Exploratory Essay Topic Ideas
I have a class assignment in which I have to write an exploratory essay, and I need to decide a topic soon. The main point of the exploratory essay is not to find definite answers. The point of the exploratory essay is to ask an inquiry question and find out as much as you can to try to answer your question. Then write about inquiry and findings. The essay will consider multiple viewpoints.
Why am I posting and asking about topic suggestions for a school assignment on this board? Because I want to be entertained by reading what terrible answers the board comes up with (tho good, serious suggestions will be considered)
Aaaaand GO
Why am I posting and asking about topic suggestions for a school assignment on this board? Because I want to be entertained by reading what terrible answers the board comes up with (tho good, serious suggestions will be considered)
Aaaaand GO
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43 comments
Bouncing off of ime's musical legacy idea, something similar would be to go into how to handle the legacy of popular artists who turned out to be scumbags. For instance Bill Cosby, Phil Spector, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski. Should the art be considered separate from the legacy of the person? It's a good topic as well because it is an tangential (but not at all integral) to recent public debate, and there are a ton of editorials on the subject online already to give you a jumping off point.
Do video games cause antisocial behavior.
Just look Japan for instance. Nearly a third of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to research.
The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.
Is this due to their strong obsession with video games.
Could this same thing happen to our millennials?
How would life be different in the mirror world version?
What would life be like as a glass of orange juice?
Will I ever find love in the strip club?
If we combined all the strip clubs in the US into one big club, I wonder what dancer would be highest earner? How much earned? Who would be the biggest whale? How much spent?
* Are humans causing climate change?
* Is @founder the best web site owner in the world?
* Should prostitution/weed be legalized, regulated, and taxed?
* Does the Oxford comma serve a useful purpose, other than something to argue about while sipping martinis?
* Has banning smoking in restaurants/bars helped those establishments?
* Will an abundance of self-driving car services increase the amount of teenage sex?
Examples:
--Why should we build a wall if 2/3 of illegal immigrants are foreigners who overstay their visa?
--Suppose we have a more progressive tax structure or begin to tax wealth for those with more than $50M. What effect would that have on incentives and GDP?
--There are about 8 different (radically different) plans that come under "Medicare-for-all." Which, if any, make any sense?
--Exactly who is responsible for the financial crash of 2008 and what should be done in the future?
--I like @Woodstock's suggestion on climate change.
1. 1/3 of illegal immigrants is still an astronomical number. Are you advocating that we don't worry about it because it's only 1/3? Imagine how big that number would be if there was no enforcement.
2. About 1/3 of traffic related fatalities involve alcohol. Do you not recognize the logic behind enforcing DUI laws? Imagine what the numbers would be like without it.
Suppose we don't give the government a license to steal from people.
I used to read a lot of gay fan fiction in my teenage years and a threesome would be a delight. I’ve never tried asking him, but I know he wouldn’t go for it...
I would pose the question, "What is it going to take to get our society to move beyond a politics based on denigrating the poor, minorities, and immigrants, and beyond the idea that we should be imposing Christianist moralisms, rather than respecting the beliefs of others"?
SJG
Lee Atwater teaching us how we can still say "N.... N.... N...." in a post 1954 world
https://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/14/d…
Mexico City, has so many people and cars on the streets, that if one is interested in hookers, likely best to find a bar, or you would really have to know that area.
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=70423
http://doxyspotting.com/yellow-dress/
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=129645
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=97293
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=70423
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=88173
http://doxyspotting.com/?p=112750
Richard Smoley, Inner Christianity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52xShzP5…
Business Law Today, 10th and 11th Edition, Roger LeRoy Miller
https://www.textbooks.com/Fundamentals-o…
New, Used, purchase as ebook (pdf) and in libraries
Good book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/034580…
SJG
But no, the focus is on math in general. Not about private/charter/home schools/SJG’s organization.
@DC My guess is 69 pics.
And then some say, "I am not good in math", when in reality they are like most people. You can learn it if you take the time.
But some get turned of in the 3rd grade, others get turned off in grad school. But it is always based on the bogus assumption that others have something they don't.
Show us what materials you have to start with, if you wish.
SJG
San Jose Mayor Sam Licardo supports all of this, but rest assured that no child of his would ever be sent to such a school. And all based on the premise that students from poor families and racial minorities somehow need to be "fixed". And very few stand up against this shit.
SJG
The tools people have are too limited, and people use these canned simulation programs, essentially busy boxes, without understanding much about them.
Hand held calculators do have a great deal of memory and computing power now, but the keyboards and displays are too limited.
So I am looking more at desktop and networked computers.
And people need to be able to own it themselves, just like musicians like to own their own instruments.
So interested in the mathematical concepts, and in learning to work wonders with the computer too, expertise will develop. Most of that expertise is absent today. The tech sector favors striver and bureaucrats, and the results of this show.
