If you put effort into something, you’ll get better at doing it, and it will result in something good, or at least in something tangible. If you do nothing, you get nothing in return.
From:
A Summary Of The Best Life Lessons From Movies: Or, Everything I Know So Far
I love rats. I love all mammals and birds, most reptiles, and some insects, but although this is inventive and creative, I imagine that people suffering from the trauma of being trapped under rubble due to an earthquake or an explosion are not going to react well to a rat coming close and speaking to them via a microphone, I'm sorry to say. A cute, friendly, small robot would really be better for this kind of thing.
>>Guardianship, which provides essential protection to many frail or incapacitated people, has also been criticized as overly intrusive, and its legal processes as secretive. Claude Pepper, the former chairman of the House Select Committee on Aging, once called it “the most punitive civil penalty that can be levied against an American citizen, with the exception, of course, of the death penalty.”<<
This is true. Here is an article about it (The New Yorker, October 2, 2017):
There are many examples of abuse of the elderly, such as this case, "a 90-year-old woman almost lost her house for failing to pay $0.06, six cents, in property taxes, thus making a slogan of the Libertarian Party empirically true, “taxation is theft.”
I wrote about it in a post titled, "When A House Is A Tragic Character" because I feel, like Claude Pepper did, that this theft is so punitive, abusive, and unethical, yet it keeps happening and nobody in government is doing anything to prevent it, and not enough people know that it could happen to them.
not to mention the film "I Care a Lot", with an admittedly outlandish plot but a disturbingly plausible dramatization of the legal aspects of guardianship
That is measuring from the outside, and quantifying it. How do you measure “skill”? You still look at the results, rather than the skill that develops inside a person. It’s still the same problem as measuring “learning”.
These essays are usually assigned in college-prep courses with the intention that the students will go to college where they will need to read/write in APA, MLA or other rigid, clear styles that would allow them to read/publish in specific academic journals. It's a high standard for the high-achieving students.
As a teacher of English as a second language, I find the Jane Schaffer method quite helpful in teaching structure, idea generation, and the skill of supporting statements by providing examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaffer_method
Of course all essays shouldn't be written exactly this way, but for students just learning about writing long form, it is a brilliant stepping stone to get the basics down. Too many students—and readers—can't differentiate between a "concrete detail" or statement of fact, and "commentary material" or statement of opinion. This method helps to distinguish them.
If you put effort into something, you’ll get better at doing it, and it will result in something good, or at least in something tangible. If you do nothing, you get nothing in return.
From: A Summary Of The Best Life Lessons From Movies: Or, Everything I Know So Far