托福写作原创满分范文4：非理工科学生要不要学科学课程

TOEFL ESSAY NO.4

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? University students should be required to take basic science classes even if they are not part of their field of study. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

It was once believed, even in the late nineteenth century, that the world is a flat plate on the back of a giant tortoise. To the question “on what ground does the tortoise stand to support the world”, a typical answer would be “a giant turtle standing on yet another turtle and so forth.” Ridiculous as such a belief sounds today, hasn’t been the inclusion of basic science classes in education at different levels that gradually rendered that received, yet false, wisdom obsolete? Is the practice no longer necessary in college? Negative. [91]

Truly, advances in physical and life science have cleared up many past misunderstandings about the world around us and ourselves. Even an old lady born in the fifties, now, would not buy the tortoise theory (at least not too easily). Yet the subjective nature of the human mind can steer even those with decent education backgrounds away from thinking in strict scientific manners. Think about the number of constellation enthusiasts among college students; it is a surprise to see it falling. “Paul is a Leo, thereby having a big ego” or “Sophie, an Aries, has to marry a Sagittarius” are commonly heard in college classrooms. Some say it is just for fun to believe in Horoscopes, but few rational minds, trained through science classes, would base their decisions or judgments, some of which could determine the trajectory of their future, on the positions of a few random stars in the sky. [154]

In a broader sense, increased interdisciplinary interaction in today’s world actually requires students of social science and the liberal arts to acquire entry-level knowledge of physical and life sciences. Archaeologists, for example, have to ask biochemists for help to date an artefact or a body from a newly discovered site, but they must have the ability to understand biochemical reports in the first place. For historians, it is important to understand, from a scientific point of view, why bloodletting that prompted the death of the first President of the United States is a pseudoscience, and an elixir for life that directly killed the first Emperor of China a superstition. In the same way science needs arts, arts need science. [119]

Voices arise as to the difficulty of an art student to understand what is being taught in a science lecture; time, therefore, is wasted. That is not the case. Only basic, not advanced, science courses are required for non-science majors and should be understandable to an average college student. A literature student, for instance, need not learn the mathematics behind the quantum theory, but should nevertheless know why it laid the cornerstone for modern technological progress. [76]

Questions are raised regarding whether students can better learn about science through popular science writing. That is shallow thinking. Science classes are necessary to spark students’ interest in and curiosity about scientific facts and developments. It is hard to imagine that an art student, with academic burdens and personal life pursuits, willingly makes time for reading The Selfish Gene or The Elegant Universe, unless prompted otherwise. Would an art student be automatically into science documentaries like Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman? Also doubtful. [85]

To conclude, then, basic science classes are not out of date in college education as they seem to be and should be mandatorily included in its core curriculum. After all, complexity of modern society necessitates an all-round education, especially at the undergraduate level. [43]

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