Sydney Harris Figurative Language Analysis

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Have you ever read a piece of text, and weren’t quite sure what the main idea was? Authors use the text structure of articles in order to develop the main idea by using figurative language and outside quotes from scholars. (insert transition sentence) By using different text structures, the author develops the main idea of the essay with figurative language. “Into this empty casing, the teachers are supposed to stuff education.” This piece of figurative language is used within the first paragraph of Harris’s essay, to define early on the purpose of this essay. What education is accomplishing is not sufficient. All they are doing is throwing information at students and hoping they grasp the concepts. However this is not what true education …show more content…

Harris develops the main idea of the essay with outside quotes from scholars. “The most important part of education, is this instruction of man in what he has inside of him.” Using this quote from William Ernest Hocking, Sydney J. Harris develops the main idea of the essay by showing that a Harvard philosopher had the same thought process as him, school should instruct what you already have, not put more information into you until you don’t know any of the information that was already there. This concept is introduced to us early on in the essay to further our understanding of the main idea. Another quote used to add to our understanding of the main idea was taken from Socrates, “Look into your own selves and find the spark of truth that God has put into every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame.” This quote develops the main idea of the essay by showing that Socrates never said “I know learn from me.” He rather said the opposite. Learn from yourself, introducing what real education should actually be striving to accomplish. A quote was also pulled from a college student who said, “I spend so much time studying that I don’t have a chance to learn anything.” This was pulled to advance our knowledge on the main idea of the essay, by showing us that a full time college student felt that they weren't learning anything despite studying all the time, they felt that they were just shoveling information into their brain

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