gre writing issue sample writing 37
- Society should identify those children who have special talents and provide training for them at an early age to develop their talents.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
Stating that society should identify those children who have special talents and provide training for them at an early age to develop their talents, the speaker asserts that the best way to help talented youngsters to grow well is to provide them with an early, specialized training in their talent areas. In many ways, it is true that such training is beneficial and even necessary for children’s optimal progress. From my perspective, however, there are several side-effects that accompany the policy of early, narrowly-focused education.
Of course, few would disagree that a gifted child benefits from a well-matched, specialized, early training. Especially when it comes to refinement of certain techniques and skills, intense training given at the early stage of life may be critical. Because of their ability to absorb instructions efficiently, children, unlike many adult learners, can pick up know-how and diverse skills on a daily basis; in fact, whether it is about skills in treating musical instruments or about refining highly intellectual senses, a child requires relatively short periods of time to make itself be equipped with those skills and capacities.
In addition, the benefit of a specialized training can be found in terms of its efficacy to increase focus without distraction. Without being impeded by various demands to tackle with seemingly unrelated subjects and concerns, a talented young guy who is guided to concentrate on his original interest can develop deeper and sophisticated abilities.
Then, is the early, narrowly-focused teaching always beneficial for a talented youngster? My answer is definitely no. When it comes to sustainable social interaction in their later life, the restrictive foci of the policy may backfire. Skipping the normal pathway of socialization through which a child can interact with other individuals with different interests and different level of power, the talented child who has no idea about those common people may lose sights to compromise with them. In reality, it is not difficult to observe that many retired athletes who have lived a different realm of specialty and excellence from their early ages find difficulties in adapting to the real world, a world dominated not by the narrow skill and function they are familiarized but by diverse skills and functions with great ranges.
Further, the limitation of the early specialized education can be found in another sense. Given that only a small fraction of the talented young can extend their primary talents and interests into their entire professional career, the policy seems extremely dangerous. Consider an athletic young guy who has devoted all his energy into an area of specialty but cannot continue his dream because of some reasons such as unexpected injuries, too strong rivals or so. For his best adjustment of life path and more smooth transition into different career, perhaps, it is not the narrowly bounded training but the normal pathway of learning that seems more helpful.
To sum, despite its merits of focused efforts as well as efficient refinement of certain skills, the early, specialized education has its own liabilities. Considering the fact that every human being is less a functional robot whose value is solely based on refined technique in a given area than a holistic person who should interact with other people and live a real world with diverse facets of living, I cannot fully agree with the speaker’s notion that the only and best way to foster talented youngsters future is an early, focused learning. ……………
One may say that development of young talented children’s potentials can be best made by early focused training in their talent areas. In some sense, it is hard to deny that an early, specialized education is helpful to foster their special skills and capacities. To my eyes, however, clearer are several side-effects of the early, narrowly focused training; skipping a normal pathway of socialization, the early, specialized training may deter their ability to harmonize with other children (social interaction) or the possible shift of their dreams when they find a difficulty to continue them in real life. ----------------
Saying that society should identify those children who have special talents and provide training for them at an early age to develop their talents, the speaker asserts that the best way to help develop talents of young people is an early, concentrated education. In some sense, it is true that students with unique gifts can benefit from some training programs which narrow their curricula according to certain relevant skill areas. In my opinion, however, this approach seems (to be) missing several possible dangers inherent in the early, focused training. -----------------
People would say that the best progress of talented children can be made by an early, focused training. Apparently(seemingly), an intensive early training may provide a number of opportunities for them to excel at their talent areas. At the same time, however, this specialized but narrowed training may rob them of the well-rounded, well-balanced learning which only the normal procedure of common education can provide. -------------
Some would say that the most effective way to promote young people’s talents is an early, specialized education. In some sense, it is true that one’s ability might be enhanced optimally and maximally by kinds of narrowly focused, early trainings. However, I strongly disagree with this proposal because this approach usually means the sacrifices of other more important aspects of true human development: the sacrifices of both balanced, well-rounded personality and the ability to harmonize with diverse individuals.
Of course, it is undeniable that one’s talents can sometime be developed in a best way when she is given a chance to concentrate her entire energy on a specific purpose as early as possible. Especially as long as the growth of a person is defined solely as heightening or deepening one’s level of skill, there seems no effective way which is superior to the early, specialized training. In fact, a number of professional athletes or artists have been known to shift their potentials into an inimitable level of sophisticated skills by sacrificing other diverse human interests—that is, by being trained at their early ages in their respective talent areas.
However, people in general and even those professional artists or sports stars are not living in the world where only one specialized quality counts. Every human being is one who needs to equip herself with a number of seemingly trivial but essential abilities in diverse realms of the actual living. She needs to deal with a variety of routines that occur to a real human being in her long life; making friends, meeting her husband-to-be, going shopping and movies, and taking parts in several serious conversations. And, these everyday social activities require one to be familiar with other general topics of life beyond her unique talent area.
I agree that we should attempt to identify and cultivate our children's talents. However, in my view the statement goes too far, by suggesting that selected children receive special attention. If followed to the letter, this suggestion carries certain social, psychological, and human-rights implications that might turn out to be more harmful than beneficial not just to children but to the entire society.
At first blush the statement appears compelling. Although I am not a student of developmental psychology, my understanding is that unless certain innate talents are nurtured and cultivated during early childhood those talents can remain forever dormant; and both the child and the society stand to lose as a result. After all, how can a child who is musically gifted ever see those gifts come to fruition without access to a musical instrument? Or, how can a child who has a gift for linguistics ever learn a foreign language without at least some exposure to it? Thus I agree with the statement insofar as any society that values its own future well-being must be attentive to its children's talents.
Beyond this concession, however, I disagree with the statement because it seems to recommend that certain children receive special attention at the expense of other children’s recommendation that I find troubling in three respects. First, this policy would require that a society of parents make choices that they surely will never agree upon to begin with--for example, how and on what basis each child's talents should be determined, and what sorts of talents are most worth society's time, attention, and resources. While society's parents would never reach a reasonable consensus on these issues, it would be irresponsible to leave these choices to a handful of legislators and bureaucrats.
After all, they are unlikely to have the best interests of our children in mind, and their choices would be tainted by their own quirky, biased, and otherwise wrongheaded notions of what constitutes worthwhile talent. Thus the unanswerable question becomes: Who is to make these choices to begin with?
Secondly, a public policy whereby some children receive preferential treatment carries dangerous sociological implications. The sort of selectivity that the statement recommends might tend to split society into two factions: talented elitists and all others. In my view any democratic society should abhor a policy that breeds or exacerbates socioeconomic disparities.
Thirdly, in suggesting that it is in society's best interest to identify especially talented children, the statement assumes that talented children are the ones who are most likely to contribute greatly to the society as adults. I find this assumption somewhat dubious, for I see no reason why a talented child, having received the benefit of special attention, might nevertheless be unmotivated to ply those talents in useful ways as an adult. In fact, in my observation many talented people who misuse their talents--in ways that harm the very society that helped nurture those talents.
Finally, the statement ignores the psychological damage that a preferential policy might inflict on all children. While children selected for special treatment grow to deem themselves superior, those left out feel that they a worth less as a result. I think any astute child psychologist would warn that both types of cases portend psychological trouble later in life. In my view we should favor policies that affirm the self-worth of every child, regardless of his or her talents---or lack thereof. Otherwise, we will quickly devolve into a society of people who cheapen their own humanity.
In the final analysis, when we help our children identify and develop their talents we are all better off. But if we help only some children to develop only some talents, I fear that on balance we will all be worse off.