Sample Coursework Essay for Assignment 1 - informative,analytical and/or argumentative

EDUCATION: “WHAT SURVIVES WHEN WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN” (-B. F. SKINNER)
By Katie Berry

Surely the thing valued most by students of today is an education? Each individual treasures their own unique experience, knowing there will never again be an opportunity to discover so many essentials. Our professors are oracles providing the fountain of all knowledge. Or am I exaggerating just a little?

Who in their right mind would invent school? The student population will forever wonder why such a person was permitted to survive! But our idea of ‘school’ slowly evolved over time to what it is now. The original and admirable purpose of it was to share awareness of worldly matters with less informed persons in some sort of small meeting place. Slowly age groups were formed, and a schedule was made. ‘You must arrive promptly at seven, and leave at three thirty, you are required to come Monday through Friday and if you dare to not show up, you will be refered to as a slacker, and some form of punishment will be in store for you.’ Next they developed tests to make sure that what went in one ear didn’t slip out the other. In time, they stuck a physical education class in with the other 10 classes already being taken; to make sure students stay fit. Is this because school suddenly started taking up so much time that students couldn’t find time to run around with their friends at home for fun and fitness? And how could I forget, seeing as our teachers now dictate our lives instead of our parents, they formed a system of sanctions, detentions, suspensions, and expulsions, and for good behavior: a merit, or a mere pat on the back. As if all of this isn’t enough, some authorities feel that students should appreciate their environment and add such decorations as fake, but very green grass and Chinese gardens. Alvin Toffler says, “In the year 2000 an illiterate person will not be someone who can't read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again.” Despite such good intentions and original purposes, times have changed!

Before we pick apart the deception of education, we must first decide what it is we are examining- and the irrelevancy of certain knowledge. Most of the subjects in school are divided into chapters or sections. The easiest and most straightforward system to make your way through school is to take notice of the essentials and forget the inessentials. For instance, while getting deeper into a “chapter,” keep asking yourself, ‘can I use this in my future? Is it relevant in my career or useful in raising children?’ Forget the inessentials that you don’t remember and lose marks for on the end-of-unit test. Why should students learn about the plate tectonics theory? The earth moves around. So? It sure doesn’t stop people from living there! It’s simply pointless to learn about! And of course, in English we like to look at some ‘techniques’ that poets use in their poems. Does this not assault writers’ space? In general, poets write to express how they feel or what they think about in their surroundings. Why should students dissect each and every word as if the poem were a frog? In 1980, small boys learnt about the slide rule and the log table in the subject of maths. They spent three weeks on this subject, and now, twenty-five years later, such a thing has ceased to be studied; these utensils are unheard of.

An education may be for the best, but it can have a considerably negative consequence that happens ‘behind the scenes’. Agatha Christie once said, “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” Not only have we been taught science, reading, and math, but also to not disagree with our superiors- at least those who are teachers. Our professors teach us all the nonsense in the world, give facts and show evidence on the truth of that certain issue, and then quiz us on this extremely vital topic. Result: we believe it. Of course we can’t assume that all students believe everything they hear. Some rubbish is just too hard to manage. In the words of Robert Frost, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.” Are we therefore preventing something, by trying to bring that very thing out, the intelligence in each child? The term ‘student’ refers to a child who is in the process of learning. And an education is supposed to make a student become brilliant. Yet if the education would leave the child alone, their brilliance would indeed come out. There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.

Some sort of understanding may be accurate, but unnecessary. For instance, the majority of people in the west make a living by simply working in factories. In Sumy, Ukraine, there are now some 150,000 persons engaged in the local industry from a population made up of 1,384,000 persons. Let’s not point out the obvious, but clearly the majority of people living in Sumy are unskilled workers in a factory. So we ask ourselves, did they essentially need 12 years of education to get this far in life? Surely they wasted their time!

Emma Goldman, unlike an everyday principal or teacher finds the true purpose of an education, "No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” Thomas Armstrong joins in, “The newer and broader picture suggests that the child emerges into literacy by actively speaking, reading, and writing in the context of real life, not through filling out phonics worksheets or memorizing words.” Many logical people have found the true purpose of an education, it’s just a shame our own principals and teachers don’t have the common sense to see the same way.

Is there a solution? In our heads we picture the image of a man standing in his hole, digging. Soon it is so deep he can do nothing but keep digging. This is our situation. Authorities should try to do something about ‘education,’ what can they do? There are some small changes: perhaps limiting each subject to only one class per day or perhaps getting out of school earlier. But we have dug ourselves a hole so deep, there is no way out now.

Surely this piece of writing is one of many others that attack and criticize the system of an education. How else can I now communicate to you that everything once learned will soon be forgotten -within a mandatory environment? Plato declares, “Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

In the United States of America, high school kids often have a traditional party not long after the end of school. It is called a ‘book burning party’ simply because students toss into a bonfire all their annotations, notebooks and papers. Does this come near showing the amount of care students give to their understanding of information? You might tell me the reason they have tests is to make sure the data is in their heads, not on their papers, yet the majority of students frequently fail their tests. And how can this possibly be the only problem? What about learning how plants pollinate three years in a row? We can’t possibly ask a school to get their act together, because students change schools so regularly that it’s really no one’s fault. Yet it is still a problem and a waste of time.

To criticize an education completely is somewhat unreasonable when we will essentially need to know how to add and subtract, read and write, and solve certain problems in our future. Some aspects of an education are quite useful and practical, and we will of course need such basics but how can I refer to the entire education program as a treasure or a privilege? Ivan Illich observes, “...we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.” Indeed- we come to school by force not because we have a yearning desire to learn. Those who started out with bright ideas and good objectives have lost sight of their intentions. Their plan has failed.