Can you think for yourselves?

This semester I have a course that studies literature too - Teaching language in short story. And so far the lecturer has been reinforcing and teaching us about the various elements in literature such as imagery, point of view, irony, plot, characters and so on. The hard ones would be to detect the symbols, irony, the hidden messages in there.

From these lessons, especially from the way the other coursemates have been doing, yes it's okay to REFER to online notes. But what about YOUR OWN OPINION? Perhaps, yes, we don't know how to find the symbols and irony and conflict perhaps. But have you ever tried?

The Malaysian education system has given birth to students who do not take risks, are so afraid to make mistakes and put so much emphasis on giving the right answers that they are not trained TO THINK. If you would give a questioin especially in literature of WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT so and so and why, the first thing is that they will go search for references, other people's finished work and create their own copy-paste answers.

"No, I am superbly against copy-pasting other's answers!" Some would retort. But don't you realise that the answers you give before you go to refer to others is so much different than the answers you give after? Do you know why is it so? If you don't know, let me give you a thought. Don't you think that your answers would either have the either the same structure, ideas, opinions, facts and other little similarities to the text you refered to?

About looking for direct answers like the theme of the stories and the irony and symbols, don't you think it is high time we learn how to look for it ourselves? And isn't the lecturer trying to train us to be able to look for them ourselves from any given text?

Then the other thing would be about the answers given. Perhaps yes, she mentioned (the lecturer) that the arguments and explanations as to why we choose certain events in the plot as the climax would be kind of up to us how we explain and she can give marks. So I wonder, are there any concrete, absolute rules that have no exceptions concerning this? I mean like, is the story totally up to our own interpretation?

Somehow I feel that there is still a balance, that there are absolutes that we can get from the evidence in the story and there are other grey areas that we can only infer from the text. So, I have to try to find out lo.

Now the thing for me is whether I should find the references first or try to look for the elements myself before referring to the text because I need to use my opportunities to online in labs and library to the max. Sigh.