Evaluation wanted: "Analyze an Issue" essay

[InvisibleHand]

Greetings,

Please find below my "analyze an issue" essay and prompt. It is all but impossible to grade your own essay with any semblance of objectivity. So, please evaluate and critique away! Thanks.

 

"A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college.

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."

The education of students in high school, before they enter college, remains a topic at once contentious and important in national debates around the world. There should be some common curriculum that every single high school student in a nation covers before they graduate. But the entirety of a student’s education should not be the same as every other student in the nation. Rather, students should study a curriculum that is to some extent specialized based on their individual strengths, in addition to the curriculum shared by all students in the nation.

One goal of education in high school should be to produce “good citizens” who are able to contribute to public discussions and to connect with fellow citizens from all walks of life. In the absence of a shared curriculum, studied by all students before they enter college, it would seem difficult to ensure that all high school graduates had this ability to connect with citizens from circumstances different from their own and therefore contribute to public life.

Consider, for instance, the case of American history in the United States. Imagine if some students never studied American history before college and never studied American history in college. These students would lack an understanding of the American history that informs America’s public policies and therefore lack an ability to have informed conversation about, say, the merits of the policies proposed by different presidential candidates. Indeed, presidential candidates themselves often allude to American history in their speeches. Such a citizen, lacking any formal education in American history, would be unable to have an informed judgment about the various policies proposed by a candidate. This is a bad outcome. Should this citizen then encounter another citizen who has this background in American history in, say, a bar, then this citizen would be unable to engage in an informed discussion about the historical perspective on current presidential candidates. As a result, American public life and American democracy would suffer because of this individual’s lack of any understanding of American history. Were this “uninformed” individual to have had the same education in American history as the informed individual at the bar, however, these two individuals would be able to have an informed conversation about the historical perspective on the current presidential candidates.

Yet education has another purpose beyond the production of “good citizens” from uneducated individuals: helping individuals figure out where in the economy their individual skills will be most valued. The capitalist economies now prevalent in the world depend on a division of labor in order to function. Each worker finds a specific role in which their specific set of strengths add value to the economy, and as a result, the economy as a whole generates substantial value. But this requires individuals to learn what their individual talents are. And this requires high schools to allow students to specialize based on their perceived strengths and weaknesses. If high schools did not allow such specialization, and instead required all students to take the same curriculum, then students would leave high school without much of an idea of what their individual strengths were and therefore where in the economy they could add value. As a result, individuals would leave high school unsure of what to specialize in, and the labor market and the economy for the whole country would suffer.

Consider the contrast between an engineer and a police officer. Engineers must know high-level mathematics, beyond even multivariable calculus. A police officer will never need to know anything approaching this level of mathematics in order to do his job successfully. An individual who will one day be an engineer would not know if he is suited for this position unless he took an advanced mathematics courses in high school and excelled in it. But the individual who will later flourish as a police officer would likely flounder in this same advanced mathematics class. To require them both to take the same mathematics courses in high school, therefore, would do a disservice to at least one of the two individuals. If the mathematics course is less sophisticated and amenable to the mathematical disposition of the police officer, then the would-be-engineer will not be challenged and would not know if he has the aptitude to excel as an engineer. Such a policy would turn mathematics classes into the lowest common denominator, forcing the brightest students to not discover their talents in high school. On the other hand, a mathematics course suitable for the future engineer would likely prove difficult for the future police officer. Given that failure or near failure in high school can have consequences for the entirety of a career trajectory, even if the subject at hand is not directly relevant to the job, this “math for future engineers, for all” approach to high school math would unnecessarily penalize future police officers.

It may be tempting to think that students can all take the same classes in high school but specialize in college. But this is unrealistic. Students, especially those seeking technical degrees or wishing to enter medical school after graduation, must have at least a crude idea of what classes they will take from the first day they set foot on campus, if they hope to complete their bachelor’s degree in time (at least in the United States). While most of the specialization in education necessary for a specialized labor market to function happens in college rather in high school, a degree of specialization in high school nonetheless remains necessary in order to facilitate this process in college.

Many nations demand that high school education fulfill two different purposes. One is that high school education should produce “good citizens” who can connect with fellow citizens and contribute to public life. This requires a shared understanding of certain topics, like history, and therefore requires that all students in a nation’s high schools cover at least some of the same content in their courses. Yet another requirement of high school education is that it help students figure out where their individual strengths will be most valuable in the specialized labor market they will ultimately join when they graduate college. This requires that students specialize in their curriculum in high school, to at least some extent. Hence high school education in a nation should have some elements that are shared by every student in the nation, but also have elements that are not shared by every student in the nation

Edited September 4, 2016 by InvisibleHand