Well, I am preparing for the SAT and I wonder if you guys , EF_Contributers and members , can give me some feedbacks and correct my Essay and grade it out of 6. Thanks for advance!!!
SAT Essay December 2007:
Prompt 1
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
The first problem for all of us is not to learn but to unlearn. We hold on to ideas that were accepted in the past, and we are afraid to give them up. Preconceptions about what is right or wrong, true or false, good or bad are embedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there. Whether it's women's role in society or the role of our country in the world, the old assumptions just don't work anymore.
Adapted from Gloria Steinem, "A New Egalitarian Lifestyle"
Assignment:
Do people need to "unlearn," or reject, many of their assumptions and ideas?Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
My Essay:
The world is drowning progressively in the abyss of wars and conflicts, which basically originate from humans' tendency to adhere to widespread believes, fixed ideas and old assumptions. They refuse to take a decision and give them up. As far as I am concerned, I firmly believe that we should reject many false ideas and prejudges.
To begin with, I think that rejecting some ugly misconceptions, biases and stereotype ideas is a need to build a bright future because it's vital for upcoming generation to clamber out of the box and reach blue-sky thinking. I see also that some ideas are poisonous in our modern world so it's time to unlearn them because at a certain level of dogma and ignorance , these ideas can lead a person to destroy himself and to ruin the harmony of a whole community. Besides, some of these ideas bread extremism, the ultimate wound of humanity. For instance, Christian Church, who ruled Europe during The Middle Age, was a serious stab to scientific research, liberalism and free thinking. Clerics tend to oppress people with brilliant scientific ideas and explorations because they refuse to give up their biblical false ideas about the universe, nature and humanity. Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, those who established heliocentrism, the new perception of the universe were intimidated and persecuted. And only, when people give up its falsified ideas, they reached the Enlightenment manifested in the Age of Reason, a crucial period of history which saw Europe introducing democracy, freedom and economic prosperity.
I do believe, also, that unlearning too many misconceptions is the key to save a nation from civil war and ethno-religious sectarian strife because it paved the way to a tolerant society. In fact, The United States is a case in point. After enacting the rights of vote, desegregation and social equality in "The Civil Rights Act" 1964, U.S. proved to the world that it's vital for the American people- and generally to the humanity- to be socially compact and to destroy the idol of falsified believes about Blacks' inferiority and put an end to human rights transgressions.
To conclude, I see that human's mind should be as flexible as a rubber band in order to clearly distinguish the right from wrong and the true from the false without neither prejudges nor preconceptions.
