Educational institutions have a responsibility to dissuade students from pursuing fields of study in which they are unlikely to succeed.

In this era of rapid social and technological change leading to increasing talent demand, the magnitude of education can’t be emphasized more. Even though educational institutions are bound to hold responsibility for motivating and guiding students, it’s nonetheless recommended for education institutions to dissuade students from achieving their own career dreams.

The statement above strongly emphasizes on the magnitude of the educational guidance, to the extent that it assumes that those guiders are capable enough to recognize whether a student is likely to succeed in his/her current major, accordingly they can directly recommend students to quit the field of study seeming not suitable. As Bill Gates ever said, “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” Educational institutions, as with teachers, play a definitely vital role on the growth of students, both intellectually and psychologically. In this point, what the statement asserts do reveal the common mission shared by all educators – i.e. , wholeheartedly considering and doing whatever of benefit to students.

Nevertheless, the situation of educators being overly accommodating becomes problematic; the first factor that should be taken into consideration is if schools or teachers really have been perspicacious and provident enough to foresee whether the student is going to succeed or not. As it is acknowledged to all that without determination and hard work, even the minimum success will never occur. In contrary, by perseverance and sustained efforts, impossible goals will quite probably finally be achieved.

Consider how dramatic changes have taken place over the past decades, from early test rockets to sophisticated satellites, the human expansion into space is perhaps the most amazing engineering feat of the 20th century. But remember not until the appearance of the first plane, people firmly considered flying to the outer space as impossible for such a long time!

Not only the assumption that educational institutions are capable to judge the likelihood of students’ successes is untenable, but more seriously, educators should never treat themselves as dictators of students at all. We must remember what the purpose of education first, that is to provide an environment in which students’ mind are cultivated, not just their abilities to record and recite. If students’ testing of boundaries, trying-on of personalities are forbidden and substituted for obedience of instructions from adults, doesn’t that portend clones of the previous generations, therefore a stagnant culture?

This point can be proven by the example of Thomas Edison, which is a household name all over the world because of the numerous brilliant inventions, such as the electric light bulb. It’s highly commented now that his inventions have such a profound influence to not only his generation, but even to generations yet unborn. However, it is surprising to note that Edison was a school drop-out who had only attended school for 3 months, since his teacher was fed up with his large amount of meaningless questions thus considered him as stupid and slow. Hadn’t Edison dropped out school to pursue his own interests and move forward to develop his own unique personalities, but formed a totally different kind of personality catering to his teacher, what a prominent inventor we would lose!

Educational guidance will always function its indispensible duty to the significant period in students’ lives. Yet this duty should be performed more as a constructive role in students’ decision by helping them to achieve the self-understanding and self-direction necessary to move toward personal goals, rather than a dictator who will only render deprivation of students’ independence and desiring.