Woohoo! Another interesting and insightful post about research!
From Photobucket
Probably not what you’re thinking, but research is everywhere and I believe it to be central to most things in the world. And almost all kinds of research should be regarded as useful and productive ways to spend time.
Take an argument about Lebron James and Michael Jordan for example.
From ClickHole
Two basketball greats who have often been compared to each other. Michael Jordan is considered to be the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Recently, however, many people have started to argue that Lebron is better.
I love basketball, and in middle and high school, my friends and I would often get in heated arguments debating this exact matter.
Our arguments would take place anywhere and everywhere, and would often go on for hours and hours. By the end, neither side was convinced of the others point, but, in the process,we were inadvertently researching a thesis and data to support our claims.
We would scroll pages of data that looked like this…
From Cleveland Media
…and compare their stats for each category. We’d look at their shooting percentages, rebounds per game, assists per game, blocks per game, titles won by a certain age and on and on and on.
Sometimes, the debates would rage on for days. We’d return from school and continue to search for new statistics to back up our claims and find new statistics to make a new claim.
It got so bad that our dad’s began to weigh in on the issue. We quickly discovered they too had opinions and arguments of their own.
As a side note, through these debates, I learned whose dad made unreasonable claims without data, and whose dad could support an argument through data.
These arguments bonded us as friends, but they also built our rhetorical skills without us even knowing it. We were developing a thesis based on who we believed was the true GOAT and we were developing our claim through research and statistics.. If you asked any of us to write an essay expressing our thoughts, we all would have easily had enough material and knowledge to do so.
The thing is, this type of research and thesis driven argumentation is not recognized enough as being productive and a useful step in child development.
Why isn’t this type of research and debate considered to be as important as a debate on politics? Why can’t educators and parents alike consider these passionate arguments to be useful building blocks to a child’s education rather than an annoying debate about a meaningless topic?
Shouldn’t students be able to research what they please? Might this account for more engaged, passionate students?
Maybe if educators allowed assignments to be more open ended and allowed students to research topics they care deeply about, students wouldn’t dread writing papers.