2.+Group+Analysis

 So many of the discussions and controversies about the content of education are futile and inconclusive because they are concerned with what should “ go into ” the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done. The college student who once said to me, after a lecture, “ I spend so much time studying that I don ’ t have a chance to learn anything ” was succinctly expressing his dissatisfaction with the sausage-casing view of education. He was being so stuffed with miscellaneous facts, with such an indigestible mass of material, that he had no time (and was given no encouragement) to draw on his own resources, to use his own mind for analyzing and synthesizing and evaluating this material. Education, to have any meaning beyond the purpose of creating well-informed dunces, must elicit from the pupil what is latent in every human being- the rules of reason, the inner knowledge of what is proper for men to be and do, the ability to sift evidence and come to conclusions that can generally be agreed to by all open mind and warm hearts. **Pupils are more like oyster than sausages**. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence.   Sydney J. Harris, "What True Education Should Do," 1964
 * What True Education Should Do ** 

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The use of analogy in this passage helps express the authors purpose and shows the reader his attitude towards the nature of the piece. The author says "Pupils are more like oysters than sausages" to say that pupils have riches inside and not like a sausage which is just packed with meat and intestines. The richness the author is expressing about is the capability from within a persons mind and its hidden knowledges that are within. For the author sausages are just like compressing random useless knowledge in a persons head to just keep them busy. The author is trying to get at that true education should not be random useless knowledge, but true inner knowledge that compels your mind to think and to use reason. The author gets his point through with the use of analogy because it compares and shows the parrallels which give the reader a keen sense on what the author is trying to get the reader to believe.===== //What True Education Should Do// by Sydney J. Harris 1) 05 Feb. 2009 .