Students' "unwilling to fool" elective assignments don't just bring romance

Source: China Youth Daily

Ren Guanqing Source: China Youth Daily ( 2022-02-11 08 edition)

"The final exam task is very heavy, I wanted to fool around with this homework... But yesterday in the library, after listening to this song list that recorded the development trajectory of Western music, I really felt touched, and the whole person calmed down. Recently, some netizens posted a romantic college assignment: in the Western music history elective class, the teacher hopes that students will set their own themes from the works they have appreciated in the classroom and "make" a playlist of their own choice.

With the theme of "Falling Moonlight", the netizen selected works such as "The Girl with Flax Hair" and "Moonlight Sonata", shared the subjective feelings brought by these tunes to himself, and wrote heartily in the homework appendix: In my opinion, selecting a few from 91 excellent works is a process of reaching out to catch the scattered moonlight.

"I also want to take this kind of romantic class" "Quite a hard homework, it is not too much to say that it is a gift"... Many netizens said: This is what college electives should look like. Different from the professional courses that seek refinement and depth, the elective courses are mainly used to expand students' horizons and satisfy the curiosity of non-professionals. Rather than creating "one-semester crash courses" for musicians, architects, and philosophers, they are a journey through the direction of teachers to train students to perceive the reach of the field. Therefore, compared with the knowledge instilling at the level of "art", how to make students have enthusiasm for learning and sustained interest should be the focus of teaching.

However, in reality, there are not many courses that can truly achieve the above educational goals, and many elective courses have been reduced to "mixed credits". Some college students often complain that the teachers of elective courses often just read the old courseware according to the script. At the end of the semester, students who were originally interested in writing novels may only have a bunch of boring terms left in their heads; students who originally wanted to explore the rise and fall of history may only gain mechanical memories of "what happened in what year".

In the case of elective courses not being taken seriously, a strange situation of "taking what they need" between teachers and students has even developed: in order to make the course selection rate "look good", the teacher does not carefully polish the course, but uses less homework, high scores, and the final question bank to create a "word of mouth"; the tacit students hold a "water and water" mentality to participate perfunctorily. This situation of confusing each other seems to be a "win-win", but in fact it deviates from the original meaning of university education, and it is a waste of precious time and teaching resources.

In fact, university courses should be full of endless possibilities. As long as the curriculum is designed carefully, students will also be infected by this sincerity and enthusiasm and embark on a wonderful spiritual journey together. Previously, many colleges and universities' special courses were eye-catching: in the stage drama writing class of Nanjing University, the classroom teacher would let the students pay attention to the interesting dialogues that occurred around them, and adapt them into script dialogues according to their own understanding; in the "Happiness Class" of Tianjin University, the teachers would also support mindfulness exercises, gratitude diaries, social surveys and other actions to help students find their own "happiness code".

It can be seen that these "somewhat interesting" courses do not fall into the formality of classes and exams, nor are they "fun for fun", but in the process of sincere interaction and teaching, students' interest naturally arises. At the end of such a class, students will not only gain cold numbers lying on the report card, but may benefit a lifetime of interest, is to open up a spiritual back garden of the other side's wealth.

College electives should not be dispensable "water lessons", and the reason why romantic college assignments make people yearn for it is precisely because we see sincerity and love in it, and see the innocent yearning for knowledge.

February 11, 2022 Edition 08