Topic Proposal-the education experience

Paolo Freire writes extensively about what he perceives to be the shortcomings of traditional educational systems. Among the critiques he makes is the claim that the “banking model” of education creates a schism between education and the real lives of students, one that interferes with the students “becoming fully human.” In so doing, Freire also articulates an argument about the value and purpose of education. As many of you are preparing to leave the university in the near future, the prompt asks you to think carefully about the connection between your education and your life, and also about your own sense—now that one major stage of your education is nearing an end—of the value of education. Your task is to write a paper in which you define and describe what you believe the value of education is. In order to help you avoid the perils of abstraction, you should focus your paper on whatever you believe is the single most important educational experience you have had during your time at college. You do not need to limit yourself to writing about an academic experience, but can focus on any life event or experience that has shaped you in an important way as a thinker or person (this will be our shorthand for “educational experience”). You will begin your process by thinking about this experience—not about the value of education. Your job is to explore, through prewriting, the details of this experience so that you can come to understand (for yourself, and ultimately for the readers of the paper you will then write) what you believe the value of education is. After you have generated material by prewriting, you will begin to draft the paper in which you develop this idea. You will submit a brief topic proposal paragraph in which you identify the experience you will be writing about. You should not say anything in this paragraph about what you think the value of education is—this is something you will develop later.