Essay:The Value of Essays
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This essay is an original work by Nathan Sullivan. Please comment only on the talk page.
A thesis is defined as an intellectual proposition, so here’s my intellectual proposition: nobody likes writing essays. As unorthodox and blunt as it seems (and as the subsequent will be), it’s entirely true. Neither there is absolutely anything beneficial about essays, nor is there anything relatively gratifying about them. In fact, you’d be surprised to discover that essays cause numerous physiological disorders. I have also uncovered the truth about the total institution that is our American education system, led by the Department of Education, its dynamics, and their control through essays. Allow me to explain:
To begin, essays as a whole are contributors to a number of physical ailments, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, peptic stress ulcers, and even defenestration. The CDC (Center for Disease Control & Prevention) published a report stating that “all of the recent outbreak cases of E. coli have been traced to writing essays” (Wikipedia). I, for one, am not surprised. The psychological issues that occur as a result of essays are endless as well. Stress, schizophrenia, dementia, craziness, and laziness, which were all thought to be idiopathic, are just a few linked illnesses which can result from both writing and reading essays.
Of course, these are only contemporary essays, so let’s overview at the history of essays. Essays have been around since the dawn of man. Looking at the record of mankind and today’s modern world [comparatively], which is full of innovative technology and really snazzy foamy Tempur-Pedic® beds, we ascertain that we have almost nothing in common with our late ancestors who used to bang rocks with sticks for entertainment. What aren’t innovative are essays; we eliminated fax machines due to their obsoleteness, and I propose we do the same with essays.
Essays offer nothing for the students. Proponents of essays claim that essays promote individualism and creative thinking. The sheer hypocrisy of this claim is the fact that the educational syllabus in which students are required to follow is designed without the schools taking into consideration the students’ thoughts on the course outline. If the school doesn’t care about the students’ thoughts on the curriculum in which they are forced to follow, why should they care about their “creative” thoughts on a sheet of paper? Another claim is that essays are a hands-on approach on how to master the English language; this is also wrong. Not only is mastering a language theoretically impossible, but to suggest that essays help students master the English language is absurd. Very rarely, if ever, are people in the real workplace required to write essays. As the most industrialized nation on Earth, it’s safe to assume that only writers and wanna-be writers will be required to write anything even close to an essay. If one aspires to become a writer, then I recommend classes that teach the essentials of writing an essay be an available option (similar to my theory on geometry and higher levels of algebra not being an essential skill in a majority of America’s workplaces, but I digress).
But now we begin our real in-depth investigation to a much larger conspiracy which heavily influences why we take essays, perpetrated by the Department of Education (which, for the record, was enacted in 1980) and many other unmentionable, dare I say, “Evils.” To begin, school districts and educators, as previously mentioned, make guidelines and curriculums without the consent or opinions of the student body. This is not only corrupt, but very, very not fair, considering mandatory essays fall under these types of forced curriculums. While some may say that educators and those with a fancy college degree know what’s best for today’s youth, one would be surprised to discover that a 2003 Harvard essay found that four out of four students reported essays as “sucking” (Harvard). Most students find that the grade percentage that an essay is worth is often-times disproportional to other assignments, which they also reported as “sucking.” But, again, syllabus designers don’t care.
The “No Child Left Behind Act”, since its ratification, has raised the standards for schools. Unfortunately, many school systems (such as the state of Georgia’s school system, which is laughable) have been forced to do the unspeakable: mandate more and more stern curriculums. Essays, which are arguably deemed important to an individual’s education are part of the aforesaid mandated syllabus. So, in the long-run, the Department of Education has forced every school nationwide to do exactly what the Department wants, leaving little or no breathing room with fear of cutting bling on materials and teachers’ stipends (ed.gov).
As you can see, the United States Department of Edumacation can manipulate schools by enacting all kinds of ordinances. I don’t know where or when we’re going to draw the line and say, “no thank you, I’d rather not have these hard-working, good-looking, suave, debonair, dapper, and bright children take any more of your thoroughly mandated malevolent essays,” but based upon all of the risks and health hazards that essays cause and their usefulness (which is none), I find that we need to not only abolish the Department of Education, but essays. We can do this by force, but I advise we write them essays to demonstrate our discontent.
In summation, essays are nothing more than a subtle reminder of the educational dictatorship that is run by the central administration. State rights have been infringed upon enough as it is. We can no longer allow the backbone of this nation’s radically socialist federal government be our children and their education. This form of control is outright communism, and unless the federal government intends to reimburse students for their inevitable medical expenses as a result of the countless medical conditions that can and have resulted from writing essays, then I will again suggest that we need to eliminate the Department of Education, thus eliminating mandated essays and hopefully all essays as a whole, forever.
