Comment by Aerroon
10 months ago
I think these complaints will fall onto deaf ears for at least two reasons:
1. Students are a captive audience. They don't want to be there. It's the law that makes them be there. Even once you're beyond mandatory education this holds true: they were just carried into further education by momentum. They didn't realize they had a real choice or what alternatives were available.
2. A lot of the skills you build in classes aren't useful to you. I spent a lot of time in my English (second) language classes, but it was my use of the internet that really taught me the language. The later years of English classes was just busywork.
In my native language classes I had to write a fair number of essays. The only time this was useful was the final exam of that class. I haven't written a "real" essay since. Even if I did, it would probably be in English and use a different style - something taught to me by forum posts.
But this is exactly the problematic viewpoint. You thought that the point of letting you write essays in your native language was to enable you to write essays. It isn't, it never was.
But what was the point then?
During the final exam, a national exam (all the students did it at the same time in the country) you were given blank pieces of paper, a pen, 10 different topics to choose from, and 6 hours.
You pick a topic, write a draft, then write the essay. ~700 words.
Bonus points if you use relevant literature or science quotes in it. Quotes you had to memorize, without knowing the topics.
None of the topics resonated with you? Tough luck, buddy.
Don't have any 'novel' ideas? Figure something out!
Cited something the reader didn't know about? Should've known better!
Quoted someone the person grading doesn't know? Better hope they're in a good mood!
There's a reason they got rid of this style of exam a few years later. Doesn't change that this one thing dominated my native language and literature classes.
My biggest takeaway from it is how much I hate my native language class and literature class, but that might've happened even without the essay.