托福寫作范文：be required to study art and music

題目：

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

All students should be required to study art and music in secondary school. Use specific reasons to support your answer.

范文：

The term “art” has various definitions. It refers to the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects. It also means the works so produced. Sometimes it is used as the synonym of fine arts while in other case it refers to one of the fine arts. In the following discussion, it is defined as one of the fine arts. Under this definition, it is unreasonable to require all secondary school students to learn it and music.

The first prerequisite to answer the question whether all secondary students must study art and music is the purpose of secondary school teaching and learning. The second is the functions of music and art in the life of a secondary school student. Besides, if the art and music is compulsory in the secondary school curriculum, we will focus on how to teach them or how to help students study the specific art and music.

What is the purpose of the secondary school? In China, it is no more than teaching students the tricks to crack the nut of National Matriculation Tests (NMT), or the college entrance or admission examination. Parents emphasize nothing more than the possibility for their children to earn a high score in these tests, which finally dictates the fate of a student. If the candidate outnumbers all other rivals in NMT, he or she will have the opportunity to enter a leading university such as Peking University. And if a candidate is admitted by such higher education organizations, she or he will be able to live a relative comfortable and convenient life in future. The consequence of NMT means everything to a secondary school student. It means the career, job, salary, house, car, and even a decent husband or wife. Therefore, in China, it is abhorred to force secondary school students to learn music and art because both of them are not in the list of NMT.

The purpose of secondary school in the USA or European countries might be strikingly different from the Chinese version. I learn that the secondary school students also have to sit some tests such as SAT or SSAT, but the results are not weighed much. In this case, it might be reasonable to ask students to learn music and art. However, it is yet presumptuous to claim that all students must learn because each individual student has his or her distinct interest and the right to choose what to learn.

Unlike the engineering courses or medicine courses that prepare students for a better career, art and music function in the deeper world of human spirit. The impacts of learning art and music are on the cultivation of human personality, aesthetic taste, and characteristic development. Therefore, theoretically speaking, it benefits students who learn. Nevertheless, neither education organization, nor teachers, nor parents, nor the educators have a far reaching vision to encourage students to study art and music. Instead, art and music today have been degraded as nothing different from commodities that help people earn money. Consequently, it is not feasible to ask all students to study music and art.

If we consider this issue more profoundly, we find it is impossible to list music and art as compulsory in secondary school curriculum.