Formal education merits the universal acclaim

Hi there! I am struggling with analytical writing. Hopefully, I’ll make progress sooner or later. As for now, it is quite difficult to reason about such complex tasks. I realy admire those who managed to enter a grad school.

Please provide me with feedback to contribute to my progress as a writer.

Some people believe that the purpose of education is to free the mind and the spirit. Others believe that formal education tends to restrain our minds and spirits rather than set them free.


Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.

Formal education provides people with indispensable knowledge and skills that enables them to internalize positive values and free themselves from prejudices and unproductive patterns of behavior, resulting in their wellbeing and personal freedom. Yet there are a full array of paradigms and traditions that inundate formal education that presumably might impede the human progress. Though it may be the case, it is pivotal to realize that it is formal education that provides the platform for human minds to thrive in various realms of activity.

It goes without saying that formal education hands to people theories, ideas, concepts that were successfully used by the previous generations, allowing them to advance further. Equipped with the solid foundation in the basic disciplines such as science and the humanities, an individual is able to face challenges that ever increasingly arise nowadays. In this respect, building upon experiences of the ancestors, people are capable of avoiding various pitfalls, which results in their freedom. Indeed, a body of knowledge provided by formal education does not put constraints on human existence, rather it secures better outcomes. On a personal note, while being a market researcher in Indonesia, I often encountered the situations that required me to make decisions based on the incomplete information. Only through resorting to techniques for forecasting did I succeed in designing business operations and steer their further development. In my view, this freed me in my job.

Along with that, formal education offers a plethora of invaluable cases from history, arts, and literature that inspire and ignite in people precious feelings and priceless pursuits. It is those cases that allows people to build upon and endure, making them free from prejudices and faulty assumptions. Personally, I changed my view on my future prospects by drawing inspiration from cinematography that I was a part of my curriculum at college. In particular, the movie Cobra Verde, directed by Werner Herzog, which depicts the life of a lonely yet courageous general striving to survive on the island inhabited by indigenous savages stroke my mind. It is this movie that continuously motivated me in my pursuits to prepare for a grad school, making me to endure and counter my fears and unproductive thoughts about worthless endeavours. In light of this, I do see the value in formal education because it opens new frontiers and new opportunities for one’s imagination.

Yet one might reasonably argue that only through challenging formal truths can people free themselves, transcending the restrictive boundaries of firm beliefs and long standing traditions. Though it might be the case, it is essential to realize that such approach to life should be deployed with caution. Take for instance the situation when a man decides to drop out of college. Personally, in most of the cases I am familiar with people who did it ended up doing laborious and tedious jobs, with only some minor exceptions. They were trapped in their mundane routines which inhibited their spirit and overall development. In light of this I hold that such approach to free one’s spirit should be used sparingly with necessary precautions.
To sum up, there is much to be said on the both sides of the issue, yet it is evident that formal education has invaluable significance in human lives, allowing them to build upon the accumulated knowledge and expand their spirits to new horizons.

Hi Trololo, once again great writing and vocabulary, but your thoughts still seem somewhat unorganized and vague. This time I highlighted the parts of your essay that support the “free” viewpoint green and the parts that support the “restrain” blue. In addition, those sentences that don’t seem to reference either side or when I could not figure out which side they are meant to support, I highlighted red. Maybe that will make it a little more clear where I think you are being vague or not addressing the prompt directly enough. Notice that several of your topic sentences are red. If your topic sentence is vague, your paragraph is pretty much doomed I think because the reader is not really sure where you are going. And do you understand about the “yet” sentence? It is great to address both sides in a GRE essay like this, but the way your “yet” sentence is doing it is incorrect - let me know if I need to explain it better or give an example. See my notes about defining what “freeing your mind” means to you, and you could also define “restrain” and perhaps question if that is really always such a bad thing. Couldn’t another word for restrain mean guide or control? Surely knowledge must be guided in some way to achieve goals and success. Also, I think you need to tie your examples closer to your thesis and make the connections more explicit.

Hi Thomas,

I see you points. Indeed, my writing is quite nebulous. I’ll try to be more concrete, and I should contemplate an issue more thoroughly before starting to write. I’ll try once again.