2. 外语
  3. All parents should be required to volunteer time to their children’s schools. Write a response in which you discuss the extent t

All parents should be required to volunteer time to their children’s schools. Write a response in which you discuss the extent t

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问题 All parents should be required to volunteer time to their children’s schools.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
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答案 How should parents participate in their children’s education? Some claim that all parents should be required to volunteer their time to the schools of their children, which certainly does have some benefits. That said, I do not agree with the notion that every parent should be required, because it may not be practical for all parents to volunteer. More profoundly speaking, it is self-contradictory to require people to volunteer their time. To begin with, it should be acknowledged that participating in children’s education is beneficial on several levels. For students, the presence of parents in schools will make them more engaged in the process of learning. A recent study on children’s performance in fifteen Indian kindergartens has demonstrated that when the parents are present in the classroom, the children will be significantly more active in classroom engagements. A possible explanation is that children yearn to be praised and acknowledged by their parents, and hence are more motivated. Additionally, the proposal of volunteering can be beneficial for parents as well, for the reason that the bonding between parents and children will be greatly strengthened. The same study cited above also discovered a higher level of affinity between the children whose parents participate in school activities and their parents. To sum up, because volunteering largely means physical presence in school, by devoting time to their children’s schools parents can benefit both the children’s education quality and the relationship with the children. Despite the potential benefits discussed above, I cannot agree with the claim that all parents ought to be required to participate in volunteering activities in the school. The reason is that from a practical point of view, not all parents have the time and/or resources to participate. For some parents, their work may be so busy that they do not have sufficient time to spend in their children’s schools. In China for example, some workplaces adopt a "996" schedule, meaning that a workday begins at 9 in the morning and ends at 9 o’clock at night. Six days are workdays in a given week. Needless to say, it would be extremely hard for parents, who are already exhausted by their intense work schedules, to make any firm commitment to their children’s schools given a lack of available time. A number of longitudinal studies have indeed found that the level of direct participation of Chinese parents in their children’s school is in significant decline over recent years. At the same time, in the United States where interactions between schools and communities are encouraged, there are families who are faced with financial challenges. In such households, parents often have multiple jobs that occupy a significant chunk of their time, making volunteering in schools an impractical option. In these cases, volunteering time to schools is a luxury that those parents simply cannot afford. Finally, even if time is not a limiting factor, I would still like to point out the contradictory nature of the words "volunteer" and "require" on a philosophical level. The former word implies an action whose nature is voluntary. In the case of parents’ involvement in their children’s school life, volunteering means committing oneself to school participation out of parents’ free will. On the other hand, the proposal to require parents to participate in their children’s school life is inherently mandatory, which is in clear contradiction of the voluntary nature of the volunteering. For example, when people talk about volunteers in art museums, no one would expect they are at work to fulfill certain requirement. Instead, volunteering one’s time in an art museum most likely means their interest in art and their passion to share art with others. The same logic also applies to parents volunteering in schools. If the act of participation is required, it cannot be considered as volunteering. To sum up, while I do not deny the potential benefits of parents volunteering in their children’s schools, one has to be pragmatic in terms of how feasible it is for parents to engage in school activities. In fact, many parents do not have the necessary time for volunteering due to various reasons. On top of this practicality issue, the nature of volunteering is not compatible with the status of being required. I therefore disagree with the proposal that all parents should be required to volunteer. (716 words)
解析     本文是一篇教育类的文章，围绕着学校、家长以及子女的教育展开。对于这篇文章，我们有很多的破题方法，譬如极端词、理论与实践(这样做的好处以及实际上的困难)等。本文的第一和第二主旨段就是这样的思路。具体来说，第二段中，我们使用了中国这种“996”的例子，这对于我们的读者、身处国外的评卷人来说是有理解上的挑战的，他们习惯了朝九晚五和有完整双休日的工作，或许想不到为什么有人会愿意工作这么长的时间，因此我们需要用额外的笔墨去描述“996”的内容。
    在本题当中，“要求家长做志愿者”，用到的词是require和volunteer。require的语气和态度是非常强硬的，有点带强迫的意味；但volunteer这个词翻译成“志愿”，隐含了一个行为是自愿的。想清楚这两个词背后的深意后，我们会发现“强迫要求别人做志愿者”是这一观点的荒谬性，究其原因是两个词的内在逻辑相矛盾。这就是本文第三主旨段的内容。
    这种对题干中单词意思进行深挖的方法，我们在之前的文章中已经有过介绍，譬如对于“什么叫有效领导”和“教育的目的”给出了明确的定义。这篇文章里，我们其实也是在围绕单词的意思进行讨论，要实现对一个英语单词意思的深刻理解，大家一定要翻看英英词典，否则很难理解为什么require和request都可以翻译成“要求”，但两者的语气强弱可能差了两个数量级。
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