Describe, in your own words, the writer’s views related to the ideal student and true education.

Ans.

Two types of students

After reading this essay “The Student we noted the views of Robert Lynd in relation to an ideal student and true education. He classified the two types of students in these lines. The first type of students are conscious about their future carcer. It is their fixed aim for getting some high position in their life. Some of them want to join the Church with the sole purpose of becoming religious preacher. Some other students wish to become lawyers in their life to get name and fame making legal practice. There are some other students whose aim of life is to join some Civil Service to become officers dealing with public service.

It is necessary to mention that all such students have a set ideal before them to achieve it and work honestly. They follow a set course of study and they do not go away from their set purpose. They study seriously without going astray. They do not study any other book different from the prescribed texts. Their only purpose is to pass their examinations with flying colours. These students soon become the favourite of their teachers because they are perfectly disciplined and obedient. They also suffer from the traits of curiosity and imagination which become out-of-date from disuse. They may become successful in their career but not in their life as quality persons. The writer further says that they cannot become inventors, leaders, poets.

The second type of students

There are some other students of second type and they enjoy comparatively love of freedom. They want to become original, so they avoid to get formal college education ignoring their prescribed course of study. Such students wrongly become over-burdened. Such second type of students become devoted to the love with the gutter and they lose control over themselves by breaking the need of discipline. They go astray and suffer from different impulses. Such education is not useful for them in any way.

The needed balance

Both types of students are not supported by the writer as ideal. They become so much career-conscious that they lack originality. The freedom loving students lack in discipline. The writer asserts that both the qualities of freedom and discipline should remain balanced for each and every ideal student. The writer has divided them into epicurean and the ascetic in students life. The epicurean is a pleasure-loving student but on the other hand there is the ascetic who is self-disciplined. According to the writer the epicurean cannot become an ideal student. The ideal student must be the ascetic type. These significant words of the writer make the idea clear, “I always regarded the ideal student as an ascetic.” The writer further says that the ideal student should have two dreams with the aim of getting knowledge and developing his character.

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