Walker Percy The Loss Of The Creature Summary

Secondary Education and Its Ill-Preparation for College

High school is typically hailed as a bridge connecting the last four years of secondary schooling to post-secondary college education. The high school experience is believed to assuage students into their roles as independent individuals ready to take on college and future endeavors. As a former high school student, I profess that this idea of a bridge, is just an illusion; instead, high school creates a divide, generating dichotomy in regards to post-secondary tutelage. Moreover, secondary educational institutions claim that they provide students with the utilities, assets, and erudition necessary to succeed in college, but in actuality, the modern high school does not prepare students

In The Loss of the Creature, “prominent American writer” of the 20th century, Walker Percy, elaborates on how materials are presented. Percy proposes that these packaged experiences in school lead to a loss of the true essence. For instance, students enter a lab in which they are going to examine and dissect a dogfish. The dogfish is referred to as a “specimen of squalus acanthias” (Percy 59). Percy then declares, “The phrase specimen of expresses in the most succinct way imaginable the radical character of the loss of being which has occurred under his very nose. The dogfish itself is seen as a rather shabby expression of an ideal reality, the species Squalus acanthias. The result is the radical devaluation of the individual dogfish.” (Percy 59). Certainly, experiencing this lab in this kind of “packaged” environment fails to capture the true essence as the dogfish is diluted into a theoretical ideal; however, seeing a dogfish in the wild would have a much more original and memorable influence where it unpackaged and can be explored naturally. Students need to be able to think, and have a unique experience that enables them to learn; lacking this ability to learn will affect them negatively in their creative pursuits in