Peer comments are in the bold.
ENGL 1201
Exploratory Essay
A College Education
A college education should help a person attain a goal. It should also further your basic knowledge of the world around you. College is not for people who don’t know what they want in life. According to Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind (1987) “this undecided student [who] is an embarrassment to most universities, because he seems to be saying “I am a whole human being. Help me to form myself in my wholeness and let me develop my real potential,” and he is the one to whom they have nothing to say.” To avoid this, one should have a telos, or goal. So that by the time you leave college you would have accomplished the goal. Of course, one can decide their own goal but some think, “The goal of education is to produce the citizen.” I had a hard time trying to figure out what the thesis of the paper was.
Hart believes that one should have a general education before specializing. When freshmen enter a curriculum they do not know exactly what courses they should take, because colleges offer an array of possibilities. He says as a rule of thumb “students should stay away from anything listed under ‘Studies'”and should seek out those “‘ordinary’ courses.'” However if freshmen ask themselves “What is this education supposed to produce?”(129), then they can avoid wasting their time and money. For then they will have a goal, which would be the answer to the question. Specializing is then necessary because success depends on it (128). Is this page number supposed to be here. This paragraph was a little confusing for me. It seemed like you jumped around from thought to thought.
In my opinion education should be a step in reaching a goal. Like Hart, I think one should have a general education. A person should be able to at least understand a little about the world around them. I think you had already mentioned this in the second paragraph. Might want to change you focus for this paragraph. Entering freshmen should not enter college without a goal that they want to accomplish, because college is not the place for it. College is where one furthers their education by learning the things one will need to succeed. Getting a college education should not only be the goal, but it should help one reach an ultimate goal. Education should prepare a person for the world. I disagree with Hart that the first 12 years of schooling are a waste. I think that this could use some support from an outside source. This education, depending on how good the school was, should have prepared a person for college. In preparing the person for college, it prepares them to go out into the world after learning more about the world. REPEATED Those first 12 years do not prepare a person to succeed in the world it only prepares them to succeed in college. I suggest maybe finding a different word for prepare, person, and college. In the a few previous sentences you used those words a lot.
Hart thinks that students should get a general education before specializing and I agree with that. However people should take it a step further, this education should also get the student where they want to be at the end. Hart seems to think that the first 12 years of schooling is a waste because freshmen still come to college not knowing some things about their own country. I disagree; the first twelve years of school are not attempting to prepare the student for the world, like they used to in the past. They now prepare the student to go on to college. It is at college that people get prepared to go out into the world. College has many firsts for freshmen. It is usually their first time being independent; they no longer have teachers or parents to show them the way. College prepares people to become citizens of the world. This is the ultimate goal of education, “to produce the citizen”(129). The only problem that I have with your conclusion is that it doesn’t really tie the paper all together. It seems to repeat what you had said. I think that your paragraphs need to be tied together better transitional sentences. Your paper consisted of good thoughts and ideas, but at times it was hard to figure out what you were getting out. You had the correct format for most of your quotes, but in one spot I remember seeing a floating page number. I wasn’t sure if the sentence before it was supposed to be in quotes, so you might want to check that out. Your paper seemed to be geared towards students who were wondering how they could benefit from college-and that was to be successful as a whole person. I think that you did a good job otherwise! Hope that my suggestions will be beneficial for you.