Essay on essays

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I bring to your attention my essay on what, perhaps, essays are needed for. This is a slightly edited text from my 2013 mailing list. Since the text has not lost its relevance, I decided to repeat the experiment here.

I am sure that everyone has already thought out their plan for the summer and I hope that there is at least one useful item in it. By combining the many observations I have made over the years of working with young people, I have found that a typical summer plan usually looks like this:

• spend June worthlessly;
• spend July worthlessly;
• spend August worthlessly.

The fourth point is quite common: “do something useful on August 31st”. Sometimes the plan consists of many more points (such as, for example, to work somewhere or for someone, to go on a long and long trip), but on closer examination they turn out to be variations of the template described above with varying degrees of detail. It's time to take offense at me for unambiguous hints. But just to be offended, you need to have very impressive reasons for this or an extremely extraordinary approach to summer pastime. I would be glad to hear one.

So this is where I am leading … Each of those who studied at school remembers that in early September it was often suggested to write an essay on the topic “how I spent my summer”. Remember? Some people liked to share their adventures, imagining that there really was something interesting in them and that the teacher really wanted to learn about them. However, a significant part of the people I know did not like such compositions: “Why? Who cares? And the topic is boring, I'll write some kind of nonsense, just to get off. Before reading further, let everyone remember their attitude to essays in literature class and think for a couple of minutes why they are really needed.

Have you thought? Let's go further …

If we talk about the attitude of schoolchildren to essays, then I see two problems here. First, it is difficult for a student to explain why these compositions are actually needed. His measure of understanding the principles and methodology of development has not yet formed enough to be able to determine the benefit or harm from certain actions, hobbies, decisions.

Therefore, by the way, I still cannot listen to the stories of students without an inner smile about why they chose this or that faculty or followed this or that choice in their life, and also when they think that they can appreciate the importance or worthlessness of this or another subject at the university.

Secondly, the teachers themselves at school have long lost the original meaning of this kind of essay and give the task to write them only because they are in the curriculum. Some of the experienced teachers remember that in this way you can test literacy and the ability to express your thoughts, creativity and other qualities. But, in general, all this is done purely formally, for show.

The original reason why schoolchildren are forced to write their stories from time to time in literature lessons is different. Yes, there are obvious reasons that I listed just above, but they are superficial. The deeper reasons are less obvious.

Probably, everyone heard such nonsense from another person: “I always had problems with the Russian language”, or “I never knew how to write essays”, or “I always formulated my thoughts poorly” (and once I I heard a masterpiece in general: “I have a genetic predisposition to illiteracy”) and other excuses with which the speaker actually signs in his stupidity and extreme limitation of the mind. On the Internet, for example, you can find such a thought, which someone somewhat vulgarly and superficially expresses on a wider range of excuses. But with feeling, one might say, with a soul expresses …

Reading articles, essays, term papers and theses of my students, I often find a frankly childish style of presentation, I make comments, but they (comments), unfortunately, are often left without attention. Years pass, and the student still cannot write even one paragraph in such a way that there is no desire to print it out and carry out the ritual burning ceremony over the sheet of paper received from the printer. Does this mean that the student has a problem only with the Russian language and with imagination, style, creativity, the ability to express his thoughts? Yes, he does. But at the same time, this circumstance speaks about something else.

Almost always (with very, very rare exceptions), the inability to express one's thought in a coherent, competent and beautiful way, or at least smoothly and consistently, approaching creatively to the presentation process, indicates a lack of understanding of the things described. About a total misunderstanding of the processes occurring in the period of time described by a person, the reasons for his choice, his behavior, even what he really wants and for what he lives in general. At the same time, I am not yet talking about more complex issues, the existence of which such a person does not even know.

Read what the person is writing. How he writes and what about. In a few paragraphs, an experienced thinking person can already draw far-reaching conclusions, and the probability of making a mistake in this case will be practically zero. Does the person have mistakes? Does he write names with a capital letter or write with a small letter, does he use vulgar youth slang (and in what cases), does he correctly place punctuation marks, spaces, how does he hyphenate sentences to the next line (if he does), how smoothly the text is read, how the same words are often repeated.

The combination of these and other seemingly formal assessments gives a rather close to reality idea of the level of human understanding.

The presence of minor and non-obvious mistakes, which cannot lead to an ambiguous interpretation of the text, do not violate the beauty and coherence of thought, in itself does not say anything. Also, the inability to build sentences or a heavy writing style does not mean anything. In this case, you should always look at a set of criteria, and not at one of them.

Of course, a reservation must be made here. There are people who write beautifully and competently about their scientific research, although at the same time they absolutely do not understand anything outside the boundaries of their subject area. No less often there are people with an innate talent for writing, literally "on the fly" formulating the most beautiful sounding and harmoniously composed sentences, but at the same time devoid of any meaning. These two points should be taken into account when analyzing someone else's text.

