School & learning
School life, learning, college choices and how we think.
GRE Issue Essay on Beginners’ Contributions Versus Expertise
This essay argues that beginners are not generally more likely than experts to make important contributions: their fresh perspectives can expose assumptions, while expertise often helps test ideas and turn them into consequential work. Whether either group is more likely depends on the field’s needs and how it evaluates challenges.
GRE Argument: Should Students Always Question What They Are Taught?
An argumentative essay that defends persistent critical inquiry while distinguishing it from reflexive doubt: students should test claims and authority, but also build foundational knowledge and rely provisionally on well-supported expertise.
Teaching Facts Through Ideas and Context
An argument for teaching conceptual frameworks before individual facts when learners need a map for organizing information, while using carefully chosen facts and cases to build or correct those frameworks.
Why Average Graduate Earnings Cannot Decide Every Student's Future
Averages describe broad patterns, but cannot determine whether college is worthwhile for an individual. Costs, aid, financing, available educational routes, and goals all shape that decision.
Interdisciplinary Knowledge: Does Every Field Need Ideas from Outside It?
A qualified argument that specialized methods are indispensable, but significant progress on practical problems often requires bringing other kinds of knowledge and experience into the work.
Later School Start Times: Learning, Sleep, and Practical Constraints
An evidence-based argument for later middle and high school start times that explains adolescent sleep needs, interprets U.S. school-start data in its historical context, and considers practical scheduling objections.
Should Schools Encourage Students to Choose Lucrative Careers?
An argument that schools should give students practical, evidence-informed career guidance without steering them toward high salaries as the overriding measure of a worthwhile education.
GRE Issue Essay on Knowledge, Complexity, and Mystery
A qualified argument that knowledge makes some questions more answerable while exposing additional layers of complexity, especially when evidence concerns human choices, power, and competing interpretations.
Should Schools Discuss the Limits of Social Media Research?
Schools should teach students how to interpret social media research, including the difference between reported experiences and proof of causation. Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. teens illustrates both the value and the limits of such evidence.
Should U.S. High Schools Teach Financial Literacy?
A qualified argument for practical financial education in U.S. high schools, with concrete examples involving credit, college borrowing, and household decisions—and a clear account of what instruction cannot fix.
Should Every College Student Study Imaginative Literature?
An argument for a modest, flexible imaginative-literature requirement that develops interpretation and ethical judgment without displacing specialized study.
GRE Practice: Commitment and Critical Thinking
An argumentative essay examines when commitment encourages rigorous self-criticism and when loyalty or self-interest makes it harder to recognize a policy’s failures.