Persuasive Essay: Be Careful Of The Speed Limit?

Be Careful of the Speed Limit

On the road we have a speed limit, but in life, we unfortunately do not. In high schools everywhere, students are stretching themselves thin in an attempt to meet the high expectations of their communities. In Concord-Carlisle, people are expected to do everything and anything they can to build their resumes and fill their time. Teachers, like students, have a time consuming job. In addition to teaching and grading and taking care of their students, they have lives of their own to tend to. In order for students and teachers to meet the expectations that the community has for them, they must be extremely efficient in each task. George Ritzer introduced the theory of McDonaldization, the effort to maximum efficiency

Recently, Concord-Carlisle High School has instituted a rule that each student must have an apple laptop and teachers are encouraged to incorporate the laptops into their classroom activities. While having laptops in front of a student in class is convenient because they have access to everything, it also has a negative impact on students for the same reason. With the opportunity given, many students will be online shopping, facebook stalking, or even doing another class’s homework in class rather than paying attention to the teacher or focusing on what they should be looking at on the computer. Additionally, having a laptop in front of a student prevents class discussion which is what actually helps a student learn and engage. The administration assumes this change will be efficient because the school will use less paper and will not have to move laptop carts around. However, from this efficiency there is and will be less student to student interaction and student to teacher interaction, which is a true loss in a student’s education. Currently, teachers post homework on their webpage much more frequently than announcing it in class. Every piece of important information can be found on a student’s email or a teacher’s website. This appears to be convenient because all the information is at the fingertips of anyone who needs it. However, there are frequent

For example, the notorious Spark Notes that have helped many english students avoid ever reading a book for class. While this example is less specific to CCHS, these resources are very much a part of CCHS students’ experience. Spark Notes summarizes many books chapter by chapter for the efficiency in understanding a story and often it helps in supplement to the actual book. However, resources such as this have become a crutch that students can lean on. When homework is piled up, students can avoid doing it by simply reading the summary of a book online. This example of McDonaldization takes away from students education because they no longer even have to do any work which is what their education is based off of. Another example of this is Khan Academy; many students rely on this resource to complete homework or learn information for an upcoming test rather than toughing through the work themselves, paying more attention in class or approaching a teacher for extra help when needed. This example of progress is much like the others in that it decreases the communication between students and teachers. This is a real loss for students, as it is a teacher’s job to teach them things and that is not possible if teachers do not know a student does not understand. The McDonaldization of student resources has inhibited their education because they no longer have to learn and do their work in order to