So, it's time to move on to the completion of the thought, which has become too long already. Essays are needed in order to learn the accuracy of formulations and the ability to endow concepts with a clear measure. This skill is closely related to the level of understanding of the subject in question. A childish naive essay often testifies to a childish and naive understanding (although this is not always a bad thing), a deep and creative text, which, even if not very easy to read, is understood clearly and unambiguously, testifies to the same unambiguous and deep understanding of the subject of the conversation by the author of the essay (although this style is not always good).

Schoolchildren neglect the importance of essays, because they do not know (and often, in principle, are not able to understand) what they are needed for. Modern culture, education and parenting of their children are too late. By the time a person has to make an important choice in his life, he is still at the level of a primitive idea of the surrounding processes and phenomena of our world. At the same time, he (supposedly) himself knows what he wants and already (also supposedly) knows how to determine what he needs from life and what is not. All this inevitably causes the same, but already tortured and terribly painful smile somewhere inside me, but often even on my face. It is unlikely, however, that those around you understand such a smile correctly. Someone reading these lines will also feel it sometime. And I hope it's not too late.

- You still won't fix everyone. - said already for the "hundred twenty-fifth" time, either an inner voice, or someone from the people who at least a little learned to understand me, I don't even remember. And I'm still trying. But not everyone succeeds.

All the same should be attributed to oral speech. The inability to express one's thoughts orally, starting from school, indirectly testifies to the problems of understanding the surrounding reality and the structure of even the simplest processes taking place in our world.

Imagine a teacher summons a student to retell this or that literary work, and a student, being in bewilderment and confusion, they say, "why do I need it", reluctantly enters the blackboard and lo! - a crowd of mockingly sympathetic eyes are already looking at him, and a second later, trying to say something clever, he already hears the wild laughter of his classmates … as you can see. What does this lead to? Someone to never again learn to speak literate, public speaking, expressing their thoughts, and finally, to the fear of thinking. To one of the fundamental problems of modern society: the fear of thinking for real. To the unwillingness to become at least a free-thinking person, to the fear of arriving at the correct worldview, due to a complete misunderstanding of its meaning, essence, nature and reality - an even greater reality than we see it in pleasant or unpleasant sensations.

Explanation. There are other reasons leading to the same thing, and they, as I see it now, are closely related to the above. All of this is some form of violation of the socialization process, often arising not only because of the inability to find a common language with other people, but also because of inadequate upbringing, the cause of which, in turn, is the absence of a parent (or two at once) or mediocrity of parents in matters of education. To the list of reasons, one should also add the rarity of moments of switching on the thinking process, but more often replacing it with an overly emotional, vaguely intuitive perception of reality. No wonder, because it is not so easy to understand for yourself what you need to think for. It is almost unbelievable for a person to take and realize that there is no alternative to reason. But this is a completely different story, very difficult for this letter.

He who does not know how to accurately and clearly formulate his thought, does not know how to think, does not know how to answer his questions and even formulate them. He does not see obvious connections between certain phenomena in our life, does not understand why certain events happen to him. Doesn't know what to do, how to do it, why and why. He just moves blindly, rejoicing in success and lamenting defeat, although both are quite easy to control.

The converse, by the way, is not always true, it must be borne in mind, as I said above. You can talk about minor exceptions to such a rule of thumb, but I do not advise you to get carried away with this, otherwise suddenly imagine that you are this very exception.

As a result, such a person who does not know how to think will always be an inferior person who, until the end of his life, will wonder why it is so difficult to achieve certain goals, why he has to do all sorts of stupid things, why he cannot find himself in the end! And all these problems begin with such simple and seemingly insignificant trifles as the lack of skills in speaking and writing, the culture of which has long been lost somewhere in the fog of vaguely intuitive and superficial thinking. The development of speech, oral and written, in a natural language and in an artificial language (for example, in the language of mathematics), allows you to significantly expand your thinking abilities, and this is one of the simplest ways. Of course, if this speech is used not for verbiage, but for useful purposes.

Think carefully before denying anything with your favorite question "why is this necessary?" If something is offered, then there is a good reason for that, and one could at least think about it. My last essay on how I spent the summer, I wrote 3 years ago (here it is), and it, even in a strong reduction, went beyond 100 pages. I don't need to do this anymore, because I already write a lot and communicate with people personally. Here I just wrote what I think about such compositions in principle. But why did I write this … this is the main question.

And now I'm wondering: how many people were able to understand all the hints in this article? And how many of them were able to understand them the way I would like? I agree that it is not easy to understand, but this text was drawn up very, very carefully. Everything is in its place in it (and possible typos do not matter).

I only accept feedback on this post by email. Comments to this text are disabled, and you know my mail. Just think very well before you write.

Have a nice summer!