Rough Draft: INQUIRY ESSAY ROUGH DRAFT

Jack McCann
Nate Millard
November 14, 2014
Inquiry Rough Draft

Children today are considered the leaders of the future. Future businessmen and lawyers are
being trained and educated throughout their whole lives. Elementary school, middle school, high school,
and college are the main forms of education today, but some people cannot get these opportunities. If
students cannot get opportunities to go through school, there are chances that they cannot be a leader
of the future. Education in the United States can be improved by adapting some new features that can
help students financially and find better ways to learn.
One idea that the United States can adopt would be free college tuition. One article I read by
Rebecca Schuman was about Germany. In Germany, they give their citizens the ability to go to college
without having to pay for any tuition. Not only do they give this opportunity to their citizens, they also
give free tuition to international students. There are differences between German college and college in
the United States. German colleges consist almost entirely of classroom buildings and libraries. There
are little to no dorms because many German students still live at home with their parents or have their
own apartments. Another difference is the academic life. Students are accepted into particular majors.
You cannot change your degree halfway through your junior year. Once you declare your major, you
take the programs required classes until the end. Another difference is there is little academic advising,
which is a significant difference than the United States. In Germany, you are supposed to know what you
are doing when you enter college. The final difference between the United States and German colleges
are the class sizes. Typically in the United States, class sizes are about 25 students. In Germany, the
average class size is 200 students. This system is not worse than the United States, but different. If you

IQUIRY ESSAY ROUGH DRAFT

are not self motivated, you will not graduate. You need to put in more time and effort to pass and
graduate from German colleges. Even though college in Germany is different, it gives the opportunity to
everyone to get a degree, unlike the United States.
Another idea for the United States is cutting tuition. The second article I read was written by Lisa
Wirthman, and she talked about how studying international will cut costs for students. If you are not
able to get into colleges in Germany, there are some colleges in countries like Canada that provide
education for lower costs. Money is one of the deciding factors when it comes to college. Students
might be missing opportunities to go to their top college because they did not get any scholarships and
the tuition is too expensive for them. They would be in debt for years after they graduate college. In the
article, it compares McGill University in Canada and New York University. When you go to school at
McGill University, you will pay $16,000 and if you go to New York University, you will be paying $50,000
a year. The students who do not have as much money will not be able to afford college. Without being
able to afford college, we will not be getting the leaders of our future.
I listened to a TED Talk about technology in foreign countries and how it helped children start
their education. The speaker, Charles Leadbeater talk about children who lived in favelas in Brazil were
not in school because they had no opportunities. A man in 1994 brought the first laptop to Brazil, which
changed the education system forever. The children there started to go back to school because they
were interested in learning and had the opportunity. The next story the speaker talked about was about
children in a slum of Africa, called Nakuru. The children in the slum have either no parents or one parent
because they died of AIDS. The children in Nakuru are in school to learn how to stay alive and well. They
have to know how to not become HIV positive and how to become successful with their lives. The
introduction to technology started a new era of education. So many more opportunities are given to
children because of technology.

IQUIRY ESSAY ROUGH DRAFT

The last TED Talk I listened was about how using videos have changed and reinvented education.
Teachers today are using videos posted on YouTube as their lectures and make the students do
homework in class. This technique helps children in many different ways. They are able to re-watch the
lecture over again if they do not understand and they can ask for more help with homework in the
classroom. The speaker, Salman Khan, said that he had a student with autism. His parents tried
everything they could to teach their son decimals, but were still not able to learn it. Once he watched
the videos, he was able to learn decimals and even more. This new form of education has helped many
people throughout our country and hopefully can help students from foreign countries.