Writing Feedback / Should Schools Offer Moral Class? (SAT and homework) [4]

This is actually a prompt from the SAT, but is also the topic for my today's writing assignment. I know the essay is short, about 260 words or so. I had problems when writing this topic. It was like that I kept saying moral education is important because it teaches children to be responsible, and - I think - will help to reduce environmental pollution because much of the pollution is contributed by people who don't care about environment, hence, other people living in the world. (I didn't write down this because I'm sure if it's a good point.) I need examples and ideas which I'm lack of. Do you have ideas or examples, or ways to find them?

Thanks for any idea, advice, review and correction! :)

Prompt 3

Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
Most of our schools are not facing up to their responsibilities. We must begin to ask ourselves whether educators should help students address the critical moral choices and social issues of our time. Schools have responsibilities beyond training people for jobs and getting students into college.

Adapted from Svi Shapiro

Assignment:
Should schools help students understand moral choices and social issues?

Essay:

Should schools offer classes that teach students moral values and ethical issues? Of course. Moral education is important as much as academic education is.

Students are part of the society. They are not isolated individuals who only take classes and tests in schools. They interact with other people of society. And the act of interaction would bring out social issues which they have to make choices based on their moral values. Therefore, moral education which can help students to make the right choice is crucial.

If someone pays you for accusing nine black men of the gang rape, even though the black men have never even touched you, would you lie or would you reject the offer? Your choice is made depended on your moral values - do you value integrity, justice and non-racial discrimination very high and much higher than money? If you do not, then you would probably choose to lie, which is the choice that two women in 1930s had made - they lied and the black men were put into jail. (Scottsboro Case)

Therefore, moral education is very important and crucial because it helps children to acquire moral virtues: honesty, responsibility, integrity, respect for others. And it teaches students to recognize the importance of ethics, giving and self-control which is important for every living person that one can't do whatever one wants to do. We are living in society and we are members of our community. So when we want to do something, we need to think of the result and the effect that would make upon other people.

Lily Rose

Writing Feedback / Are Photographs Representations of Real Life or Just Artistic Creations? [4]

All comments are welcomed! :) I appreciate your help on my essay! I really need your opinions: what is my weakness and where do I need to improve? Please grade my essay also. I will review your essays too, just ask me! Let's help each others and beat the writing! :) Thank you for reading.

Prompt 2

Photographs are very much a part of our daily lives. They show us faraway places, things to buy, important people and happenings, and sometimes just the ordinary. These pictures seem like frozen moments of real life. Cameras do copy what is in front of the lens, and so, in that sense, photographs show us what is real. They are at the same time, however, creations of the artist's intentions and unconscious mind.

Adapted from Leslie Sills, In Real Life: Six Women Photographers

Are photographs straightforward representations of real life, or are they artistic creations reflecting the photographer's point of view?

Essay:

Everyone has seen pictures, and may has taken pictures as well. But are pictures portrayls of real life, or reflections of the photographer's viewpoints? The answer varies, depending on the purpose of the photographer and the type of the photograph.

As an amateur photographer myself, I have taken both "realistic" pictures and "unrealistic" pictures. "Realistic" photographs are pictures recording some particular moments of life, or telling a true story. Photojournalism is "realistic" because the purpose of it is to represent true, happened stories. Therefore it should be realistic, too, since it is to tell the truth. There should not be any fake, artificial information contained in this kind of photography.

On the other hand, art photography can be fake, artificial, surreal, exaggerated. It can produce pictures for purely aesthetic and artistic purposes, and doesn't need to be real or true. For example, to take a picture of a railroad, by using different techniques and perspective, a fine art photographer can make the railroad looks longer, or wider, or shorter, or narrower than it is in real life. And by the way how the photographer handles the relationship between the railroad and the surrounding environment, the picture can show feelings of loneliness, emptiness, hopefulness, happiness or any kind of feelings or ideas that the photographer wants to show. Also, before taking pictures, many fine art photographers would "make up" the objects that they will take pictures of, such as changing the objects' appearances, so that it would be easier to produce pictures that can perfectly reflect their themes.

