ARP: Reaction to Meiland's "New Types of Intellectual Work" (corrections)

Hagiwara1

Tomoya Hagiwara
Mr. James
ARW Section AC
13 May, 2007

Reaction to Meiland’s “New Types of Intellectual Work”

Summary
According to Meiland, the difference between high school and college is that college work requires that student engage in a different kind of intellectual activity, in addition to the activity of understanding the material that is presented. The first type of intellectual activity in both high school and college is to understand the material. Second, once the material is understood, the college student must perform another sort of intellectual work on the material, namely “critical examination and evaluation.” In high school, materials are presented authoritative manner. But sometimes it which we are very sure can turn out to be false. In college, on the other hand, they’re treated as beliefs or conclusions that have been reached on the basis of investigations. It is rational to believe something only if one has a basis for that belief. One basis is what we call evidence. Material is presented in college as something to be believed. Therefore, college student have to engage in a different kind of intellectual activity: critical examination and evaluation.

Discussion
Meiland says college students have to engage in a different kind of intellectual activity, what is called “critical examination and evaluation.” I agree with his opinion. Up until high school, we are required to understand the meaning of what we learn and to memorize it. But after entering the university “ICU”, we have told in the course of “Introduction to Biology” to continue to have a question of which we don’t know the answer and to find the answer. I was really impressed to here that. I thought in university we would deal with just something more difficult than in high school and it was difference from high school. When I heard that, a certain example came to my mind. It is the example of Dr. Shirakawa, who discovered special plastic through which electricity can pass. It was believed that electricity can not pass through plastic until his discovery. But he changed the common knowledge. As we can see from this example, what we think fact can be changed into false. Let me show you another example. Isaac Newton, who I think is known to everyone. He is famous for discovering the gravity, which is said that he discovered it when seeing “an apple falling.” Nobody didn’t pay any attention to what things fall, because everyone except him though falling apple was “common sense.” But he thought it was doubtful. Then he searched and searched. Finally, he found the gravity. These examples may show that there is no “common sense” in fact. Therefore we have to do “critical examination and evaluation.”

Work Cited

Meiland, Jack W. College Thinking: How to Get the Best Out of College. New York: New American Library,1981. (The ELP Reader, 2007. 3-23).