Reality Is Greater than Ideality

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1996-Aug, a 21 year-old woman was 5 months pregnant and hopelessly addicted to glue and solvent sniffing. Having previously given birth to three children, she had at least two of them permanently harmed in the womb as a result of her addiction. Social workers tried to obtain help for the woman, but she had refused treatment. In such a case, she had already violated her responsibilities of being a mother-to-be. Even though abortion is not the perfect answer, but it’s a better result to prevent another inborn harmed child.

Promise fetuses a future is to provide them a complete and happiness-oriented future, not a broken and miserable one. Not only from the Canadian case, lots of women who suffered from rape or incest mostly give birth to their children unwillingly. In other words, their children are doomed to have their parents unconcern, or worse, dislike them. If so, this kind of kids is very likely to commit crime in their future since they cannot have a normal loving family and parents. Therefore, if we insist on illegalize abortion and force those women to have their children, we are not only forcing those mothers to give birth to a child but also putting our society into a better risks—promised enhancing crime rate.

Pro-choice side emphasizes more on practical living capacity than on ideal right of living. Even though the Constitution has promised each one of us the right of living, there is an unclear area to define who are exactly the ones to be promised; does fetus have the right as well? Can we call fetuses human beings as well? These are the questions that are still uncertain, but crimes are ongoing, so do the unwanted children keep producing. Sometimes, unwanted children not merely involve in the person will of raising them but also result from the inability of raising them. Some poor young parents might not have full knowledge about contraception or might have financial problem in contraception. Under this kind of situation, if abortion is illegalized, forcing them to give birth to as many children as them can’t avoid can only make their living situation worse. They will have no living quality and their children might therefore suffer from having not enough food to eat, such as condition in most African countries.

Between people having been born and fetuses still in wombs, we can still distinguish them clearly and obviously. In English, we call each human organism those have left their mother’s womb a person; however, we never call fetuses people. In our cognition, the difference between something and someone is consciousness. Apparently people are conscious. They can think and express themselves. Comparatively, a fetus, especially before the second and the third four weeks, is unconscious. It is a part of a human being, not a human being. As a result, when we do abortion, we don’t call it killing, because killing results in death. Death is the permanent end of a life of a person or an animal, causing grief of the person’s family or other people’s anxiety about their own safety. However, abortion causes neither of the two.

In my opinion, abortion is more a practical issue than a moral problem. If pregnancy can only bring misery and troubles, the beings that are already existing should be the ones we consider first, not those who are not being yet. For reality is the foundation of ideality, without dealing with reality—living—it’s impossible to talk about ideality—the right of living.

The Smaller Class, the Better

In “College Lectures: Is Anybody Listening?,” David Daniels prefers small discussion classes to large lecture classes. He claims that first of all, to listen intelligently is uneasy when learning with lecture, especially when “people can listen at a rate of 400 to 600 words a minute, while the most impassioned professor talks at scarcely a third of that speed.” Second, he thinks that attending lectures is passive learning. For most fresh learners, their first priority is to learn how to learn instead of being blindly considered to be active and experienced learners. Finally, the author states that giving lectures will harm professors as well. Without any question, a liveliest mind can atrophy. I’m very agreed with Daniel’s ideas. Personally speaking, I have quite a few experiences showing me that how small discussion classes can benefit students more than big lecture classes, whether in learning or in developing personalities.

I find small discussion classes will force student to be fully concentrated in class. Since I major in language now, lots of basic training courses are given in a small class, such as composition or oral training. It’s very obvious for me to sense the different atmosphere being in a big class and in a small class. Usually in the big lecture course, the whole class will divide itself into two groups: one group sits in the front and listens to the professor very carefully, and the other group sits at the back of the classroom and does each of their own business, or worse, does nothing but sleeping. Taiwanese students, including me, honestly, are more passive comparing to foreign students. Probably because of the education system we’ve been in since we were little—we are forced all the time. Therefore as a result, as long as there is no one forcing us, we feel like there’s an advantage to take freely. As a result, when we are in a small discussion course, almost every student is completely awake and fully anticipates activities in class. However, if it’s a big lecture course, more than two third of the student, maybe more, can never be totally focus for even one hour.

Moreover, small discussion classes can stimulate students to think instead of only taking knowledge. In a small discussion class, since everyone is involved, there’s nowhere to run. Each of us needs to tense our nerves and be prepared to answer a sudden question asked by the teacher. At the meanwhile, such kind of intensity can make students to think what the class is about and what the activity which is on going is for. Contrarily, if now students are in a big lecture class, instead of taking notes, they have nothing more to do. Yes, active learners may think and absorb knowledge, or even raise a question when listening to only a lecture, but, as I’ve mentioned above, mostly Taiwanese students are passive learners. The worse situation for a Taiwanese student is that he or she only takes notes like a robot, writing something he or she doesn’t even know. The person is not in the class at all, and after the class he or she can’t read the notes, either. This is the most inefficient way of learning.

The other substantial feature that a small discussion class can influence a student is that it can help develop the student into an active and open-minded learner. Listening only in the class without active participation can very likely make a student dumb and lack of positiveness. Having no environment to encourage learners to speak up actively, Taiwanese students become much shyer when speaking in front of the class. In the end, they have not enough courage to express their own opinions in the public. This phenomenon doesn’t merely exist in the campus but extends to be a social issue. Even though most people say it belongs to our cultural tradition, it is actually a vicious circle. We Chinese are always educated in a certain way, so our personality’s development is led to a certain direction.

From David Daniel’s article, he suggests an option for the authority of education to explore a new system of offering “lectures.” I think it is a high time for all of us think of this question and do something about it.