Group 1--Unit 2 Reading 2.pptVIP

Group members: 顾筱琴 黄婷 黄春玲 罗丹 Background Why is the article entitled“Angels on a pin” Medieval scholars often debated meaningless topics like How many angels can dance on the point of a pin Later, science replaced such debates with experimentation and called for observable facts. The article suggested that “Solving problems in a pedantic way is similar to those empty arguments; some what unpractical. Historical environment Americans panicked when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in 1957. Because it seemed that the Soviet Union surpassed America in science and technology. So, Americans thought there were serious problems existing in their educational system. Meanwhile, they criticized the fixed education. Main idea A boy bravely challenged the education system which emphasized on fixed rules to show that methods not admired in class yielded satisfactory results in solving problems. Passage Analysis Form: narrative writing Order: time sequence Structure Part 1(para.1): the introduction of the clause Part 2(para.2-para.12): body, the process of the story Part 3(para.13): the conclusion Introduction A colleague would like to give a student zero while the student claimed that he should receive a perfect score in an examination question. I was selected as a partial arbiter to deal with the matter Body The student presented his answer to the problem completely and correctly. I thought the answer could not affirm his competency in physics, and suggested he should give other answers. I was really surprised that he could give other five creative answers to the problem. Conclusion He was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use the “scientific method,” and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. Directly criticized the fixed educational