide students with adequate library resources and increase the size of library facilities. Such measures would encourage students to choose from different field of study what they really love to pursue in the future. 

To sum up, educational institutions do not have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed. For one thing, it is impossible for instructors to foretell whether a student will succeed or not in a field of study. For another, although a student chooses a field of study in which he is unlikely to succeed, he may still be able to make great achievements outside his field of study. Hence, educational institutions only have the responsibility to provide students with various opportunities to develop their interests and let the students decide what field of study they want to pursue in the future.