Teachers of 21st Century---We have no choice

Dear Tan and Ice,

Both your reasons are reasonable, but I still insist my opinion that in order not to be left out by the society, a teacher, no matter how old or young she/he is, she/he must keep on learning.

In the past several years, life-long learning/education to a teacher simply meant one should update her/his knowledge of a particular area frequently, while nowadays it seems that besides one's professional knowledge, mastering of high-tech knowledge and skills becomes a necessity. To be an excellent teacher of 21st century, we have no choice but to work harder than ever before in order to follow the footsteps of the new world.

However, we do have our choices to make: we can choose to stick to the old teaching method or we can choose to corporate high-tech into our classroom. The point is whether sticking to the old teaching method and not striving ahead work well. If it does, then everything is fine. But I do suspect it will.

I remember six years ago one famous professor from the Foreign Languages School of Beijing Normal University once openly expressed his strong objection of using a computer. He refused to use computer to write his papers or anything else. I quite understood him then. But now I feel sorry for him because it seems that one just cannot work nowadays without relying on a computer. Do you see what I mean? Facing high-tech, being afraid or ignoring it is useless, what we can do is trying our best to catch up. This is specially true for a teacher. My experience tells me it is never an easy and comfortable life to be a teacher. To be a top teacher of 21st century, we have to suffer more pains in order to improve ourselves and realize our values.