Does more information mean we know less? ESSAY

           “The two driving forces of modern history- politics and technology.” The author of this article says that we believe that our lives are constantly changing, and we must be ready to access the information about these changes.

           Thanks to the advances in technology, he says, we can easily access information, vast amounts of it. Yet, despite the vast amounts and accessibility of information, what we gain from them has not increased at all. “We are reluctant to admit that we are simply swamped with information and have lost the ability to make sense of it.”

           However, there seems to be several flaws in this piece of writing. First, the author is being much exaggerated. “We are made to feel … something may occur … something that if we failed to learn about instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellow human beings”, he says. The pronoun “we” is in constant use. By this means, the author is trying to generalize many statements which may not apply for many people. For example, not many of us  “leave the theatre vowing to reconsider our entire lives in light of the values shown on screen” after going to the cinema. These exaggerations can be seen a few times throughout this article.

           Another flaw is that there are too many assumptions throughout the article. Many phrases are missing logical links, and some sentences seem to be irrelevant to what the author is trying to say. The author downgrades the value of our overflowing information, and says that information was more valuable in the old days. However, the reason for this is that in old days, books were harder to make. This explanation makes no sense at all, since it is the values of the books which were more valuable, not necessarily the information inside the books.

           This article was written in a very persuasive manner. “Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.” We can see that the author is trying to influence us through this piece of work. However, there are too many flaws in this writing for it to be persuasive. The author keeps exaggerating and generalizing his ideas. Many of them do not make sense; there are not enough explanations and some words are unrelated to the main idea of this article.

Essay on Learning

Question: It has been said that not all learning takes place in the classroom. Compare and contrast knowledge gained from personal experience with knowledge gained from classroom instruction.

We might be sitting in a classroom, listening to the teacher droning about algebra. We might be scrambling ourselves some eggs, realizing that it tastes better made with butter than with oil. Different these two events may seem, nevertheless we are learning something. When we think of learning, we usually think of learning things at school. However, not everything that we learn is from school. In life, through our experience, we also learn many things.

           These two methods of learning are in some ways similar, and in some ways different. The biggest difference is how we are taught, and what we gain by learning from these methods.

           Unlike learning from school, when we learn from experience we are not taught by teachers. In school, teachers plan out our education; what subject we learn, whether we will have to write essays or not, etc. In life, there are no teachers to guide us. What we learn will usually come from pure coincidence; for example, you might try scrambling eggs with butter because you ran out of cooking oil, and find that it tastes better.

           At school, we gain the ability to think more intellectually, and we gain academic knowledge. By learning algebra and geometry, we learn how to think more mathematically and logically. In history class we learn about past wars, mistakes of the human race. Through experience we gain common sense. We learn how to cook better scrambled eggs, how to survive when people around you are feeling upset.

           Although these differences exist, there is a fundamental similarity to both methods of learning; we learn, we gain something from it, and it is useful for our lives.

           Common sense that we learn from experience is very important, since it teaches us how to live life more easily. It teaches us how to deal with trouble with other people, like in the example with the angry parents. It teaches us how to enjoy life with tastier scrambled eggs, and lots more. At school we gain things that common sense cannot give us. We earn some valuable thinking skills and knowledge, with which we can solve problems which cannot usually be solved just by common sense. For example, if we learn engineering at college, we can probably repair cars better than people who have never been to engineering school.

           In school or through life, we learn many things. What we learn and what we gain, and how we learn those things are very different. However the most important thing to know is that what we learn from both eventually makes our lives easier.

Ode to my Closet Door

A wooden giant standing tall

Gracious, grand, against the wall

Two strong doors standing guard

Opens, reveals a screen bright and hard

A mirror, a gift for my comb and hair

And my hairdryer; I always use it there

I look, and smile, and sometimes wrinkle

My nose; I have seen my pimples

Yet I thank you, for you show me

I am what I see in you before me

But how strange, you reveal and shine

At the same time, you hide and confine

You open wide, and I lie on my bunk

Relaxed; No “Wake up, you punk!”

Coming from anybody, no one sees me

So I smile in my dream, sleeping sweetly