Consider the following comments on education.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris
A system that grades children by a single number teaches them that they are a single number.
We say we educate for the future, then test only for the past.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
Argue that education's deepest purpose is to enlarge a person's capacity to think, not to certify them for a labour market, and that the two aims pull against each other more than schools admit. Open by granting the practical case: societies need skilled workers and credentials are an efficient signal. Then complicate it by asking what is lost when curiosity is reduced to assessment, since the most examinable things are rarely the most worth knowing. A useful third move distinguishes training, which fits a person to a fixed role, from education, which fits a person to question the role itself. Caution: avoid romanticising learning so far that you dismiss exams entirely, since unstructured freedom can fail the disadvantaged child who has no other ladder.