Enjoy and Embrace Learning

For several years, no matter how high tuitions rose, a steady stream of students passed through the gate of a liberal art college. A majority of these students and their families involves considerable expense, time and effort. Was it worth it? I got several reliable answers which suggest that it was. From the discussion in the honor courses, they really got a great insight into what they are looking for in college and got answer that it is worth to fertilize the soul of themselves through a growing knowledge. Some people may insist that they gain more material things from learning such as that it is useful to prepare them for a job. However, students have been blinded by those visible material things and they neglect the transformation of the human characters. While to an extent "seeing is believing", quite often it is what you don’t see that makes the difference. Receiving liberal art education, students are able to have many kinds of perspectives and use them appropriately. For these reasons, I believe learning just like Tangram which is a square divided into seven pieces that can be arranged in many ways. People hold on consistently and persistently to find the possibility of the world and themselves. This journey is permanent and people should enjoy it and embrace it. And students should see invisible changing when they are learning. Fortunately, at Drew University, I did see students were eager to embrace the process of learning from my observation of Chinese classes.

In the class I observed, I found my notion of freedom, a key to embrace learning, was confirmed. More interestingly, there were plenty of ways for the pursuit of freedom. When I observed Chinese class, I saw the classroom had blue wall which differs from the yellow chairs in other class and evoked tranquility, freedom and esteem. To my surprise, the placing of tables and chairs was very special. Four tables, on either side of the classroom, formed a long table. In the middle, each of the four tables was perpendicular to the long tables. And three black boards were on the three sides of this classroom. Every student enjoyed this open environment and lived in this environment for a long time.