Practice Essay 1

The pre-decided topic: James Moffett is an educator who influenced many American teachers and schools in the last third of this century. He wrote about traveling to West Virginia in the 1970s to talk with people there who had recently voted to remove from their local public schools a set of textbooks he had designed. Moffett tried to assure the people he spoke with that the goal of his textbooks was not to promote any one set of beliefs or attitudes but to present students with a variety of ways of seeing their world. From the conversations he learned, however, that the local people understood his aims well enough, and in fact his effort to allow students a choice among competing values was precisely what they most disliked. Moffet's texts supported the values of self-criticism and tolerance, but his vocal critics wanted texts that supported continuity with the past and the preservation of particular values. Moffet's texts supported classroom practices that made students evaluate knowledge while his critics wanted their children to absorb knowledge. Everyone involved saw that much more was at stake here than the sale of certain textbooks.

What do you believe is at stake in the controversy between Moffett and his critics? Use some of the terms or ideas from the passage to discuss in detail one or more of your own school experiences, and use those experiences to show what you think is at stake in this dispute. What difference does it make when a community chooses one of these educational paths? With the help of the examples you have chosen, explain where you stand on the conflicting views of education you find in this passage.

My mini-essay [The esay is much longer]: In my opinion, I believe what is most at stake is the right to be different, and the right to an opinion.
People who conform to popular taste are not always correct, and those who force their student bodies to conform are depriving them of the knowledge to explore a certain aspect of life further. Evaluating knowledge, and researching further, is what made us the way we are today.
If A.Einstein had conformed to popular sciences, or if T.Jefferson had never evaluated knowledge, chances are we wouldn't be as advanced as we are now.
In the end, I think that evolution is knowledge, and learning without it, isn't knowledge at all.

[In the longer version there are some examples of real life experiences, religion, and some other things. Enjoy =)]