gre writing issue sample writing 116
- 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 statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
The given statement asserts that students before entering college benefit from the same national curriculum. In some sense, there could be lots of advantages in requiring all students involved with the common learning schedule. However, I firmly believe that the best way to develop students’ potential is not to mandate uniformity but to respect their individual, environmental differences.
Needless to say, the standard time schedule designed by the government can produce valuable consequences in education. With regard to the formation of common social and cultural background for effective communication among prospective adult citizens, it seems clear that the well-balanced national curriculum is priceless. An artist with no adequate knowledge on sciences or mathematics because of the lack of study on them during her school years cannot properly appeal to her potential audiences whose background assumptions are totally different from hers. An engineer who received no education in arts, ethics, or sociology in his high school classes will find it difficult to make his creative, unique ideas shared by others whose ways of thinking are totally distinct from his own. In short, without building a common ground through some standard curriculum, it is difficult to expect either more balanced thinking in a person or more effective social interaction among individuals.
However, this does not necessarily preclude the necessity of considering individual differences and personal tastes among diverse students. In terms of adequate maintenance of intellectual interest, the rigidly uniform national curriculum appears to produce more problems than benefits. A student with little interest in advanced mathematics may be more thoroughly alienated from his classroom which deals with questions, scheduled according to the curriculum but above his mathematical skill.
Furthermore, any inflexibly uniform academic schedule seems also counterproductive even among many talented students.