Humanities, taught by Ms. Small, is a class that combines History and English to explore what it means to be human. The course covers a wide range of topics, from literature and psychology to how society works. We began the year studying Walden and performing skits at Bournedale. Since then, we’ve examined the history of education, explored satire and logical fallacies, and discussed issues like race and identity. Through class discussions, text and media analysis, and bi-weekly journals on current events, the class encourages us to think critically about real-world issues and the factors that shape our society overall.
The education essay was the first formal essay that we wrote as a part of the Humanities course. In this essay, we were given the opportunity to reflect on the current state of the education system. We were allowed to provide our thoughts on how to improve it overall. The topic that I picked was, whether or not schools should implement earlier start times. My sending school, Grafton High School, begins school at 7:25 am. After talking to some of my friends, I was informed that some schools start as late as 8:30 am even. It made me wonder if starting school later would have any significant impact on the students’ academic success. I enjoyed this essay, as it helped us use our skills on rhetoric to create our own question to argue, in an attempt to sway the reader to the viewpoint we are arguing.
This specific essay during our Humanities course was on picking a piece of satire, either something we analyzed in class, or another piece of satire we found online. Prior to writing this essay, we examined many different pieces of satire, picking out the devices used in it, and then having discussions on those pieces. I enjoyed learning about satire, and why authors decide to use satire to get their point across. We learned that satire is used by authors to "make fun" of a certain idea. In other words, to directly and indirectly critique the idea. I decided to examine a satire that we discuss as a class, called "A Modest Proposal."