Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Should all school teachers be required to attend courses every 5 years to update their knowledge?

The contemporary society has witnessed a dramatic development of education during the past several decades. To coordinate with the tremendous development of education, some people assert that all school teachers should be required to attend courses every five years to update their knowledge. From my perspective, I generally agree with the statement, although it may not be valid enough under certain circumstances.

We shall admit that under some conditions where the knowledge of subjects is relatively stable and does not need to be refreshed continuously, it is unnecessary for teachers to attend courses every five years to update their knowledge. For instance, it is unreasonable to force the teachers who teach sports to participate in courses to refresh their knowledge. Because the types of sports may be constant for a long period, which engenders that teaching sports does not require updating knowledge. Hence, compelling the coaches to attend course for updating knowledge may waste their time which can be used to train their students.

However, never can we neglect the necessity of new knowledge for teachers. Sometimes the experience and methods of education which proved to be efficient under some conditions may not have the same effectiveness under the others, thus the teachers should refresh their knowledge to adapt to the variation of the conditions. Take John Dewey, n outstanding educationist, as an example. He was a strong advocate of the quality education and disdained the examination-oriented education. However, he has changed his opinion after he conducted research in some Asian countries, where he found that the quality education may not be the most effective way to teach. Finally, he acknowledged the advantage of test-oriented education and summarized that the best ideal education concept is combination between quality education and examination-oriented education. Therefore, without updating their knowledge continuously, the teachers cannot be aware of the shortage of their teaching theories and methods which are probably outdated.

In addition, encouraging teachers to take refresher courses regularly can help them get an in-depth understanding of technology-based education. The pervasive use of internet enables students to get access to excellent education online, which may threaten the traditional education. So it is imperative for the teachers to attend courses to update their knowledge when confronting with the competition with online education. For instance, the emergence of Coursera, a website on which people are offered a wide variety of means to assimilate knowledge from the professors of MIT and Stanford, has imposed heavy pressure on the traditional teaching technology. Netizens even advocate that attending regular schools physically is unnecessary. In other words, if teachers are unable to update their interactive skills to fulfill online requests, the dominance held by traditional education tends to be replaced by online niche. Hence, it is crucial for authorities to issue regulations requiring teachers to attend courses periodically to improve professionalism of online education.

To sum up, although the statement is unconvincing under certain conditions, it is still indispensable for teachers to fulfill the requirement of updating professional knowledge by attending courses periodically under most circumstances.