Friday, May 14, 2010

The object of education should be to teach skills, not values.

I just woke up, and still feeling ambitious, I am going to start my first writing sample. Here is how it's going to be. I am going to give myself half an hour for each writing sample. Once the time is up, I will spend some time to edit my writing to see what kind of quality I can accomplish if given unlimited amount of time. Finally I would comment on my performance and point out how the writing piece could be improved and things like that.

The MCAT writing sample consists of a prompt, followed by three tasks. The first task is to explain or interpret the statement. The second task is usually to provide a counter thesis to the statement and provide several arguments/examples to backup the counter thesis. Finally the third task is to unify the thesis and the counter thesis by discussing in which circumstance would each thesis be valid.

Here goes...

The object of education should be to teach skills, not values.
Explain what you think the above statement means. Describe a specific situation in which the object of education might be teaching values rather than skills. Discuss what you think determines when the object of education is to teach skills and when it is to teach values.

Education is the process by which the society passes knowledge from one generation to the next such that the younger generation is groomed to become contributing members of society. Since the ultimate objective of the education system is to prepare the students for the work force, educational institutions usually focuses on the teaching of skills, which is necessary for the students to start the work. For example, a medical school might teach medical students the skills of patient diagnosis, surgical techniques and communications skills, while a teacher's college may teach prospective teachers the most effective ways of communicating with students and ways to encourage students. In contrast, our education system rarely teaches students about values because they are usually very subjective and therefore difficult to teach. Despite the paramount importance of values in work, it is usually expected that the students would develop the set of values required for a particular profession once she starts working. In this case the education of values is not required, and the educational instutution focuses on the teaching of skills.

There are cases, however, where a given set of values play such an important role in a profession that it is required before the student can start working. Such professions usually involve the frequent use of judgements, and usually has a set of universal values that is shared among all individuals of the field. Because these values are not as subjective, they can be taught in school much like a set of skills can be taught. For example, in medical schools, medical ethics is usually a mandatory course of study. Medical ethics teaches the students what is right and wrong in the medical profession, the importance of confidentiality as well as other topics. These topics are extremely important because the students will be calling on them on a daily basis, as a doctor, to judge what should and should not be done. The same goes for other professions. For instance, prospective teachers are taught to value their students as their children and law students are taught to look out for the best interest of their clients.

As can be seen from the above discussion, both skills and values are important in the work force, therefore, both should be a part of the education system. But when should each be taught? It seems to be a good idea for educational institutions to focus on teaching the skills first. Once the students has learnt the required skills to perform in the field, values should be taught so that the students can best use the skills the benefit the society. It is important to note here that education is not confined to education system such as schools because learning is a life long process, and sometimes important values are picked up once the students starts working. Whether or not values should be taught in education institutions depends on the importance of personal judgement at work. For example, a medical student should definitely learn about values when they are still in school because their job is patient care, which is heavily dependent on the doctor's judgement. On the other hand, a factory worker can most likely learn about the values on the job because their work is very skill-based and depend little on their personal judgement.

(Word count 548)

Ok... that took a little longer than I hoped. By the end of the first 30 minutes I had barely completed the first paragraph... so I decided to give myself another half an hour.

To be honest I think this is a terrible writing piece. Most of the arguments I made here did not make sense. If I were to write this piece again I would spend the first paragraph talking about education in an education instution, where students are usually taught skills. Then in the second paragraph I would start by writing that education is not limited to school, and value education takes place at work place. The third paragraph would be approximately the same as the one right now, where I would talk about the involvement of judgements at work, and how it would influence the way values should be taught.

I also think it would be a good idea to start by drafting an outline of the essay. I find it very difficult to stay on track as I always go on tangents to talk about things that is completely unrelated.

^^ I'm proud of myself for finishing my first writing sample tho...

1 comment:

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