GMAT Essays (AWA)

Prompt: ”Primary and secondary education should focus on training students for the highly specialized jobs of the future, rather than on providing them with a broad range of non-specific skills and information.”

Assignment: Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your position with reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

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The opinion stating that primary and secondary education should focus on training students for highly specialized jobs rather than providing them with a broad range of non-specific skills and information is an interesting one. I believe that while, it is very important that people gain specific skills to succeed in a competative job market, it is equally important to have knowledge about subject areas not directly relevant to success in one's vocation. This knowledge is generally attained during an individual's primary and secondary education.

Firstly, the broad range of skills which might not be relevant to training students for highly specialized skills are nevertheless important because they give a person the foundation of all aspects of life. Students in their primary and seconary years of education are not completely aware of what field they would want to specialize in and hence need information that helps them in determining an area they would want to specialize in. An example of this situation is the education system on India, students as young as 14 are forced to choose either a specialization in science, commerce or arts.

Secondly, university education stresses on those highly specialized skills necessary to succeed in one's career. Hence primary education need not cover those areas as it would only lead to redundancy in these essencial skills. I strongly believe that the role of primary and secondary education is to provide the building blocks that shape an individual's character. Physical education, environmental studies, music and painting are as important as those "highly specialized job training" courses such as accounting, computer science and statistics, especially since they develop an individual's character.

Finally not all students would want to learn them same specialized skills. There might be certain students who would like to enhance their skills in physical training and become an athelete or learn the guitar and become a musician. To determine each one's individual needs would require a lot of resources as not everyone would want to learn the same "specialized skills." Thus primary and secondary education can not be altered to focus on specific specialized skills as these are not universal.

In conclusion, although primary and secondary education should focus on training students for highly specialized jobs, it should not loose focus from its main goal, that is to provide the building blocks that shape an individuals character.