Bard High School Essay Question Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. Additionally, a 500 internal server error error was encountered while trying to use an errordocument to handle the request. Is thorin in any sense a heroic leader? do his actions in the novel make him deserving of his death at the end? by the time the battle of the five armies commences, thorin has incurred the contempt and disrespect of many of the book rsquo s characters and probably most readers. But to thorin rsquo s credit, he shows tremendous courage in attempting to reclaim his ancestors rsquo treasure from smaug. We come to learn that his failings mdash which become apparent once he is inside the lonely mountain mdash are common to all dwarves, who possess a great desire for gold and a fierce, even arrogant pride. Thorin rsquo s great crime is his ingratitude toward his benefactors, the many lake men who died so that smaug could be killed.

Thorin rsquo s stubbornness over the legitimate ownership of the gold is dishonorable and costs lives, but he strives to redeem himself in the end by admitting his mistakes to bilbo. He lacks the capacity to formulate and execute plans, and he relies on bilbo to get him through nearly every difficulty he encounters. Given his development throughout the book, does bilbo belong in hobbiton at the end of the novel? he is not completely accepted by the hobbit community, but he seems to be perfectly happy there.

How do you think tolkien views the relationship between heroism and the simple life? at the beginning of the novel, the simple life seems antithetical to heroism, but by the end of the novel, after bilbo has proven his common sense and courage, his resumption of the simple life seems like a small act of heroism in itself. Thorin comments that if more of the contentious warriors of the world lived the way hobbits do, it would be a happier world, and bilbo rsquo s return to hobbiton seems an acknowledgment of the same idea. Heroism is important in a world beset with evil, but tolkien suggests that if everyone lived the simple life of hobbits, evil would be obsolete.

So, in a sense, bilbo does belong in hobbiton, even if he does not in the eyes of the hobbit community. Where do humans fit in among the other races of middle earth? are humans a ldquo good rdquo race? as we have seen, the various races portrayed in middle earth each demonstrate very specific invariable characteristics. Tolkien shows that in the human race, each individual determines his or her goodness. But the old master of lake town is greedy and manipulative in an almost pitiful way mdash he dies out in the desert, clutching gold stolen from the town.

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Do individuals have any power over who they become, or are their characters entirely determined by static factors such as family and race? 2. Describe tolkien rsquo s use of humor in the hobbit. from what authorial techniques and sources does the book draw much of its wit? how does tolkien rsquo s lighthearted tone impact the portrayal of the more serious elements of the plot? is the hobbit primarily a comedy? were pleased to announce the winners of the nations fifth annual student writing contest. This year we asked students to send us an original, unpublished, 800 word essay detailing how their education has been compromised by budget cuts and tuition hikes. We received hundreds of submissions from high school and college students in forty four states. The winners are amanda lewan of michigan state university and melissa parnagian of old bridge high school in new jersey.

All receive nation subscriptions. many thanks to the nation institute for its generosity in making this contest possible. the editors the day that the course catalogue comes out at my school is like christmas morning. Almost as soon as the catalogues are put out, they disappear, and my friends and i run through the hall frantically circling all of the classes that we want to take. Instead of worrying about choosing between ap english and ap government, were excited to see that novels of fyodor dostoevsky and a political science course called equality are being offered. My high school, bard high school early college bhsec , offers a nontraditional alternative to high school in new york city. Founded as a collaboration between bard college and the new york city department of education, bhsec is a free, public school that challenges students to complete all of their high school requirements by the end of tenth grade. During the last two years of high school i was able to choose from a plethora of onsite college courses taught by college professors, many of whom have doctorate degrees in their field of study.

Bhsec graduates receive both a regents diploma from new york state and an associate of arts degree from bard college equivalent to sixty transferrable college credits. For evidence of bhsecs success since its founding in 2001, one needs to look no farther than the significant percentage of my graduating class of 2010 who will be the first in their family to go to college. In order to maintain its college program, bhsec requires approximately an additional $4,0 per student. Since bhsec does not charge tuition, it relies on city, state and federal grants as well as independent parent fundraising efforts to close the financial gap. As a result of this, each year bhsec is directly impacted by cuts to the education budget. In the past two years, when bhsec has had to cut its budget, art and music programs have been in the most danger of being eliminated, leaving bhsecs highly motivated academic student body with fewer creative outlets. Bhsecs enrollment has increased significantly in the last nine years, but its funding has not.

Since bhsecs funds are limited, existing bhsec faculty have had to teach more classes, meaning that fewer sections of classes are offered overall. This has made a significant difference at bhsec, where classes are usually capped at twenty students most public high school classes in new york city have over thirty and students in high and low academic standing alike meet frequently with professors one on one outside of class. Bhsec also emphasizes discussion rather than lecture as its method of teaching, and expects that students will develop critical thinking tools by challenging one anothers ideas. Having larger classes makes this goal more difficult to achieve, as each student has less of an opportunity to contribute to the discussion.

Last summer in a speech to the naacp, president obama lauded bhsec as an innovative program for the rest of the united states to look to. Yet bhsecs tight financial situation raises an important question to think about in american education: how can we offer successful, innovative public education programs in a climate where financial resources are so limited? finding a solution to this problem will require a significant shift away from investing in students test scores and toward funding programs like bhsec that challenge students to critically think. As a bhsec student, discussing notions of lockean consent with a professor who had just published a book on religious toleration in israel was exponentially more valuable to me than learning how to answer a question on an ap or regents exam. Learning how to build an argument by examining contradicting viewpoints meant more to me than learning how to construct a standard five paragraph essay. All of the students, teachers and parents in my school also embrace a love for learning beyond exam scores and report cards, i have frequently had conversations about kafka with friends over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at lunch and each member of the school community is deeply invested in everyone elses learning.

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