ipl-logo

The Dispossessed Summary

985 Words4 Pages

Essay One: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
The extent that grades have on hindering the ability to learn is discussed in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, in which Shevek a college professor is troubled by the importance placed on the grading system as a mark of understanding of a subject at the university he recently started teaching at. One of the first points to be made is that understanding what you were taught isn’t the point of schools anymore, it’s about memorizing the information for a test or assignment.Second, is that achieving high marks in school doesn’t always equate intelligence or lack of it . Lastly, it’s not how well one is able to memorize what they are taught, but how they’re able to take that information, process and apply it to real world problems that shows the extent of one’s true education.

First high achieving students grades are what keep them focused and motivated in school. On the other end of the spectrum are students who simply do not have the willpower or drive to earn high marks in school. There are students who focus who too much on grades, and by doing this end up memorizing the material being taught and not absorbing. They are like little robots spouting facts and information, but not being able to truly comprehend its meaning. In The …show more content…

Some simply try to memorize for test and quizzes. Others feel grades don’t reflect their intelligence and can make them feel worthless for a lot of students grades are taught to be so hyper-focused on grades that aren’t going to matter in the real world. If you bombed your statistics math final in 10th grade you’re not going to be expected to learn that material in college if you 're an English major. Getting good grades shouldn’t be the main focus in school, but wanting to learn and become a better educated, well-rounded person who truly is able to process the information they

Show More
Related
1061 Words | 5 Pages

Desmond, Matthew. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown Books. Book Review Assignment Evicted is a non fictional book written by Matthew Desmond that relates actual events in the city of Milwaukee. Matthew Desmond is a sociologist that follows eight families while these families fight to keep them and their families living with any type of roof over their heads.

Read More
1258 Words | 6 Pages

In his non-fiction book ‘Evicted’, Matthew Desmond conducted an ethnographic study on the residents of a black ghetto and a trailer park, the poorest parts of Milwaukee between 2008 and 2009 during the financial crisis. By presenting the story of eight families who struggle to meet their rent payments, Desmond attempts to understand the causes and effects of the tenant eviction process, and examines poverty and the economic exploitation in the United States. One of the greatest qualities of the book is its readability as Desmond tells the story from the third-person point of view in order to bring readers into direct contact with the families and their trajectory. By permitting the characters to speak for themselves as much as possible, Desmond conveys their true emotions, reactions, and thoughts with all the colors, sounds, and smells to the readers. Paul Farmer’s “AIDS and Accusation” is another highly readable book as it provides not only about the true causes of poverty and sickness in Haiti, but also about the connections between human suffering and political/economic issues.

Read More
1254 Words | 6 Pages

Higher education is important to most people, but there are times where it does not take priority. One major issue talked about by Magdalena Kay in “A New Course” is that teachers are teaching to the state test, and not to teach students knowledge. There are two perspectives in this article: one is from Magdalena Kay, an associate professor of English at the University of Victoria, and the other is Christopher Lasch. Christopher Lasch is a historian and a social critic, who does not have an inside sight into the educational system. Lasch is only able to express the perspective of an outsider, unlike Kay who has an insight because she is in the educational system.

Read More
321 Words | 2 Pages

The professor Louis Menand explains in his essay the different theories that exist in different college students and how society always tries to sort people based on their intelligence. Menand explains Theory 1 as students who only want to pursue the career paths that promise greatest personal or financial rewards. All they care about is ace their classes so they can warrantee to get their dreamed job. It doesn’t matter if they don’t understand the course or even if they to learn more. They completed all their classes and they learned what it supposed to learn and basically they don’t want to learn more.

Read More
316 Words | 2 Pages

“What I Learned and What I Said at Princeton” by David Saderis and “Against School: How Public Education Cripple Our Kids, And Why” by John Taylor Gatto both relate to school using the experience that they encounter in the system. Both writers give example of how the education can affect the student reflection. In “What I Learned and What I Said at Princeton,” Saderis mention how his dad was in character of his school, “He had the whole outfit: Princeton breastplate, Princeton nightcap; he even got the velvet cape with the tiger hanging like a rucksack from between the should blades (Saderis 197).” Failing was not an option for Saderis; his dad is constantly bloated about him as a Princeton student. In the second essay, “Against School:

Read More
1264 Words | 6 Pages

Elona Kalaja Professor Eleni Saltourides ENG 101 Critical Analysis Paper February 21, 2018 Flunking vs Students In the article, “In Praise of the F Word” Mary Sherry argues that flunking students is a method that has been effective in the past and is still effective todays day, and anyone needs to see is as a positive teaching tool. Sherry indicates that flunking students is a method that motivates students to study more and to be more responsible for what is their responsibility. Students challenge is not to get an A or B, but to succeed or to fail.

Read More
745 Words | 3 Pages

The main argument is that perceived throughout the reading is that the schools itself is failing students. They see a student who may not have the greatest test scores or the best grades, and degrade them from the idea of being intellectual. Graff states, “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic” (Graff 244). Schools need to channel the minds of street smart students and turn their work into something academic.

Read More
569 Words | 3 Pages

In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.

Read More
249 Words | 1 Pages

In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.

Read More
531 Words | 3 Pages

Because of this students will do try for good grades in order to satisfy their parents instead of doing it for themselves to be more

Read More
833 Words | 4 Pages

In his article “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Rose makes the statement: “students will float to the mark you set” (Rose, 1989, p. 3). This remark is one of the truest I have ever read. When teachers have high expectations, students tend to rise up and meet those expectations. Students want to please their teachers and be praised by them. Rose describes: “I loved getting good grades from MacFarland…

Read More
741 Words | 3 Pages

Students that get advanced scores on tests are able to move ahead and have better opportunities in their schools, but students that don’t score well are left behind, sometimes barely moving from grade to grade. When making changes to the schooling system, Thomas Jefferson said “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually” (Congressional Research Service, 269). The president of the United States of America, when setting up a part of the education system, said that only some of the extra-intelligent students would be taken and given amazing opportunities. He himself said that they would be taken from the rubbish,

Read More
1191 Words | 5 Pages

Standardized testing has become one of the most popular types of testing in U.S. public schools to date. Students take numerous standardized tests throughout their childhood schooling. (Studies show that a typical student takes an average of 112 mandated standardized tests between Pre-K and 12th grade.) While standardized testing is one of the main procedures that Universities use to judge incoming students, it is not proven to be the most effective way to convey a student’s actual intelligence level. The U.S. should not focus so heavily on standardized testing because it is not a complete accurate measurement of a student’s intelligence.

Read More
1204 Words | 5 Pages

Grades are said to drive students to push themselves even more, yet it is not entirely true. Some students cheat, causing their grades to fly high, and that doesn’t reflect wit at all. In a survey of 24,000 students at 70 high schools, Donald McCabe (Rutgers University) found that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent for plagiarism, and 95 percent for some other form of cheating. (Facts) This proves that grades are more likely to cause students to cheat than to motivate

Read More
702 Words | 3 Pages

Teachers like these make high school difficult. This paper discusses traits of bad teachers, and the study habits they fail to create, in their students. Firstly, a bad teacher is someone who comes into class, and reads from his/her notes, and gives one a problem to work on for an hour with no input from the teacher at all. Bad teachers don’t have class management making it easy to clown around and not pay attention.

Read More

More about The Dispossessed Summary

Related Topics

Open Document