Please evaluate my issue Essays (2 total)

[LostMyDucK]

First Issue: Educators should teach facts only after their students have studied the ideas, trends, and concepts that help explain those facts.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.

Essay: 

 

First, we must acknowledge that not all facts become lucid to individuals even after they have studied the ideas, trends, and concepts. They may not be able to make connections between the fragment parts that form the fact. One reason for this case can be contributed towards the fact that some individuals might need to see the whole before they are able to understand the parts. That is, they must be able to see the fact in order to make sense of the parts that help explain it. Therefore, since students are not all coterminous it may prove detrimental to teach in the style claimed in the statement.

Mathematics, in my personal experience, is more detrimental to teach facts last. In mathematics, proofs range from a few lines to entire pages and usually, the longer the proof the harder it is to digest. When being taught, most of my mathematic teachers taught us the definition and how to apply it before they showed us the proof. The reasoning for this, they told me, was because those ideas, trends, and concepts can seem abstract and showing us the conclusion will help our focus on what we are looking for.

In my case, if math teachers taught the proof before showing the definition it would be more detrimental to the students. For example, all the students in my Real Analysis taught us the proof first before showing us the definition and the entire class failed the first exam. When questioned on what could be done to change how he taught for us to better understand, the class desired him to define the definition first so that they had an idea of where the proof was headed. The class proceeded to pass the following exams for the rest of the year.

In conclusion, teaching facts only after students have studied trends, ideas, and concepts is a haphazard approach to teaching. However, we must acknowledge that teaching in such a way does can be successful in many scenarios but making a universal claim is audacious. Some educators teaching this way would more pragmatic.

 

claim 2:  Society should identify those children who have special talents and provide training for them at an early age to develop their talents.

Essay: 

I think Identifying children who have special talents and providing training for these early talents seems logical but elicits a concerns that make such a claim unviable.

Before we can identify children with special talents, we must define what those talents are. We must be able to identify what constitutes a talent because it can be quite ambiguous. What one individual considers a talent, another may not. Is a talent one that is recognized by the majority or is there some prerequisite required to be considered a talent. For example, an individual may consider his ability stay under water for five minutes a special talent worth developing but individuals who don’t care for the water may disagree. There are too many what ifs regarding special talents and therefore it’s imperative that we are able to clearly express what a special talent is because not doing so would be a waste of resources.

Once we are able to define what a talent is and what it is not, we must be able to determine if that talent is even worth developing. Which talents trump others or are they all equal? If there are talents that trump others, it would only follow that we would invest more into the higher tiered talents rather than those deemed less important. We must also consider the amount of resources we allocate to developing these talents. There is too much ambiguity and there would be too much controversy in determining which talents trump others and which are worth developing.

                Moreover, providing training to children with special talents can be quite beneficial; however, it can pose detrimental to children are not identified with special talents. If society recognizes children with special talents, then it also recognizes children without special talents. This can segregate the population because families without children with special talents might feel belittled by society because they don’t receive the same special benefits that families with children with special talents do.  

 

For anyone that takes the time to evaluate these, thank you!