Cross-Cultural Blog

This assignment was created by students at The City College of New York for the Freshman Inquiry Writing Seminar, Web Discourse. Students are researching a social issue in one of four large topics: Urban Life, Public Health, Immigration, and Education. This will result in a final research paper that explores both how the conversations surrounding the issue are enacted and how a CCNY student may enter that conversation in a meaningful way.

I would like to research the learning differences between members of the current parent generation, and their children as it pertains to the education system. I will show that today’s children are not learning the skills that they need in order to succeed in society outside of school. I will then show why I think this is happening. In the last pages, I will acknowledge arguments to the contrary of my thesis. Some anticipated arguments are that today’s generation is simply less focused and hardworking than generations past due to a technological overload it has experienced throughout its young life. I will disprove this. I will also argue that the current generation has the untapped ability to succeed at levels never previously anticipated, and that they may be able to close the math and science gap between America, and some of its eastern rivals.
This topic deserves my vested interest because the fate of future generations depends on the outcome of this technological, educational, and neurological debate. Many ideas on education reform are being discussed, but none of them are drastic enough to enact the change I envision. The academic community needs solid research to show them how and why the very paradigm teaching is based on needs to change. I believe that I can not only collect that research, but form a cohesive argument that could be valuable in that debate.
My working thesis is as follows: Today’s children are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach.
Many questions about my topic remain unanswered. The most prominent one is as to whether research cited by articles I’ve read that contradict my argument holds any weight. My life experiences directly contradict such research, and I intend to disprove it. I also need to discover whether my ideas have been tested in isolated circumstances, and to what effect.
I will research mostly through personal interview, and through scholarly journals. This topic is a popular one among article writers, and there will be a wealth of information available.
It will be challenging to object to an argument that has gained a lot of weight in the scholarly world. I, however, firmly believe that hundreds of intelligent people can believe in something that is completely and utterly wrong.