However, it is ambiguous to define some types of photography, that if photographs of these kinds are true images of real life, or subjective creations of the photographer, because such photographs can be productions of art while portraying real life. Fashion photography, for example, is one of these types of photography. The photographer needs to portray clothes, shoes, models in their real forms, but meanwhile, the photographer also needs to use techniques, and maybe picture editing software, to slightly change the appearances of clothes, shoes and models for either aesthetic purposes or commercial purposes. Documentary photography is another example. Although photographers need to document real people, creatures, or things, they may use techniques, and take pictures from different perspective, to show their concerns or issues they want to address.

Therefore, to say if a photograph is a true portray of real life, or a subjective creation of the photographer, one needs to make sure the type of the photograph and the purpose of the photographer. Different types and purposes lead to different answers. A photojournalism photograph is and should be a real portray of real events, while a fine art photograph can be highly artistic and creative that is only to express the photographer's own opinions.

Writing Feedback / SAT essay: Do incidents from the past continue to influence the present? [3]

Do incidents from the past continue to influence the present?

The famous American novelist Pearl Buck once said: "If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday." This quotation illustrates how important the past is to the present. In the long, vast history of human, it is not hard to find plenty of examples to show that past events still have impacts on today's world.

The establishment of the United Nations is a good example. During the Second World War, twenty-six countries signed the "Declaration by United Nations" to fight together against the Axis Powers. After the Nazi was defeated, the United Nations was kept and was officially established in 1945 to maintain international peace and to promote cooperation in solving international affairs. Today, the United Nations is the most authoritative and well-known international organization. It has involved in numerous important political, economic, social and humanitarian issues around the world, such as the most recent and famous event of imposing a no-fly zone in Libya during the Libya civil war.

The September 11 attacks, although happened ten years ago, continues to influence the American society and American people's daily life. On 11th of September, 2001, terrorists from the Islamist group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets, two of which crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, to declare a holy war against the U.S. About 3,000 American civillians died in the attacks. The attacks provoked a war between Afghanistan and the U.S., a much more strict system of safety regulations in airports in the U.S, and numerous policies and acts against terrorism from the U.S government. Today, relationships between the U.S. and Islamic countries are still intense, both officially and unofficially. In airports, passengers wait longer than before because the federal security force inspect them and their baggage. Earlier this year, many airports in the U.S. employed body scanners that use X-ray to detect concealed weapons and prohibited items, to make further safety measures.

Technological incidents from the past also affect our modern life. In the nineteenth century, Alexander Bell invented telephone that could transmit people's voices from one place to another, without the people being meeting. About thirty years later, the Wright brothers created the first airplane. Both inventions started new chapters in human history. Now, telephone and airplane are two important things in our urban life. The former makes communication easy and convenient, and the latter makes travelling fast and effective.

As seen in the three examples above, whether the past incident is from history, politics, or technology, it influences our life and our world today. Yesterday makes today, the past creates the present. Even a small event at the time can have a huge impact on the world later. And we can't cut the connections.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Hello,

I'm a homeschooler who's preparing for the SAT in Jan. Please correct my essay if there are mistakes, and score it from 1 to 6. Any opinion(e.g. on organization, diction, grammar, paragraph, development of the theme, punctuation etc..) is welcomed, and is valuable! Thanks for taking the time to read my essay.

Rose

(10.27 finished.)

Writing Feedback / SAT essay: Should people always be loyal? [3]

I prepared two examples: Martin Luther and Napoleon. But I ended up writing too much about Martin Luther so there was no time left for the Napoleon example.(The time limit is 25 min.) I wrote 2 pages (over 400 words). Although I've read posts saying the essay with one well-developed example can score high, I'm worrying if I should stick with one example in the coming test in Jan. Do you think I argued convincingly and developed one example well? Thanks!

Should people always be loyal?

Although loyalty is considered as a virtue and a crucial trait of a good person by generation after generation, it can also have an unfavorable side. Always being loyal sometimes means being blindly obedient, which thus may foster evilness; so when the certain people or ideal which people are originally loyal to turn to the opposite side of justice, righteousness and benevolence, people should not continue their loyalty. They should not always be loyal without regard to how the people or ideal they are loyal to have changed. This can be proved in the example of the Christianity revolutionist Martin Luther.

