The following is a draft essay for What Makes a Good Essay?, responding to The Globe and Mail article, "Teaching and Learning," by Moira T. Carley.

My Thoughts on “Teaching and Learning” by Moira T. Carley

     The recent Globe and Mail essay, “Teaching and Learning,” by Moira T. Carley analyzes our current educational methods and points out some pitfalls. Carley argues that students are bored, have lost their curiosity, but could be “active learners” given the chance; I agree with her with some qualifications.

     At the beginning of her essay, she portrays the average university student as listless and bored—I couldn’t agree more. She remarks that many students slip into “a state of robotic passivity.” Attending lectures in a hall shared with hundreds of other students often prompted me to idle daydreams and doodling. Strongest for me is her argument that “students who sit in class filling their notebooks soon lose interest in learning for themselves.” This is exactly how I felt when I attended university the first time. Luckily, when I returned to university, I attended the Faculty of Education, a place where new methodology is encouraged, so I regained excitement for learning. But, in the main, Carley is right about the boredom found in many university courses.

     She goes on to argue that students lose their curiosity in such systems, an idea I agree with to some degree. Carley argues that “the curiosity and wonder that five year olds bring to school is educated out of them [students].” This point I find a bit overstated. As a teacher of many students over the years, and of students who have come from stultifying school systems worldwide, I can state that it is true, sometimes, but just as often I find students who retain their childlike sense of wonder. There are “intelligent questioners” among all the students I have met, people who challenge me as a teacher, who challenge the ideas I present, who make the classroom an interesting and vital place. Some people rise above all challenges and stay curious all their lives.

     Carley ends with words penned by a football player, describing “intelligence at work”; the student’s football-based metaphor is indeed a good way to show the active and intelligent judgment of “active learners.” For me, the metaphor works particularly well because it combines my knowledge of the sport as a spectator with my intuitions about intelligence gained as a teacher. In particular, I like the details given about how “imagination kicks in” to alert the player to a potential winning play, and how he must then react, physically to make it a reality. Carley found his essay “brilliant!” and I do as well. Indeed, there is intelligence at work demonstrated here: the player’s imaginative response to his teacher and the teacher’s in making such an accessible assignment.

     Thus, in the main, I agree with Carley’s argument regarding the current situation in education, and a potential remedy. As I look at my classroom sometimes, a bustling hive of activity when students work in groups, the curiosity and wonder is clear to me, and worth every minute spent planning that class.

—497 words (including title). Note the relative size of the body paragraphs and how the introduction and conclusion are shorter by about 50%.

 

 

 

 

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