So I am talking about slicker work with integral transforms, complex numbers, and rational polynomial functions, vector calculus, tensor analysis, and more.
And people need to be able to modify the software themselves, write interpretive routines, and make dynamic linking extensions to the compiled code which is under it, and use it with instrumentation and real time controls too.
There are some tools available, MATLAB, MathCad, Mathematica, but I say that these are still far too limited, and also often way to expensive. People need to be able to own it themselves, so that they can master it and improve upon it.
And then of course, some of this would apply in primary and secondary school too. People could do much more, if only they were just given the chance.
SJG
Manly P. Hall - Reflections on Esoteric Christianity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klFU7REO…
How to sexualize women:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OM2UCwSxGtk/maxre…
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/15/4b/ee/154be…
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0VEL-mOHfCk/maxre…
SJG
Just the fact that you're asking this means you should be drummed out of civilized society.
* What is the social significance of dick pics, and how can a girl get more of them?
* What is the most gentlemanly approach to covering up an LDK wetspot on one's trousers?
* Is it possible to suck your way to an A grade on an exploratory essay?
* Why I'm proud to hold the world record for most cell phone entries as "side chick"
And then of course these Charter Schools, pitched at trying to close the "Achievement Gap", are even worse.
SJG
"I say that people could do much more math, if only they had the computer tools to help them. I am not so much speaking of primary or secondary school. I am thinking college, grad school, and the technological work place."
I agree that the internet has done a lot. When I was going to through calculus and differential equation classes, Khan Academy and PatrickJMT were incredible. Those two online resources alone I think were better than maybe 80% of instructors out there.
I have to do more research into what studies were already done on math education. But so far I'm of the opinion that math education reform is even more critical during secondary school (to encourage further advancement in more students).
"Also Nicespice, do you agree with me that the purpose of classroom education should be to prepare people for lifelong independent studies?"
In a utopia world, yes. But the best way to inspire that in others is to lead by example. *Most* teachers (there's definitely exceptions) , while nice enough people, I wouldn't consider individuals who are necessarily lifelong independent learners themselves.
@Subra lol at the answers. I do confess that there were a couple of upper level math classes I took where I managed to get a C when I deserved an F. (Maybe if I had given a BJ I could have gotten an A)
I agree with you that most school teachers are not lifelong learners and that they do not lead by example in this. It was not until college that I found people I could say were leading by example in their ongoing learning. It was there in a portion of the faculty, and in various departments. But it was most always based on depth of mathematical understanding.
I know that math ends up being used as a qualifying subject, in test scores and grades. And it sounds to me that you look at it this way? I feel it should be presented as something people can come to love. And the computer tools only help here.
Here is another idea, Math Groups, for elementary school.
I am many many decades older than you. I don't know how things are done today. In elementary school we always had reading groups, 3 of them, based on present ability.
Well, one 4th grade teacher decided to set up math groups, at least for a week or two. So he made up a test, based on multiplying two multiple digit numbers. This is what the class was working on. Stupid if you ask me. But based on how the students did on this 3 problem test, he cast us into one of the three groups.
I got into the top group, and this was clearly the reason he made the groups, because of what he wanted to teach the top group. We got to learn first set theory, and then building upon this we got a very well ordered presentation of the rules of geometry. Lots and lots of years in school, but this two week interval still stands out in my mind as one of the most important of times. I still very well remember everything he taught us, and how he explained it.
When I entered elementary school, the buzz word was "New Math". Is it true that this idea came from the Bourbaki group in Paris? Are people still thinking like this?
Well I have to ask, what do you think of these charter schools which reduce the curriculum down to test preparation and use drilling computers? I think it is completely wrong and exploitative.
SJG
Manly P. Hall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klFU7REO…
I’m not too sure about the charter schools. But my (public) high school was teach-to-the-test. The final one, administered to higher school juniors, required a certain minimum score to pass high school.
That being said, as long as college tuition is the way it is, I can’t knock that system *too* hard. I have received a lot of credit for the AP and CLEP tests I have passed.
Where you have something good would be in the CLASS Test which CA developed in the 1990's. But Right Wing groups, often using Evangelical Christian logic, strongly objected and blocked it in court. The test would have allowed the schools to better evaluate themselves, but there would have been no individual student scores. It favored critical thinking. Famous because an example question was based on an excerpt from Alice Walker's "The Color Purple".
I would say that teach-to-the-test destroys the educational experience and severely limits what students can learn. And then the charter school versions will be even worse.
No it is not too hard, it is just to limited. It amounts to training youth to be slaves.
From your state, Houston:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/034580…
And teach-to-the-test and the entire charter schools movement amount to neo-liberalism:
Wendy Brown. In the account of Neoliberalism. 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ_dIjr…
Would you have any book refs or links which you are drawing from which you might like to show us?
SJG