Martin Luther, a German monk in the sixteenth century, did not continue his loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church when he discovered that the church and priests had been corrupted and materialized. The Church was selling salvation, a means for people to be saved from the sins they've done, and therefore they would not go to the Hell when they died. Selling salvation brought enormous fortune to priests, monks and the Church, but it was actually a wrongful act because salvation should had been given to people who truly regretted their wrongs and had decided to change to be better from their hearts. With much money, priests and monks spent their time to pursue pleasure. And with power, the Church controlled every aspect of ordinary people's lives. Any sin could be forgiven as long as there was money compensated. Seeing all those corruptions and wrongdoings, Martin Luther knew it was time to reform the Church. He discontinued his loyalty to the Church, and published a booklet, listing 95 things the Church was doing wrong, to criticize the Church. It was this booklet that later led to the religious revolution throughout the Europe. The Roman Catholic Church, saw the rebellions everywhere, finally changed its system, loosed its control over people and stopped selling salvation. Martin Luther's call for freedom of religion also inspired American colonists, who later drafted The Independent Declaration and built a country of democracy. Now we're living in a world which is freer than that of the Middle Ages. Religion freedom is granted to everyone, and no one would be burned for a crime called Heresy. This was all started by Martin Luther and his revolution. If he had continued his loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church even though the Church was corrupted, he would not begin a revolution, and now we wouldn't be living in a better world.

Writing Feedback / In the pages of human history, conflicts are unavoidable; Is conflict helpful? SAT [2]

Hello! Please grade my essay below from point 1 to 6. (A 6 would be a well-organized, clear, coherent, strong essay with varied sentence structures and good vocabulary, whereas a 1 would be a very flawed, poorly organized, incoherent essay with many errors in grammar and diction.) Any feedback is also welcomed. Thank you for taking the time to read!

Is conflict helpful?

In the pages of human history, conflicts are unavoidable. From the Civil War to everyday conflicts of ordinary people, we can see conflicts everywhere. Although people usually consider conflicts as harmful and disastrous, conflicts can actually have a helpful side that enables us to learn and improve ourselves. This can be seen in the examples of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; and of the American Civil War, which happened in the 1800's because a strong conflict between the slavery proponents and abolitionists.

Conflicts can help us to learn better about ourselves. In the novel written by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bennet is a beautiful, clever, genial but stubborn girl. She often quickly judges people on the first impression, and can hardly change her judgements. Darcy is one of such people who did not give a good first impression on Elizabeth, and therefore is considered by Elizabeth as an arrogant, ill-tempered, and evil man. However, later, Elizabeth has a conflict with Darcy, and through solving this conflict, Elizabeth discovers that Darcy is in fact a good-natured, benevolent and honest man, who only aren't very good at talking with strangers. She also realizes that she is too judgemental and obstinate. Elizabeth's story is a good example of how conflicts can help people to learn better about themselves, and even others around them.

But the helpfulness of conflicts does not limit to that. Conflicts can have a more benefitting and significant impact on the whole society and generations. The American Civil War is a good example. A strong conflict between the slavery supporters and the slavery opposters provoked this war. Because a compromise could not be reached, the supporters and opposters inevitably started the Civil War to fight for their own beliefs. Although the war is definitely unpleasant, it eventually freed the black slaves in America, and helped the country to be a true democratic nation where every human is equal and respected. The Civil War not only gave freedom to millions black people, it also inspired many other people to start their struggles for freedom and equal rights, such as women, minorities and people in the developing countries. The Civil War is also a perfect example to demonstrate the good effect of conflicts.

Through the examples of Pride and Prejudice and the Civil War, we can clearly see that conflicts, although being traditionally considered as harmful, is actually helpful in many ways. "Every coin has two sides." said the philosopher Emerson. So do conflicts. We should now realize that there may be something more to learn than to simply solve a conflict and pray to avoid it.

TO Moderator, I mistakenly posted this under the Undergraduate Admission section. Sorry. I've deleted the original post and repost it here.